Visitors only spend minutes on my newspaper site! What am I doing wrong?

I received a phone call from a publisher the other day who spent a night looking over every statistic from his website ... he was obviously upset when he called, thinking his site was a failure.

Overall the conversation was sparked when he looked at the average time visors spend on his site ... a mere 2 minutes. With more than 1,700 pages of total content, and with updates at least twice a week, the publisher was worried that his site was not drawing visitors in.

After talking about the various hooks to get people to stay longer on his site, I asked him how long on average he spent on various news sites. His answer startled himself -- probably about a minute or so at a time.

Unlike print newspapers, online news sites don't draw readers in. For the most part, this is because people get their news from so many sources on the Internet, that a few minutes is all that is needed to get the information a user is seeking. Although, this is true, I don't think it has to be the rule.

Here is a test (don't worry, there are no right or wrong answers) ... visualize your perfect news page on the Internet, with any number of content items taken from any number of sources. Maybe headlines from the NY Times ... briefs from AP .... slideshows from the BBC ... even a cartoon or two. Can you see it now?

What draws you into the page is the content, tailored into your wants and needs when looking at a news site. Just as a print edition is not ready cover-to-cover, nor will a news site.

In a very long and drawn out way, I am asking publishers to look at what they can offer their readers ... and then look at what their readers want. If you combine these two things, you have a news site that is surely able to beat the competition.

And just to let you know .... even the most popular news sites out there only average a few minutes per reader:

Nielsen Online tracks the average time spent per person at a site.

Newspaper Web site -- Jan. '09 (hour:minute:second) -- Jan. '08

NYTimes.com -- 0:35:02 -- 0:35:47
washingtonpost.com -- 0:16:31 -- 0:17:31
USATODAY.com -- 0:21:56 -- 0:13:06
Wall Street Journal Online -- 0:14:22 -- 0:07:50
LA Times -- 0:06:39 -- 0:07:56

Boston.com -- 0:11:37 -- 0:11:11
N.Y. Daily News Online Edition -- 0:06:44 -- 0:09:22
New York Post -- 0:08:05 -- 0:14:22
Chicago Tribune -- 0:08:04 -- 0:12:24
SFGate.com/San Francisco Chronicle -- 0:13:20 -- 0:11:50

Newsday -- 0:04:25 -- 0:03:35
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -- 0:12:56 -- 0:22:37
Politico -- 0:07:48 -- 0:09:50
Chicago Sun-Times -- 0:05:47 -- 0:07:39
Village Voice Media -- 0:04:55 -- 0:04:33

The Houston Chronicle -- 0:19:08 -- 0:17:23
DallasNews.com - The Dallas Morning News -- 0:05:15 -- 0:03:21
The Seattle Times -- 0:05:43 -- 0:10:37
International Herald Tribune -- 0:07:43 -- 0:02:44
Star Tribune -- 0:31:39 -- 0:29:08

Azcentral.com -- 0:09:56 -- 0:16:42
Orlando Sentinel -- 0:05:54 -- 0:14:22
Baltimore Sun -- 0:08:46 -- 0:05:53
Philly.com -- 0:06:58 -- 0:07:13
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- 0:13:41 -- 0:13:08

MercuryNews.com -- 0:04:32 -- 0:05:17
NJ.com -- 0:04:32 -- 0:07:39
The Washington Times -- 0:04:53 -- 0:03:22
Seattle Post-Intelligencer -- 0:12:14 -- 0:09:48
tampabay.com -- 0:06:36 -- 0:06:36