Turning Paper Off Means Turning Online Readers On

Delivering documents online rather than via print today is no big deal, and at this point, not even the hardest-core Luddite argues against its efficiency. But deliver does not equal receive and certainly doesn’t equate to understand, something organizations up and down the corporate spectrum are now discovering daily, and to their great dismay.

In the rush to embrace electronic means of delivery, many companies have overlooked the obvious fact that the experience of reading online is vastly different than it is on paper. A few examples:

• Screens are much smaller than most pieces of paper, so they can’t present as much information at any one time.
• Screens therefore require more ‘page turning’ – i.e., scrolling and/or clicking – thereby interrupting the reader more frequently and offering more opportunities for abandonment.
• Screens also flicker, glow, and optimally handle only a limited palette of fonts and colors compared to paper, forcing readers to work harder to internalize the content.
• Perhaps most importantly, looking at a screen doesn’t trigger the tactile response that holding a piece of paper in the fingers does, and the absence of this primal connection means people don’t connect with the process in as fundamental a way.

Comfort, Comprehension Greater on Paper than Screen
The net of all this is that readers typically don’t get as much out of their online experiences as they do with paper. They spend less time with the material, retain less of the content, and take action less often based on what they read – and as a result, marketing directors, sales executives, and issuers of prospectuses and other shareholder communications often end up disappointed in the results of their electronic distributions.

This is important to bear in mind when evaluating the impact of governmental mandates aimed at embracing the new media. For instance, the SEC’s recent ruling on Summary Prospectus gives mutual fund companies permission to send paper-based summaries of their offerings to prospective customers and provide all the gory details online. Issuers love this because they can reduce the amount of money they spend on paper, printing, and postage when soliciting new business. But they are also finding that people don’t engage with their online content the way they do with paper, and conversion rates are suffering as a result.

(You can learn more about this, and other related topics, at our upcoming Shareholder Communications Symposium.)

Recast Content to Reap Rewards
The lesson here is that simply delivering less paper-based content is not enough to get people to put down the paper and pick up the mouse, even if a major Federal agency says it’s OK. Instead, organizations must turn their online readers on by redesigning information for the new medium, meaning that time, energy, and, yes, money must be spent on new document structures, formats, and even writing styles to facilitate understanding. Failure to do so means a return to paper as a primary channel, and lost opportunities for production savings.

– Steve Weissman

“To view information online in a way that lets them rapidly understand key information, users need simple formats that don't require them to slowly page through presentations that are optimized for print rather than interaction.”

– Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox
Investor Relations (IR) on Corporate Websites
May 25, 2009