Running notes from the Associated Press Managing Editors (APME) and the Society for Newspaper Design annual conferences.
Bill Ostendorf says he started out in journalism thinking he was going to be another Mike Royko, only to discover that he wasn’t funny in print. So instead, he’s had a career of many morphs. And in person, his sense of humor and high energy make for a fast-moving session that veers across a lot of territory but somehow is crystal clear.
Ostendorf is an award-winning photo editor and designer. After leaving the Providence Journal a few years back, he founded Creative Circle, a consulting firm that works in design, training and culture change. Since 2000, he has led about 200 redesigns.
Ostendorf says newspaper websites “stink” — including most of those that regularly win major awards. “This is because of the lemming effect in newspapers,” he says. “Newspapers feel comfortable in doing what others do.”
He offers 10 tips on how to “fight the ugliness”:
1. Scrolling is out. Penetrating is in. He shows a slide of eyetrack research on a long web page. It shows that nobody read to the bottom. He flips through slides of several newspaper websites that have been redesigned recently. They are wider and cleaner, he says, but almost all are also longer. And they have too many links.
2. Don’t copy from newspapers, because newspapers are dumb. “There’s this incredible notion that other newspapers know something … No, they are just as lost as you.” He uses this riff to reinforce Tip 1, interspersing slides of newspaper websites with some from which he gets inspiration — Apple, Dell, Google. There’s no scrolling and fewer links.
Ostendorf says news websites he’s recently redesigned without scrolling are getting more page views, longer time on site (stickiness) and more clicking on links. Users also are clicking on more ads. It’s too early to draw firm conclusions, he notes.
3. It’s not how many links you have. It’s how fast I get to what I want. In focus groups done for these recent redesigns the message was loud: people want fast.
4. Learn from newspapers: hierarchy, consistency, variety.The great thing about a well-designed newspaper page: the reader has no doubt what’s important. But on many newspaper websites, everything is the same volume (and usually low.) Ostendorf says web designers are often limited by crappy software and rigid, limited templates. He advocates using multiple templates that give greater flexibility and set up hierarchy.
5. Credibility comes from your print heritage. Good branding is important. He’s a fan of niches; it’s important for newspapers to do them. But they should somehow carry the parent brand.
6. Web sites need a sense of place. They should use images and words that make it clear where they are, what communities they are serving.
7. Think life, not news. Online, cover life, he says, not just news. Ask yourself: where do people go, how can we connect with them, how do they mark their lives — anniversaries, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs.
8. Pictures are big. Really big. He shows some more generic-looking sites. The photos are tiny; the text is dense.
9. Don’t think of one dimension on a flat screen. He’s been watching what younger users — college age or so — do when they sit in front of a computer. (He shows online game slides.) He says he’s working on figuring how to make news sites three dimensional.
10. Don’t just be a website. Be a community. Be my community.
