NJI Media, FamousDC’s digital and creative partner, was cited by the Wall Street Journal for its thoughtful inside jokes on Speaker Ryan’s official website last week:
Are you running for president? It’s a question House Speaker Paul Ryan got quite a bit in media interviews this year, always with the same answer: No.
Now, that question is used as a playful joke on his new website. If a visitor searches for a topic on Speaker.gov and gets no results, the site offers this guidance on how its search parameters work. It advises: Are you running for president, without quote marks, will yield more results than “are you running for president.” And it coaches users on the use of “or” — “President or Is Speaker Ryan Running will often show more results than is Speaker Ryan going to run for president.”
It’s one of the “Easter eggs,” or treasures Mr. Ryan’s tech team has hidden in the recently upgraded site to make visitors smile. The main driver of the site’s upgrade is user-friendliness, especially on mobile devices – less than two years ago, 1 out of 3 site visitors came from mobile devices, according to Mr. Ryan’s office. Now, 44.5% of visitors are coming to the site from phones and 10.1% are using tablets.
Among the other Easter eggs on the new Speaker.gov: Visitors who hit a dead page on the site will get the usual “404″ error message – which in this case comes with a picture of Mr. Ryan with his hands in the air, looking confused.
Speaker.gov also has an amazing 404 page concept. Did you stumble upon a nonexistent page? Well, the Speaker is just as frustrated and confused as you are.