Content is still growing on most organization’s websites, and the "less is more"? principle is getting widely applied in all kinds of web applications. The best amount of functionality is being determined by understanding the user’s goals and the amount of functionality that is actually needed, because too much functionality will hurt the user-experience.
For content, the same principle is true. Too much useless content hurts the user experience. This because most content overreaches, by attempting to reach as many costumers as possible by writing text that tries to fulfill all information needs. This approach tends to fill pages with blah-blah text, over-done search keyword density and too much text to digest.
This approach doesn’t really work that well when you want to drive action for a specific target audience, because the users that will turn into customers tend to know more than is expected. So, they will ignore blah-blah text, and ignore all the content that you thought they needed.
They won’t see the prominent information, so why they should choose you?
Information needs
Does the user want in-depth information on your service, or is he just orientating himself? Understanding what the user is looking for is key, because then you can measure if your content is successful or not. Information needs are highly contextual, because the users on (for example) the products overview page have completely different information needs then users on the product page. The product page is more detailed, so it tends to be written with the assumption that people muddle through and skim. In lots of cases such as medical information, business information, school information and more, the penalty of guessing wrong is big: users read intensively.
The lack of content on detailed pages is just as painful for the user experience as too much information on content-light pages. I found myself in this position trying to pick my next 4 year education direction. The website about the Interaction Design course didn’t offer any actual detailed information about the course other than the usual "you will work in groups, projects, good teachers and vague subjects" type of text. There would be a big penalty for choosing wrong, as I would be wasting a whole year of school time if the course turns out not to suit my needs.
In information architecture there are three prominent information types we differentiate between. Although there are a few more, which are becomming increasingly important - such as social bookmarking - the most prominent types are:
- Know-item seeking
- Exploratory seeking
- Exhaustive Research
Know-item seeking
You know what you are looking for, how to call it and on what page to find it. You want to determine fairly quickly if the organization service/product can or can’t do what you need. For example, you would want to know if a webhost supports the latest version of Ruby on Rails.
Exploratory seeking
You want to learn more about a certain topic, but you won’t be settling for any decisions any time soon, because you won’t know how to determine if it’s the right decision. For example, you would want to know more about Ruby on Rails’ hosts; What qualifies as a good Ruby on Rails host? What are the differences between various hosting services? And do you even need the latest version of Ruby on Rails?
Exhaustive Research
As the title mentions, you want information that is really in-depth. The difference between version 1.0.3 and 1.0.4 is information you need to find.
Do you accommodate all of these information needs? And which of these needs are most likely to turn into customers? Most websites focus on the exploratory user, because uninformed users are the most likely to be turned into customers.
The biggest potential mistake here is underestimating the user’s knowledge. The user has probably already viewed several other websites before viewing yours. The user will use this common sense to determine if your product/service is good or bad. His common sense also includes a vocabulary associated with a good product/service. This common sense (gut-feeling) is a very dominant factor in filtering extraneous text and scanning for valuable information. The problem here is, if the gut-feeling is wrong, it’s very difficult to convince the user otherwise.
UIE talks about the users knowledge in the article What makes design seem 'Intuitive'? . In this article the current knowledge of the user is the knowledge a user has when he first looks at the site. A site should fill the gap between the current knowledge of the user and the knowledge the user has to gain in order to complete his task(s). The space between these two targets is called the knowledge gap.
Time for content to become more scientific - Gerry Mcgovern
Content on the web is still treated as an art form, implying that you can't really measure the aspects that makes content "good" . Companies invest a lot of money in content management systems, yet they invest little in improving the quality of their content.
Donna Spencer suggests little tweaks. Content should be tweaked over time to allow it to improve and adjust to the context. This doesn't only mean releasing new information, it also means adjusting existing content. However, easy measuring the effectiveness of content tweaking by a/b testing and multivariate testing is still limited to a small group of experts.
Related Links :
What makes a Great IA with Donna Spencer
New Advances in Web content Thinking (Video)
Time for content to become more scientific
Discussion
I think this is a highly-relevant article. We sometimes focus so much on website design, without realizing we need to put as much effort in content design.
To create the content that is clear, concise, and educates and informs the end user, towards their goals and objectives.
And you are right, that we need to know all that before we create the content.
However, on highly content/traffic sites, they are less likely to constantly edit/review older content, more towards adding new content, but also to improve the content process.
However, what may be part of the problem, is that many of the content editors/creators, don't have thorough examples, of what a solid content creation/editing/management process is like, since much of that is behind the scenes, and not viewable to an end user.
Such as in major newspapers, who obviously have editors, to review, change submitted content to make it appropriate for the content's end users.
I think with so many Content Management System's out there these days, that a solid diagram of good content process would be highly valuable.
IMHO.
Nice Work!
June 29, 2008
Post new comment