OPA Local Sites Study

I saw a preview of the Online Publishers Assn’s Local Online Media report at a ShopLocal event earlier this summer. (You can download the pdf of the slides from the link above.) The data at the ShopLocal event were presented by Donna Stokley, SVP of Sales for quadrantOne (the findings benefit newspaper sites). The sample is just over 2K consumers, administered by Jupiter (now part of Forrester).

Here are some slides and comments:

This side above implies users are interested in breadth of coverage and content. Newspapers and portals have more and more types of content than other categories of local sites.

I’m somewhat surprised by the high ranking of local TV websites. While some are good, many are very bad and hard to use. This also implies a user bias toward news in terms of “content,” although many local TV websites have done deals with third parties (e.g., Local.com) to provide additional content types on their sites.

I understand the trust rankings here. TV and local newspapers benefit from the credibility of their “offline” brands.

This result I find less credible. Most local newspaper sites, TV sites and certainly magazine sites suffer to varying degrees from usability issues. In some contexts, users visit them looking for commercial information (e.g., newspaper sites for restaurant reviews). But who among you goes to a TV site for local business listings? I’m also not entirely sure how the “local magazine” category is defined.

This slide is interesting as a reflection of local content interest. I find “local grocery stores” a curious second place. It must be consumers looking for coupons.

Here’s a slide reportedly featuring the content categories that reviewers appear inclined to write about.