(Stacy Lynch)

Our recent research report, "What It Takes to Be a Web Favorite," highlighted the critical importance for Web sites of being "easy to use." So we quickly fielded a follow up study to find out what "easy to use" really means. Media Management Center just released the new report: "How to Become Easy to Use."

In a nutshell, we found that there are several kinds of "easy to use" experiences online. Achieving an optimal "easy to use" experience is not so much about technical or design excellence as it is about understanding who your audience is and what they’re trying to do. In a news context, it means that the best approach for a news site for news hounds is quite different than the approach that would suit someone who follows news casually.

We also found that existing news sites are generally geared for those who are very interested in news - leaving many casual news observers overwhelmed by the amount of information available. I encourage you to read the full report to learn what successful sites do to mitigate this.

So what do these findings mean and how should news organizations should take action on them? I would make three points:

• The first challenge is to have a sharply-honed audience strategy. If your current strategy sounds something like this: "We will serve our print readers and online users with the best news possible"... that's just not good enough. You need to ask yourself just who are your online audiences? Please note the plural on that. There are many different segments of online news consumers and you need to know who you have, who you don’t have, and who you want. You need to understand the differences between different groups. And I would argue that you need to decide both who you want to serve well with each site and who you will not be serving.


• The second challenge is to offer a wider range of approaches; you need to serve different audiences differently. Most traditional news outlets seem to be still trying to build one mass-market news product (read: one size fits all) online. Some news providers are creating additional niche products – usually non-news lifestyle niches - but very little is being done on the core news site. This study suggests that news audiences are too fragmented to ever be satisfied by one approach to the news. Someone needs to reach out to lighter news consumers with sites designed specifically to suit their needs.


• Third is to invest in the talent and time to develop new ways to select and package information for different audiences. It seems clear to me that the greatest value-added service a news Web site can provide is in editing and packaging information. There's just too much news out there and anyone who can winnow it down and give it some meaning is doing a tremendous service. But to look at many news Web sites, packaging seems to be the last thing anyone's thinking about. Web sites are either a big mess or so monotone that all the news just seems the same. So embrace the role of editing and presentation. Invest in improving visuals, text and design on the Web site - not just to be slick or pretty but to help people figure out what’s important and why. I hope it goes without saying that the key to developing different approaches that will succeed is to know the target audiences so your approaches appeal directly to them.

These recommendations seem common-sense to me. In the end, the key is understanding consumers; without that, technology and technical expertise don’t matter.


Stacy Lynch is a research associate of the Media Management Center (MMC) and a consultant on innovation, understanding audience needs, research, and newspaper management. Previously, she was director of innovations and readership editor at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and research manager for the Readership Institute. She teaches frequently in MMC programs and recently created and directed a new MMC seminar: "Beyond Commodity: Customer-Focused Strategy for Digital Media."

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