Page views, clicks and old-fashioned jumps

Stories that require multiple page views are an insult to the reader. It tells the reader that you don't value his time.

To informed readers it's even more insulting because you know that some consultant came up with the dumb idea that requires you to keep clicking like one of one of Maslow's trained rats.

To the NY Times credit they offer the option to put their stories in single page view.

 

Absolutely. And this is from a paper that once banned jumps on gamers. Only columns and features could jump. One year, the guy covering the Super Bowl had to write a 7-inch container for the cover. He wrote a couple of lengthy sidebars inside so the coverage wasn't lacking, but it was weird that his gamer was 7 inches.

 

No they're not an insult. If stats show that readers click on page 2 and 3, why the hell wouldn't you break up a story and get more ad impressions?

Readers want free news nowadays. Well, hell, we have to pay the rent. So here's your free news, and here's twice the ads so it can stay free.

It's a pretty good deal for the reader.

 

When I go to a web site and it breaks a story up like that, I learn to get my news elsewhere.

Same thing with other places on the web. Once I was trying to watch an episode of Prison Break on Fox.com and the damn thing had two commercial breaks per designated TV break, and all the episodes were promoting some movie called "Into The Wild". I learned only to watch via Hulu, I ignore the commercials entirely and I still refuse to watch that movie some two years later.

I am not one reader to f--- with.

 

That's the type of thinking that has gotten your industry in such a mess. What have you accomplished if I decide not to go back to your site because it is not user friendly.

 

"User friendly" has gotten this industry in a mess. User friendly equals completely free and as few ads as possible. How will that pay the bills?

We've got to make it user friendly and a revenue source, or else more and more of us will lose our jobs.

 

Similarly, is cable television "user friendly" to you as you're writing the 75 dollar check every month to have it?

 

If only it took .0024 seconds. Too many sites out there now are so cluttered with junk -- ads, three video players, incredibly long index rails (I'm looking at YOU, Orlando Sentinel) -- that it takes far longer than that to load, even using high-speed and ad-blocking. I'm to the point with a number of sites, including my own paper's, that I'll open a story in a new tab just so I don't have to go back to the home page and wait for it to load again.