Liberal Tyler Banham and Tory Terry Anderson have the best ones, Green candidate Stephen Brotherston's needs work while NDP incumbent Chris Charlton is in danger of losing her chin.

That's the view of Mohawk College advertising and communications professors Jef Petrossi and Rafael Ferreira when it comes to the websites of the four candidates running in the riding of Hamilton Mountain in the Oct. 14 federal election.

The Mountain News provided the names of the candidates and their party affiliations and the two instructors set out to find out what they could about the candidates starting with a Google search, a common method of looking up information on the Internet. Mr. Petrossi and Mr. Ferreira spent about two hours researching the candidates using PC and Mac computers.

"I think they all did a pretty good job of getting on the first page of Google," said Mr. Petrossi, who noted all of the candidates with the exception of Mr. Anderson were at the top of the list that appeared on their Google search.

Mr. Petrossi said Mr. Anderson has a common name and the Conservative Party candidate appeared below four other Terry Anderson's that popped up. But when he typed in Terry Anderson Conservative Party, the former Mountain councillor's name appeared at the top of the list on the first page.

The two instructors then pretended they didn't know who the candidates were and typed in the name of the riding and political party. The correct names came up when they tried Hamilton Mountain Green Party, Hamilton Mountain NDP and Hamilton Mountain Conservative.

But when the typed in Hamilton Mountain Liberal it took them a while to find Mr. Banham.

"I didn't see Tyler Banham's name come up in the first few results," Mr. Petrossi said. "You can't assume that everybody knows everything there is to know about you. Some people aren't as informed about this stuff, so they go on Google because they want to see who's in the area and if they can't find your name that's a bad thing."

Mr. Ferreira felt Mr. Anderson and Mr. Banham had the best websites featuring good photos and lots of blue and red respectfully, similar to the national party websites.

"There's much more information on both of them and you can find it easily," Mr. Ferreira said.

He said Mr. Anderson's site is more traditional while Mr. Banham's site has a bit of an edge to it and appears aimed at younger web-savvy voters.

Mr. Petrossi felt Mr. Banham's site, which features a large photo of the candidate in the top right corner, is the best of the four.

"It's sort of the easiest one to digest for your eyes," he said. "You go to the top corner, then you look at the smaller pictures and then you go down the links on the edge. Terry Anderson's site is nice too, but I find there's a lot going on."

Green Party candidate Stephen Brotherston has opted for a blog (web log) with links to other party information and news articles rather than a full blown website and Mr. Petrossi feels that was a mistake.

"It doesn't feel there's as much effort that goes into a blog as a website," Mr. Petrossi said.

Mr. Ferreira noted there's a lot of text on the blog and most people probably aren't going to spend the time reading it all.

"You're kind of lost in the way you follow through the information," he said.

When they looked at Ms. Charlton's website, both profs immediately noticed her photo was too tightly cropped.

"The picture in the top left corner, they've cropped it right below her chin which is so uncomfortable when you look at it," Mr. Petrossi said.

"It's a no-no in any photography class," Mr. Ferreira added.

Mr. Petrossi said Ms. Charlton's home page contains large blocks of copy that can be intimidating to read.

"None (of the candidates) do a really good job of having a quick spell-out of what the person stands for," said Mr. Petrossi, who added Ms. Charlton's site needs more orange to reflect the NDP's national party website.

All four Mountain candidates' websites have links to Facebook, a social networking website, which contains a photo of the candidate, some back ground information and their number of supporters.

But doing that, Mr. Petrossi noted, can be risky. He said if a candidate doesn't have a lot of Facebook supporters it can give the impression that he or she is not particularly popular, which could adversely affect their campaign.

As of 9:50 a.m. on Oct. 7 Mr. Banham had 278 Facebook supporters, Ms. Charlton had 262, Mr. Anderson 64 and Mr. Brotherston 35.

"It definitely helps a person like Tyler Banham and hurts somebody like Stephen Brotherston," Mr. Petrossi said.

Of the national leaders on Facebook earlier this week, NDP leader Jack Layton had 21,000 supporters, Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper had 16,700, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion had 13,800 and Green Party leader Elizabeth May had 4,600.

Stateside, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama had more than two million supporters compared to 560,000 supporters for Republican John McCain.

When it comes to the national parties, Mr. Petrossi felt the NDP and the Conservatives have the best websites.

He didn't like the fact that the first thing he saw on the NDP site was a large image of leader Jack Layton and an orange bar with the words "donate now" on it.

"They made it so that 'donate now' is getting all the emphasis," said Mr. Petrossi, who added the "continue" button is no where near as obvious. "I feel like they're more interested in your donation than your vote."

Despite the initial page, Mr. Petrossi likes the way Mr. Layton is featured on the site. Unlike Ms. Charlton, Mr. Petrossi said the photos of the NDP leader are well-cropped and Mr. Layton comes across as both friendly and commanding.

He doesn't like the block of text that comes up when he clicked on the policy information buttons.

"I really don't think that's a great way of getting their information out in a quick way," Mr. Petrossi said.

The Conservative Party website features a photo of Mr. Harper and his family sitting on a couch. Below are other photos of the PM and at the bottom is an unflattering photo of Mr. Dion.

While he feels the Tory site is reasonably user-friendly, Mr. Petrossi wonders why most of the photos feature Mr. Harper looking away from the camera.

"You know one thing about Stephen Harper that drives me crazy is that he never makes eye contact with the camera," Mr. Petrossi said "With pictures you're always trying to decide how honest they are...so eye contact is really important."

Mr. Petrossi said he liked the big photo of Ms. May on the Green Party website and the roll-over buttons on the right side where the viewer can get information on the party's position a number of issues. But he didn't like the big blocks of text that came up when he clicked on those buttons, calling it a potential turn-off.

He said a common mistake the Greens and the other parties are making is they believe the average person who is not a political follower will spend lots of time reading all the information on their websites when in fact most just want some fast and preferably short information on the party's platform that they can read in a minute or two before they move on.

Mr. Petrossi was not impressed with the large but not very flattering photo of Mr. Dion standing with his mouth open at a podium that was featured on the Liberal Party website earlier this week.

He called it a cold photo of the Liberal leader compared to the warm, friendly or commanding photos of Mr. Harper and Mr. Layton on their party's websites. Mr. Petrossi added the Liberals do appear to be updating their site more often then the other parties.

When it came to finding policy pronouncements, Mr. Petrossi found the Liberal site a bit confusing and he didn't like the fact that policy information has to be down-loaded in PDF form.

I don't think a lot of people want to (down-load) information," Mr. Petrossi said. "They don't want that file to occupy space on their desk top just so they can find out about your party. Having a PDF on your computer is a burden."

Mr. Petrossi said all of the parties would do well to have a one or two minute video available on their home page outlining their platforms.

"People don't want to read long boxes (of text)," he said.

Mr. Petrossi said the Internet has become our "go-to" source for information and political parties need to become more web savvy if they want to get their message out to the public.