I read with great interest last week when the independent Web Marketing Association called the 2008 United States presidential election, three weeks before a vote has been cast, to Barack Obama. The reason for this was that Obama's website won their WebAward over John McCain's website!

The decision to award www.barackobama.com the gong for 'Better Website' was made by 110 internet website experts, who sit on the Web Marketing Association's WebAward judging panel. And the fact that this same crew voted for Obama's website as 'better than Hillary Clinton's' during the Democratic primaries, and Obama ended up defeating Clinton, could mean the same path is set for November 4.

Let's take a closer look at both barackobama.com and johnmccain.com...

The Web Marketing Association judged the websites based on the following categories:

• Design
• Innovation
• Content
• Ease of Use
• Copywriting
• Interactivity, and
• Technology

In all these categories, Obama recorded smashing victories over McCain, with his smallest score being 70.1%, which was for Copywriting.

Viewing both websites, they have definitely gone down the path of Web 2.0 to pass on their message to American voters.

Both websites have similar large fonts; they both possess significant movement throughout pages, they both have shops, they both have significant calls to action directed at supporters, videos are prominent, blogs are updated and interactive, while 'interactive' is a good one-word summation of the image they both do well in extracting through their respective websites.

Does one do it better than the other?

I think yes. I am in agreement with the WebAwards that Obama's website is more interactive, innovative and better looking. Although I am not convinced that barackobama.com deserves to thrash johnmccain.com in all the above categories.

For example, I think McCain's website is at least the equal of Obama's in the 'Ease of Use' category, while 'Copywriting' is another category they could have scored closer in. However, as far as 'Design', 'Innovation', 'Content', 'Interactivity' and 'Technology' goes; Obama's website deserves to score higher thus deserves the better website award.

I feel the reason the respected judges have gone with a thrashing victory to Obama over McCain is the overall appeal of these two candidates to a web audience.

Despite efforts by McCain to jazz up his campaign with a fancy font and Sarah Pallin, he still looks like an old man. Not many surfers of the web are looking for old men.

Obama, on the other hand, is different. He is youthful and he seems genuinely web savvy.

Where McCain seems to be using the web because it is an essentiality, Obama has been using it to gather grassroots support from day 1 and credits in with building his profile as a president-worthy individual.