A couple of weeks ago, Editor & Publisher posted statistics from its sister company, Nielsen Online, showing the average time-on-site for the top 30 newspaper sites in the USA. These numbers compare June 2008 with June 2009. Go ahead and take a look.
Some news sites like NYTimes.com experienced a 50% drop, whereas the Boston Globe’s Boston.com enjoyed a 300% increase. With only four exceptions, all the news web sites had numbers far below the average time a reader spends with a daily newspaper. According to the 2008 Readership Institute Study, the average American newspaper reader spends 27 minutes with a paper.
What does this show, if anything?
- These uncertain economic times are to blame.
- June 2009 was a very popular vacation month.
- Web site viewers are faster readers than newspaper readers.
- Lots of photo galleries, or just one really big one, keeps viewers on-site longer.
- Web site viewers just scan and skim, clicking on only what interests them. But print readers tend to browse and explore more articles.
- Print papers have page layout, photos, captions, and headlines to invite the reader in. Web sites, with pages of text links and look-alike pages with small or no pictures, have nothing to attract and draw in the viewer.
- Being a newspaper reader is like strolling through a large shopping mall of information, peaking in each store window and deciding whether or not to go in and spend time. But a web site is like a drive-though window. Get in quick, grab just the information you came for and then move on.
A news site might say they have “quicker” readers but they have more of them than a print paper. Which is better: 100 readers who spend 10 minutes on your site, or 40 readers who spend 27 minutes with your newspaper?
An Inline Press study in the USA concluded that a newspaper subscriber is worth $500-$900 of advertising per year, whereas a unique web site viewer is worth $5-$10 per year. This suggests a web site needs at least 100 times more readers than the print paper, assuming everything else equal.
A friend of mine who owns a Tim Hortons franchise said that walk-in customers spend more time and money at the store than those who use the drive-through lane. She also said that walk-ins are generally more friendly than those using the drive-through.
What my point? Sorry, no idea. Except to state the obvious: expecting a news site to perform the same as its print version is a waste of time. Continually making a news site mirror its print version is also a waste of time. Yet, that’s exactly what most news publishers are doing. Maybe if they stick it out long enough, the public will eventually come around? News web sites have existed for 17(?) years. If the current business practice hasn’t worked by now, perhaps it’s time for a change?
