PR on Websites

Design your website to attract journalists and site visitors. Increase our organization’s press coverage with a well designed Press Relations section. This report describes:

• Information journalists want on websites and the format in which they expect to get it
• Top reasons journalists visit Press sections of websites
• Design elements for a compelling site

This 284-page report presents 103 design guidelines based on our usability research. Discussions and 198 screenshot illustrations supplement our findings.

Topics covered

• Get inside the heads of journalists. Understand their needs and their reactions to PR content and websites
• Journalists' information needs
• Facts and humans
• Changes in PR usability
• State Of Affairs
  • Current condition of websites
  • Trends over time: User behavior and site design
  • How site design can impact press coverage
  • High-priority information
  • Short visits impact perception
• Checklist of 103 guidelines for optimizing the usability of the PR section of websites
  • Web presence: Making yourself known
  • Presenting press information
  • Press releases and news
  • Presenting the organization, products, and services
  • Management and high-level executives
  • Financial information
  • Philanthropy and social responsibility
  • Style and formatting
  • Writing style and content
  • Interaction design
  • Graphics, multimedia, and PDF
  • Handling corporate crisis
  • Press relations offline
  • E-mail press releases
• Reasons journalists leave websites
• Good sites: Journalists gave these thumbs up
• Poor sites: Journalists gave these thumbs down
• Methodology
• International notes

What’s new in the 3rd Edition?

This 3rd edition contains additional recommendations, increasing from 75 to 103 guidelines.

Research Method

The information in this report is based on usability studies of 42 corporate websites with journalists in the United States, Europe, and Asia. The journalists worked for publications with readerships ranging from less than 14,000 to more than two million.