Yesterday I noted how logging into Democratic Web sites is a chore, today I follow-up with the Republican sites. If you want a summary, its just as bad.

WINNER for both parties is Fred Thompson who not only provides a link at the top to sign-up for an account BUT ALSO MAGICALLY SIGN-IN. Wow, what a concept and he isn’t even a candidate yet.

John McCain will let you sign-up but not sign in on the main page. To login with John McCain you have to go to “McCain Space” where you cannot login immediately you have to click another link to find the form.

Mitt Romney lets you sign up to join the team but it isn’t clear this leads to any more interaction that needs a login. I can post a comment to the Mitt Blog without logging into an account. Same with Sam Brownback. I can join “Team Brownback” but other than getting some e-mails there appears to be no account creation or login.

Rudy Giuliani, Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul & Mike Huckabee don’t seem to have any kind of social networking/long-term account system in place to login to either making most of these Republican sites pretty basic. Go, look, contribute leave.

So four stars to Fred Thompson, zero stars for just about every other candidate Republican or Democrat.

Now as I said yesterday why is account creation important? I noted because it lets you track your visitors, give them access to information tailored to them and it helps the campaign keep in contact. What would it also do? Republicans, please note this, it makes it easier for people to contribute. Once a person is logged in they could contribute with pretty much two or three clicks and little typing making them more likely to do it several times and in the heat of the moment when they are all fired up from seeing you speak or reading something on your site.

Give them twenty steps instead of two or three and you might lose them. So my point is, start getting sign-ups and when you do actually give them the ability to sign-in.