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Home 10 People 11 Services 12 Publications 13 Events 14 About NN/g 15 NN/g Home > 16 Publications > PR Usability Nielsen Norman Group Report Designing Websites to Maximize Press Relations: Guidelines from Usability Studies with Journalists Second Edition 17 Download Report (PDF file, 218 pages) 218 pages PDF format 18 Download your copy of the report instantly (from eSellerate) $248 for a single report, $468 for the report and the right to make copies within your organization. Also examples from many other websites which the test users mentioned as particularly good or bad based on their experience as journalists. The sites included: * Six big American corporations (Fidelity Investments, Merck, Philip Morris, Qwest Communications, Tyco, Wal-Mart) * Six multi-national corporations based in Europe (Benetton, BMW, Deutsche Bank, GlaxoSmithKline, Nokia, Vivendi Universal) * One small company (Hemscott) * Three high-tech start-ups (Pace Micro Technologies, SeeItFirst, Tellme) * Two government sites (United States Patent Office, State of Maine) 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. On average, users were only able to complete 70% of simple test tasks such as finding financial info about a company or finding the telephone number of a PR representative. After having a difficult time on a site, one journalist said, "I would be reluctant to go back to the site. Current State Of Affairs + Differences Between Findings Over the Years + Site Design Can Impact Press Coverage + What Journalists Look For + User Success + Users' Ratings of the Websites + Correlation Between Success and User Ratings + Even Short Visits to Your Site Can Impact Users' Perception 3. Scorecard, and How the Sites in the Study Organize Press Releases 8. Information about the Organization, Products, and Services 9. Organization and Style of the Site and Pages on the Site 13. About Participants + Background + Topics They Write About + Nature of Publications Participants Write For 24. Methodology + Site Usage + Session Location + Test Tasks and Discussion + About Using This Methodology Test Participants Readership of the publications that participants contribute to ranged from less than 14,000 to more than two million. Neither the journalists' names nor their affiliations can be disclosed since participants in usability studies are always promised full anonymity. To be honest, we can only recommend this if Web-based PR is one of your main job functions. For people who are less heavily engaged in designing online PR, there is no reason to spend time and money on the second edition if you have the first edition. The most important guidelines are included in the first edition and none of the findings in the first edition were invalidated in the second study. Here's a short comparison of the first and second editions: * Guidelines: increased from 32 to 75 * Page count: increased from 114 to 218 * Screenshots: increased from 62 to 149 * Sites tested: increased from 10 to 18 > Read 22 Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox about the second edition What You Get * Checklist of 75 specific design recommendations: review your website and its press room for these 75 items, and you will discover several things that need improvement. 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. Learn from the users' comments and reactions to common design mistakes in the PR sections we tested. 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? This report has important information for: * 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 $150,000 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. Journalists often go there when looking for financial information. They Will Write: A Crash Course in Romancing The Media on the Web Inter@ctive Investor: 30 Foggy PR is a Fact of Business Life Ragan's Interactive Public Relations Newsletter: 31 Want Reporters to Use Your Web Site? Any recent version of the 38 Acrobat Reader will suffice to read or print the file. The file is not copy-protected: we trust you to buy a site license if you are going to have multiple people read the report. See also Related Tutorial Full-day public tutorial at the Usability Week 2004 conference: 39 Presenting Company Information on Corporate Websites Covers the "About Us" section, press area, investor relations, employment listings, contact info, and directions to company locations.
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