How To Create Websites That Reporters Will Absolutely Love

Editor's Note:  The following is a guest Marketing Mulligans post by Russell Working, a staff writer for Ragan.com, where a version of this story first appeared. Even though Websites have been around now for over 15 years, journalists still regularly complain about their poor layout, navigation, and design, and a general lack of comprehensive information and resources that can assist them with properly reporting on a company and its products or services. Not any longer with these tips!

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Reporters — it is true — can sometimes be snappish and arrogant, and we often fail to take time to appreciate the beauty of that great pitch you wrote.

We come tromping into your turf, by phone or in person, and presume to tell your story to the world.

But as long as communicators are stuck with us dandruffy hacks in our ketchup-stained neckties, why create websites that seem designed to thwart us? Don’t you want the ink?

At least that’s what some reporters I polled are wondering. They are vexed at having to squander precious minutes on deadline fruitlessly Googling or prowling through company websites to find out where your world headquarters is located. They are irked when they can’t turn up a meaningful description of your organization on the “about” page.

And there have been times when businesses and nonprofits have missed out on a mention in some of America’s most-read newspapers, magazines, blogs and Web-based trade publications because it was too cumbersome for journalists to find a human to talk to on deadline.

I asked several reporters for their beefs about organizational Websites — corporate, government, nonprofit — and promised them anonymity. They signaled their interest by planting red flags in flowerpots on their balconies, and we met after midnight in D.C.-area parking garages, where they slipped me manila envelopes full of coded complaints.

All right: Actually, I just emailed them. But here are some of their peeves:

1. No Obvious “Media” Button Or Link

Every company should have a clearly visible “press” or “media” button on their home page, a reporter for a major Midwestern daily offers. This should take people to a page that includes a spokesperson's cell phone number, not just office numbers.

“What we really want is a way to contact PR people directly, including after hours when necessary,” adds a reporter for a New York daily. “I don't like having to hunt down the media contacts on any Website. I shouldn't have to sort through old press releases to find a contact person. All of these names, phone numbers and emails should be easily accessible three clicks in.”

2. No Addresses

Unless you are in a line of work in which suicide truck bombers are a risk, or you are located in one of those secret Soviet factory cities whose existence was denied during the Cold War, your address is pretty much public information, isn’t it? List it prominently.

Sometimes that reporter who interviewed you just wants to mention “the Barstow-based ice cream giant” (or whatever) without having to call you back to ask where in the 760 area code you’re located.

3. Vague “About” Pages

Your organization exists not in the spirit realm of archangels and seraphim, but in the material universe governed by the laws of physics and the properties of the Periodic Table of the Elements. Your organization does concrete things. Your company perhaps manufactures and sells diaper cakes or offers lucky felines a cat massage. State this on your “about” page.

Naturally, everyone you work with understands the company jargon. But isn’t the point of external communications to reach those who aren’t conversant with gobbledygook like the following paragraph? (Just for the fun of it, let’s highlight the clichés.)

Audit360 provides the industry’s most cutting-edge mobile device management solutions developed and implemented by the most innovative team. Our company’s deeply-rooted entrepreneurial attitude and forward-thinking spirit challenges us to push the limits of existing technology to provide solutions that are quick to deploy, easy to use and highly scalable.

(And “highly scalable”? You mean like carp and iguanas?)

“If they’re not straightforward about what they do,” a reporter writes, “it makes me wonder what they’re trying to hide.”

Forgive him. We reporters are conspiracy theorists. But why risk arousing suspicions over nothing?

Besides, even if a journalist has spent a half-hour interviewing you for a fluff piece on your United Way drive, she might appreciate a one- or two-sentence description of your company online. If she wings it, she fears, you’re going to phone in the morning, thank her in honeyed tones for the awesome story, and demand a clarification for describing, say, Taco Bell as a “taco company.” (We also sell burritos! And quesadillas!)

4. No Phone Numbers Or Press Releases

An editor emails a reporter a press release and says, “Can you crank out something short for the Web this morning?” The reporter picks up the phone even while scrolling to the bottom. And she finds no phone number.

An oversight, surely. She goes to the website, digs up your archive — and none of the press releases have contact numbers. No communicator could possibly be that negligent, right? Actually, it happens all the time.

One reporter for a big-time paper asks, “Do companies or government agencies think news organizations will just print a press release without asking any follow-up questions?”

5. A Contacts Page That's Just An Email Form

A genial Pulitzer prize-winner’s hair begins to smoke whenever he goes to a business or government Website on a tight deadline, hits “contact us,” and finds an online form or email link. No phone numbers. No names to call.

“Generally,” he writes, “if I leave an email stating my urgency, I hear back four days or so later from some apologetic flack, hoping that the response is not too late.”

6. Outdated Information

Yes, it’s not your fault that the Web guys never bothered the update the profile of the former janitor who’s now chief of sustainability. But at least the basic information about your organization should be reliable. If you can’t manage that, why even have a website?

And government communicators, listen up: “If they're a municipality,” writes another reporter, “they should also list their agendas and minutes of public meetings and detailed budget information.”

So who's doing it right? McDonald's, for one. Check out my analysis here.

© 2011 Ragan Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.