Online newspapers are gradually finding their way to more successful times, as publishers unveil redesigns across the globe tap into best practices for design and usability, and the key areas of multimedia and interaction with the audience.
Here are some choice quotes that show the last remaining barriers to success for newspapers online ventures: Friday’s Five: Top Misconceptions by Newspapers Online by Erin Teeling at bivingsreport.com:
"Largely, the web is an untapped resource for newspapers."
Littering a homepage with buttons and links distracts people's eyes and prevent them from focusing on anything. Newspapers are better off leading with a couple of big headlines and pictures, letting a strong navigation do the rest of the work."
Unless you really have something superior to offer, registration barriers are only going to hurt your traffic."
Newspapers can compete in online classifieds. But to do so, they need to revamp their systems for creating ads and make them much more user- and web-friendly."
- I would say that the classified market is a real tough one, where combining the print and online products in an efficient and effective way for the mass audience is the golden ticket.
"Barriers to entry to the online world–costs and technical requirements–are dropping everyday. The Web is getting easier and cheaper as we speak."
- As for the technical side of putting together websites, true there are countless tools online, many free, that can aid and enhance a new newspaper website. But for an existing site, with much aged backend coding and elderly databases, the path to web 2.0 is a long, time consuming and potentially expensive one.
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