Located: research topics > communication

Graphic communication attracts a majority of users according to newpaper logs

Author: Stone, M. (2000)

Abstract: USA Today online General Manager Lorraine Cichowski is interviewed about the company's usage paterns. She indicates graphics and photographs appear to get the major share of user traffic.

This article comprises an interview with USA Today Online general manager Lorraine Cichowski, information about the company's logs and usage patterns.

The most visited newspaper affiliated website in the world since 1994, according to Media Metrix.

The site's most heavily trafficked day was April 21 - the day after the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado.
USA Today received 8 million total page views - 2 million were attributed to the incident's coverage.

A photo album got 952,000 views, an interactive graphic (produced by the paper's print art department) got 293,000 views, video feeds got 69,000 views, message board got 10,000 views.

Of the word-based pages (685,000 views) only 123,000 were full stories - the rest were brief pages. This represents only about 6% of people who went to USA Today for Columbine info read full stories. This contrasts to the Poynter Institute eye-tracking survey conducted recently which says online newspaper readers typically notice text before they do images.