Navigating participation: how website design impacts the digital divide in political engagement

Over the last two decades political parties and candidates have shifted many of their functions and activities online. As individuals differ greatly in their technological competence, this shift generates a democratic digital divide. Most of the research focuses on the characteristics of those who are disadvantaged by this divide, exploring the role of Internet literacy programs to ameliorate the problem. However, little attention has been paid to an alternative solution: improving the infrastructure of online communication itself. Employing hidden eye tracking technology, randomly assigned participants (N = 21) were asked to conduct several tasks on parties’ websites. Through observation flow and heat maps, mouse movements and retroscope questioning, we found that political parties’ websites were not optimally designed to facilitate participation. In fact, they hampered participation, especially among those with low technological competence. Based on our findings, we modified the parties’ websites and asked a second group of randomly assigned volunteers (N = 21) to conduct the very same tasks. A cross-group comparison shows that the digital divide may be significantly reduced by following simple web-design best practices.