Journalists need facts and phone numbers, not Flash animation, study says

You’ve jazzed up your corporate Web site with Flash animation and fast-moving videos, but did you forget the simple things, such as adding a “contact” link to your media relations team? If you forgot, apparently you’re not alone.

A new study on the usability of Web site press rooms shows that journalists remain mighty frustrated about the lack of easy-to-find information on corporate sites.

“When corporations design Web sites, they design them for themselves,” explains Hoa Loranger, director of Nielsen Norman Group, based in Fremont, Calif. Loranger is co-author of the consulting firm’s new report, which studied 40 journalists and their use of the Web.

“The designers of these press rooms don’t create them based on the needs of the users,” says Loranger.

In an age of overworked journalists with ever-shorter attention spans, the impact of a poorly designed press room is substantial.

“Journalists repeatedly said that poor website usability could reduce or completely eliminate their press coverage of a company,” the study reported. One journalist, asked about his likelihood of bailing on a confusing press room, 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."

One of the biggest complaints of Web-browsing journalists is that they can rarely find fact-based, straightforward information about what a company does.

“We’ve been studying this for years. Companies are still not adequately communicating what make them unique,” says Loranger. (read Nielsen Norman’s previous study on “About Us” pages for corporate Web sites).

The journalists who took part in the study confessed to confusion about jargon-filled and fluffy “About” pages and corporate mission statements. In many cases, the writers of corporate “About” pages rely on insider lingo and industry terms that they understand but that no one else can decipher.

“They don’t realize that their site visitors are not as educated on their business as they are,” says Loranger of some of these press room writers. “And it’s not just journalists who are lost. It’s customers and investors as well.” Here’s how to make your online press room more useful:
 
Make finding PR contact info a foolproof process: Of the top five reasons the journalists gave for visiting a corporate Web site, the most important reason is to locate PR contact info. That usually means a direct phone number to a PR person.

“Sites must offer a simple way to contact a live human being in the PR department,” says the study. “Although a Web site can answer many basic questions and provide great help, journalists almost always want to talk to a person, too.”

Loranger says journalists are more likely to desert a Web site that only offers an e-mail address as a means of contacting a PR person. Worse yet, she says, is a generic PR e-mail address, such as press@XYZCompany.com. “They’re more likely to send an e-mail if there’s a person’s name, because at least there’s some accountability,” she says. But when they’re on deadline, they still want a phone number.

Create an easy-to-find fact sheet—and don’t lard on the hype: One of the biggest beefs of the journalists studied by Nielsen Norman is that companies hide basic info under some virtual rock. The number-two reason that journalists said they visited corporate sites is to find out facts and stats about the organization, such as the year founded and the number of employees.

Yet not only is this info in short supply, it’s often cloaked in “marketese and excessive verbiage that smother the facts,” reports the study.

“You need to be wary of marketing language in the corporate section of your site. When people go there, they’re on a fact-finding mission,” Loranger says.

In other words, while journalists and other site visitors expect to be marketed to elsewhere on a site, they don’t want it on a “just-the-facts” page.

(By the way, the other top reasons to visit corporate Web sites, according to the journalists, were: to figure out the company’s spin on events, to check financial information and to download images for use in their stories.)

Link to external sources: Journalists told the Nielsen Norman researchers that they use press material only to figure out how a company is positioning itself. Press rooms should have links to external sources of information about the company, such as press clips.

“Journalists often consider articles from independent newspapers and magazines to be much more credible than a company's own press releases,” says the study.
                  
Assume media visitors don’t have the latest hardware and software: Many journalists work at home full-time or part-time and like most people, put off doing computer upgrades as long as possible. So your press room’s latest wizardry may not be appreciated. Or worse, journalists won’t be able to view or download press info.

To be on the safe side, Loranger suggests that all press materials, such as press releases or podcasts, be usable or downloadable with software that’s two years behind current releases. And while professional communicators tend to love PDFs because they preserve the look and feel of a document, journalists told the Nielsen Norman researchers that PDFs slow down their work.

“They feel that PDFs are flat documents. They don’t allow them to navigate to other sources of information,” says Loranger.