Summary

• Why journalists leave or are tempted to leave the PR sections of all the sites we tested
• How to provide the exact information journalists are looking for, in a format which make them use it
• Design flaws which are most likely to upset journalists
• How to support international press inquiries

The report contains 103 guidelines for improving the design of PR areas of corporate websites, and is richly illustrated with 198 color screenshots from many different websites, showing usability problems we found in our testing as well as examples of highly-usable press areas. Also examples from many other websites which the test users mentioned as particularly good or bad based on their experience as journalists.

The findings are based on usability testing of 42 corporate websites with 40 journalists in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

While all sites had some good traits, such as interesting content or some good interface designs, every site also had significant usability problems. At some point in every single test session, journalists said that they would have to leave the site because it failed to deliver what they needed.

After having a difficult time on a site, one journalist said, "I would be reluctant to go back to the site. If I had a choice to write about something else, then I would write about something else." Another journalist described what he'd do when he could not find any of the facts he needed for his story: "Better not to write it than to get it wrong. I might avoid the subject altogether."

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Table of Contents

287 page report with 198 color screenshots.

1. Executive Summary
   • User research: 3 rounds
   • Journalists' information needs
   • Facts and humans
   • Changes in PR usability
2. Research Overview
   • The procedure
   • The participants
   • Websites studied
   • Examples in this report
3. State Of Affairs
   • Current condition of websites
   • Trends over time: User behavior
   • Trends over time: Site design
   • Site design can impact press coverage
   • High priority information
   • Short visits impact perception
4. Guidelines Summary
5. Web Presence: Make Yourself Known
6. Press Information
7. Press Releases and News
8. Presenting the Organization, Products, and Services
9. Management and High-Level Executives
10. Financial Information
11. Philanthropy and Social Responsibility
12. Style and Formatting
13. Writing Style and Content
14. Interaction Design
15. Graphics, Multimedia, and PDF
16. Handling Corporate Crisis
17. Press Relations Offline
18. E-mail Press Releases
19. Why Journalists Leave Websites
20. Good Sites: Journalists Gave These Thumbs Up
21. Poor Sites: Journalists Gave These Thumbs Down
22. Methodology
    • Thinking Aloud
    • Participants
    • Sample Tasks
    • Websites Studied
23. About Using This Methodology
    • Advantages to testing onsite
    • Disadvantages to testing onsite
    • International notes

Test Participants

• Monthly international entertainment magazine with 2 million readers
• Monthly national print magazine with more than 2 million subscribers
• Daily national newspaper with 1.5 million readers
• Daily global newspaper with 500,000 subscribers
• Bi-weekly international magazine with more than 500,000 subscribers
• Monthly national print and Web magazine with 500,000 subscribers
• Daily national newsmagazine with Web and print editions and more than 500,000 subscribers
• Monthly print magazine with more than 500,000 subscribers
• Daily national newspaper with more than 450,000 readers
• Monthly news magazine with print and Web editions and 300,000 subscribers
• Monthly print magazine with 100,000 subscribers
• Bi-monthly print magazine with 100,000 subscribers
• Weekly print and Web magazine with 40,000 readers
• Weekly Web-based computer magazine with more than 35,000 subscribers
• Monthly national news magazine with print and Web editions and 14,000 subscribers
• Monthly national entertainment magazine with print and Web editions
• Small news website, owned by a large national newspaper
• Small national newspaper owned by a very large national newspaper
• Daily Web magazine
• Radio news show with 1 million listeners
• Various other large and small print and Web-based magazines and newspapers

Comparing the Editions

If you already own the first or second edition of this report, should you buy the third edition?

We have had major new insights since the first study, so if you have the first edition: Yes, we do recommend getting the third edition.

On the other hand, there were fewer changes from the second to the third edition, so if you already have the second edition: No, we do not recommend getting the third edition, unless it is very important to your job to know all the latest details about this topic.

Comparison of the editions:

What You Get

• Checklist of 103 specific design recommendations: review your website and its press room for these 103 items, and you will discover several things that need improvement.
  • The average website typically violates about half of our usability guidelines. You might have the one perfect site in the world that does everything right, but the odds are against you. It is safest to score your design against a checklist of usability guidelines to make sure you don't do anything wrong.
• Description of how journalists behave when using a wide variety of PR sites, including extensive quotes (often colorful, because they were frequently annoyed). Learn from the users' comments and reactions to common design mistakes in the PR sections we tested.
• 198 color screenshots of PR pages with descriptions of why they worked well for journalists or caused them problems in usability testing.
• $200,000 of user research with journalists at 0.1% of the cost; find out how real journalists behave when they use real websites.
• Test methodology description, allowing you to run your own user tests of your own design.
• Knowledge to make your site easier for journalists to use; thus getting more press coverage. The business value of better PR depends on the company, but is usually substantially higher than the cost of this low-priced report. Consider how much money you spend on PR to pitch your company: isn't it worth spending a tiny fraction of this amount to ensure that journalists are treated well if they decide to follow up and visit your site?

Who Should Read This Report?

• Anybody who is responsible for the design or content of the PR area of a website
• PR professionals wishing to advise their clients on proper use of the Web
• Executives in charge of communications strategy for a major corporate website

Running a similar usability study yourself to collect comparative design lessons from a large number of websites around the world would cost more than $200,000 and several months of an experienced usability professional's time.

Please help us continue publishing low-price reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If you only need it for yourself, then that's obviously what the single-user license is for. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future.

Download Report (from eSellerate) $248 for the PDF file (287 pages) $468 for site license to make copies