Designing Effective Online Press Rooms
Designing Effective Online Press Rooms
- Introduction
- Press Room Usability
- Five Reasons for Visiting
- Philip Morris
- Bank of America
- Apple Computer
- Recommendations
- Enhancements
- Conclusions
- Works Cited
Adaptive Web Sites: An Introduction
Designing for Overseas Chinese Readers
TradeOff Cube: A Graphical User Interface Device
By Matthew Tevenan
Page 6 of 10
Finally, Apple Computer is one of the most scrutinized companies in the technology world today. Customer, investor, and technology analyst opinions of the company are constantly shifting, which would presumably make the company very sensitive to press coverage. Providing accurate and complete information about major product announcements and corporate developments should be key. A look at the "Apple Press Info" page (Figure 3) of the Apple website is a bit discouraging, then, in the page's lack of focus.
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Figure 3. Apple's "Press Info" page (click to view live site) |
The page is shared equally in space by product announcement information and links to recent press releases. Though each product announcement (and, in the case of Figure 3, major retail announcement) has its own contact information immediately following it, a link to a full contact list is relegated to the very bottom of the page, almost four entire pages down and past product announcements from almost one year ago. Also at the bottom of the page are links to the Apple press release archive as well as "Investor Relations" and profiles of Apple executives.
Though the Apple press room fulfills most of the basic goals of journalists as stated previously, its organization and layout may prove frustrating for some. In addition, most of the information on the site seems to be happy marketing "fluff." For example, in the press release for its new portable computer, the following quote is included: "The new iBook is wonderfully small and light, and packs in all the amazing features you'd expect from Apple." This quote, by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs, is noticeably canned and contains little information beyond what is already stated elsewhere in the press release and online specification sheets.
More intelligent placement of links to company background information, investor information, contacts, and press releases-plus more substantial content-is recommended for easiest access by journalists and investors. One has to wonder if at least part of the press' ambivalence toward Apple is due to the poor collection and organization of its PR material.
Copyright © 2001 by Matthew Tevenan. All rights reserved.