Newspaper websites are not keeping viewers reading, says Nielsen report

Posted by Christie Silk on May 25, 2009 at 10:07 AM

A Nielsen Online data report for April has suggested that Internet users are yet to spend a significant time reading newspaper sites. An individual spends an average of eleven minutes a month on the top 30 US newspaper sites. Only half of these papers succeeded in increasing the amount of time spent per person on their sites in the past month.

Somewhat surprisingly perhaps, the Minneapolis paper, the Star Tribune keeps viewers reading its website for longer than any other US paper. The site clocks up an average of 40 minutes a month per reader on the site, surpassing the nationals such as USToday.com, NYTimes.com and WSJ.com.

Presentation is apparently very important in encouraging readers to stay on sites. Terry Sauer, assistant managing editor for digital at the Star Tribune believes that the increase in time spent on their site is due to a number of reasons, such as putting home page links at article level. This aims to push readers who may not be deliberate readers of the web page but were taken there by search engines or links, to browse the site. A blogging application has proven an effective; the posts of a substantial pool of resident bloggers receive on average 2,500 comments a day.

Time spent on websites is varied and dependent on a number of factors external to the site, in particular the turn of current affairs and local events. Moreover, as Editor&Publisher emphasise, the number of visitors can alter the statistics. A sharp jump in uniques-the number of hits on the page, could result in a lower average of time spent on the site.

Online metrics, however, are highly variable and thus their conclusions should be viewed alongside other bases of information. Results often differ between sources and are dependent on methods of collection. Implications of such data reports are proving problematic; The New York Times, for example, is currently disputing statistics produced by Nielson Online which suggest that uniques at NYtimes.com fell in April.

Source: Editor&Publisher