Content delivery key to online success

Dubai: You have to be fast to make it in online news.

It takes someone five to eight seconds to decide whether they're going to stay on a certain website or not, according to a web developer in Dubai.

"For instance, I look at the picture [on a website]. If the picture is interesting and captures my attention, then I go for the text," said Shoeb Surya, technical leader for the web division at BusinessWare, a web development company based in Dubai.

There is no doubt about it, the news industry is evolving and what people are looking for in terms of news is changing along with it. But what gets people to stay online when they're looking for news?

People want to know more and they want to be the first to know, said Mazen Hayek, official spokesperson at MBC Group. They want to be able to refer to a certain website for breaking news and other important stories, he told Gulf News.

"Breaking news remains an important edge," he said. However, people also go to their source of news for an exploration which includes sports, entertainment, local and international news, Hayek explains. It has become more about providing more of everything.

Sometimes a celebrity gossip story could have a bigger impact or a higher click-through rate than any other story, he explained.

What news delivery is taking more into account than ever before is the media habits and usage patterns of people, Hayek said, which is why MBC's Al Arabiya revamped their online news website last month. "We wanted it to have links and interface with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube," he said. "We wanted it to be available in several languages."

The same journalist who used to file a story for his newspaper, today needs to write a story for the web, link the web with a video, file a different story for the radio and probably write the story for print edition, he explains. For those who want to be ahead of the game, "that's the future", he said. "The era of still photo is behind us on the web."

Hard to duplicate

This news delivery technique goes beyond refreshing a website every now and then. It's more about "providing an experience, a brand and a product that is hard to duplicate", Hayek said.

Surya said that people are looking for precise and hard-hitting news. People are also on the social media platforms and on their mobile devices all the time, so they're looking for something that allows them to share links, post to Twitter and make comments. "If a company's not on social media, then they are losing a huge audience," he said. "But if they are not updating their pages, then it becomes useless and it would be better if they don't have a page at all," he said.

A lot of what people are looking for is a website that is integrated into multiple platforms such as mobile applications, he explained.

Azadeh Saljooghi, professor of communication and information studies at the American University of Dubai, told Gulf News that the visual icons and symbols have become very important because readers could get easily bored if the website is not continuously grabbing their attention.

For instance, in her classroom, Saljooghi said, she has to keep engaging her students with snippets of videos and images. "If I just concentrate on the text and have no images, they are bored," she said.

Saljooghi finds the tool bar that allows you to choose the kind of news you're interested in viewing important for any news website. "For instance on the Guardian's website you can choose if you want to read about politics, or cinema or food. I find that to be necessary."

The web tools that are currently available such as RSS feeds, tweets, blogging and sharing on social media platforms are all very important, she said. "But new media is going to keep changing," which is why the most important thing is for journalists to be critical thinkers before they're videographers, editors or photographers, she explained.

"Anybody can learn the technology, but being a person who can follow a story with no bias and critically and getting the heart of the story remains the most important thing," she said.

Dubai There isn't a recipe for running a good news website. But in today's online journalism world, there are a few must-have elements that a website needs to possess in order to have an audience.

Usama Qasem, an independent web consultant, told Gulf News there are four main elements that would make a news website stand out and attract traffic.

Engage your audience

You have to be engaged with your audience, he said. "So if you have people who come everyday and they make a comment, you have to comment back," he said. It's building a relationship between the person who's writing the article and the person who's reading it, which can be done through social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Qasem said that what most websites do here is that when they have a new article, they go to their channels and post it there and leave it, he said. "You see someone tweeted your article, then thank them for tweeting it. If someone liked it, then asked them what they liked about it." So in other words, engage and give readers some recognition.

Search Engine Optimisation

It's very important for a new website to be recognised as a source of information and be visible in the search results. "You know, 90 per cent of people don't click beyond the first page of their search results," he said.

"So if you're not in the first two spots on Google, then that's not good enough."

Web Usability

A news website has to be both easy to use and easy to search. When someone wants to search a news website, they either use the navigation system or their search button on the page, Qasem explained. "When you build a portal it's important to put into consideration what people are looking for," he said. For example, people make typos all the time. If don't have a search suggestions, then you're not helping people search your website better, he added.

Content

Everything else doesn't matter if content is not given full attention, Qasem said. "You have to write about what interests people."

The writing standards for the web are very different from writing for a newspaper or magazine, Qasem explained. He said that many newspapers and magazines today copy and paste their articles from their printed edition onto their website.

"There's a study that showed that people online don't read, they scan the pages," he said. "You have to make sure that in the first four lines you've summed up what you're talking about and that the rest of piece is written in small paragraphs - not more than five lines each," he said.

News editors and managers need to start thinking in multimedia and mobile. "They put it [video] as one more thing with the article," he said. "They are not pushing the video as the main content."

Qasem said that mobile is also very important. "If you want to stand out then you should have a mobile application and for your content to be available over the mobile."

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