how to learn from past mistakes...

Out of the three Jakob Nielsen pieces, the one I found the most intuitive and useful for future campaigns was his sidebar on how Bush and Kerry used the Internet during the last week of the campaign. According to Nielsen, the candidate who had the best Internet usability ratings in the previous presidential elections had one the race, and 2004 was no exception.

The major difference between the candidates in this election was that Kerry used his e-mail communications to raise money while Bush used his to get out the vote and motivate his base. Even the most fervent supporters will get irritated by too many donation requests, and that was the Kerry Internet campaign's biggest flaw in the last week. Bush, on the other hand, instructed his supporters to reach out to their friends and then sent a follow up email after the election telling them exactly how successful they'd been. That's the way to keep and expand your base.