Do you have any other points you’d add to this chart? Let me know and I’ll credit your ideas on this blog if you want.

Download PDF (72 Kb): Usability Differences Between Web and Print Media

1. The Web Strategy doesn’t follow the Business Strategy.

Whether you’re designing for a Fortune 1000 corporation, a SOHO business, a government agency or a non-profit, your organization has a direction and a purpose, and your Web strategy must reflect and support that purpose. Read The Chemistry of Web Strategy.

2. The Web Design doesn’t follow the Web Strategy.

Assuming your organization has taken the time and effort to develop a documented Web Strategy, your entire Web Design (or redesign) project must be aligned with the objectives of this strategy as it is aligned with your organization’s Business Strategy (see #1 above).

3. No one has developed a content strategy.

Among all the discussions about the site’s presentation design (graphic design), its tools and applications, and its navigational structure, has your Web Design team given any thought to developing a Content Strategy? If your team cannot clearly answers questions such as “How is all the site content being prioritized?” or “What is this content supposed to achieve for us? ” or “Who are the 2-3 target audiences for this content?” then you need to write a Content Strategy or a Content Requirements Plan.

4. Users are not consulted in advance about the Web Design.

Web analytics, surveys, focus groups, use cases, heuristic reviews — these are some of the tools of usability analysis. Often organizations will undertake a major Web Design or redesign project, then afterwards consult their users to try to confirm whether they did a good job designing the site. You can’t please everyone, but once you know how people want to use your site (task flow) and what content and applications are important to them, then you MUST consider these when developing your prototype Web Design.

5. Users are consulted too much about the Web Design.

Don’t be held hostage by user feedback or usability studies, either. When you continue to over-research what people want on your site, you can set up expectations on the part of your users that cannot be reasonably met. As well, you cannot possibly offer everything on your site that users want because the site has to align with your Web Strategy, which has to align with your Business Strategy. (See #1 again)

6. The Web Design is confused with “look and feel”, “colors” and “branding”.

Too often, early discussions about Web Design and redesign centre around “look and feel”. “How will our content fit the new design?” asks the marketing and communications staff. “Let’s not talk about Web Design yet,” say the developers. “Give us a few possible designs,” say the senior executives. If you are leading a Web Design project, one of your first tasks should be making the entire organization know that Web Design is not just about what the site will look like, but also how it will be constructed, how it will be used, and how it will be managed. Yes, branding is a part of Web Design, but it’s not all about branding, either.

7. The Web Design has no muscle.

Web sites that perform tasks for their users must have muscle to do it. That means not just search engines, payment processing, and other applications and databases that make the site work, but also the static content and how its information design helps users with the task of scanning, reading and interacting with content. Sites should be designed based on task analysis and task flow rather than by gathering heaps of content (focus on how it will be used to tell you what will be used).

8. The Web Design has no brain.

Web sites with muscle also have to have a brain that controls the muscle. The brain is the documented site architecture and interaction design — making the site logical and intuitive to most people through the application of best Web practices as well as a by thoroughly following how people want to use the site. The site’s critical navigation design has to be based on task flow so it will make sense to users.

9. The Web Design has no soul.

The soul of Web Design is the collective mass of human beings behind it that may hide behind the “Browser wall”, but nevertheless must imbue the site with humanity and human qualities. A Web Design has no soul if it doesn’t use the language of the marketplace. It will also have no soul if it does not provide ample means for users to contact the Web site’s owners and administrators. And a good Web Design also should have some images of the people who are behind that browser wall.

10. The Web Design is not scalable.

If a single generation of a Web Design cannot be sustained because it cannot accommodate new content and applications without distorting or mangling the original design, then it’s not scalable enough. A Web Design should allow for continuous improvement of the site, a kind of progressive evolution that allows for change as the rule, not the exception. While it’s common to implement minor site design changes through small variations, and to conduct major site redesign every couple of years or so, Web Designers should always be designing for the unforeseeable, the Black Swans, and should always design two years into the future. Not “what we are now,” but “what we will become.”

For more information on Web Design Strategy, contact Garth@DigitalPractices.com.

   What does “Contentology” mean?

In this Manifesto, Contentology is a coined word that, in its strictest etymology, could mean “the science of content” or “the study of content”. The word “Contentology” is supposed to make people stop and think for a moment, and if it sounds absurd, then we have to ask ourselves why it sounds absurd.

Most people presume that the word content means ‘something that is within something else.’ Yet this popular definition creates a tautology: “Content is content that’s inside something that seems to be content.”

Before the Internet became a tool for the masses, “content” or “contents” were simply vague terms for printed copy in a book or a magazine, or the food products inside a can of soup. The popular meaning usually referred to something that was being packaged for consumers, or something that was simply being stored or moved within containers.

Visit the Contentology site

Dlownload Contentology Manifesto

(click on thumbnail image above to view full size diagram)

In 2004, author Lawrence Lessig coined the term “email bankruptcy.” After he spent 80 hours in one week sorting through email that had been in his inbox since January 2002, he concluded that “without extraordinary effort” he would never be able to catch up. So he sent out an automated message to everyone who wrote him, then deleted all their emails.

Many office workers, and most senior managers and executives, dread email. Just a few years ago, in the late ‘90s, business leaders used to freely give out their email addresses to anyone who asked because it allowed them to reduce phone calls or keep their numbers private. Now email overload has become the biggest wave of the digital tsunami.

Are unmanageable email volumes really the issue, though? A 2005 Intranetjournal.com article cites several behavioral and time-management issues causing information overload at work. “External causes” such as constant interruptions by colleagues (either in person, by phone, or email) certainly contributed to employees’ info stress, but there were also other “internal causes” for personal unproductivity and information overload, such as:

• An obsessive need to be “plugged in”, such as constantly checking email or voicemail;
• Poor attention span and lack of focus;
• Rampant multitasking and the inability to prioritize tasks.

Email is not the only digital wave overwhelming workers. Ironically, Blackberrys (affectionately called “crackberries” by those who have become addicted to them), cellphones, (both voice and text messaging) Facebook sites, blogs and other electronic communications help keep us connected at all times while subversively disconnecting us as well.

The Consumer Research Center of the Conference Board recently released the results of a survey of 1,800 affluent consumers in seven countries. The report found that “the largest share of luxury consumers (44%) and the largest share of consumers in each country most strongly agree that ‘luxury is having enough time to do whatever you want and being able to afford it.’ So, for luxury consumers worldwide, time is the ultimate luxury.”

One of the leading authorities on conquering information overload is David Allen, whose 2001 book, “Getting Things Done,” is a guide to “the art of stress-free productivity.” Allen writes about the problem of “open loops”: uncompleted tasks, unresolved issues and unanswered emails. His solution is to simplify by channelling all the tasks in our lives into a single “in box.”

Most productivity or time-management experts have two basic strategies for handling large volumes of incoming mail: 1) prioritize and organize emails by moving them into sub-folders or by using inbox rules, or 2) simply delete or ignore any emails that don’t require a response.

Here’s an example of organizing emails by priority. You can either use inbox rules to move emails from specific people or with specific subject lines to sub-folders. Or if you want to manually sort your email, you can create sub-folders as in the example below, or use coded labels, e.g. UR (Urgent – response required), IR (Important – response required), FR (Follow-up required); PR (phone response only), and NR (no response required – file or delete). This can help you triage your inbox so you respond the most important messages first.

The problem with inbox rules is they don’t always work as intended, and sometimes they can actually cause us to miss important messages unintentionally. And the problem with manually sorting emails by priority is that this process takes time as well. You have to at least browse a message to sort it by priority, and in the time it takes to browse some of them, you could almost skip the priority sorting and simply reply.

If time is a luxury for you and your employees, here are a few information management strategies to help you save time and turn information overload into information overdrive.

1. EMAIL

If you’re a busy executive or senior manager, delegate your emails as much as possible. Ask your Executive Assistant to read your email, respond to easy requests, and then send more urgent or time-sensitive emails to your attention. You could even request a second company email address that is private – available only to a small, select group.

If you don’t have an assistant, and you can’t control what email gets sent to you, remember that answering email is an administrative task like managing your budget or attending meetings. Find a quiet time of day when other staff are not around (e.g. 30 minutes before the office opens or 30 minutes before most people get back from lunch), then dedicate that time to checking voicemail and sorting/responding to emails.

It’s important not to lose productive time by getting the “email twitch”: feeling the urge to check your inbox every minute or every time you hear an email notification “ping.” Blackberrys are a wonderful to access your email but should be turned off when you’re at a meeting or working on something. Same thing applies to your personal Webmail accounts, e.g. Gmail or Hotmail. Some organizations allow employees to check their personal Webmail accounts from the office, but if you’re already feeling overloaded by your email inbox at work, don’t waste your time checking your personal emails during work hours.

Another email management strategy is to undertake some “human engineering” strategies to change the way people send emails to you. You can also use your inbox rules not only to move mail into different folders, but also to create an automated message that is sent to everyone who sends you an email message. For example: “Thank you for contacting me by email. I receive a large number of communications by email each day, so I can only respond to emails by priority. If your message is of an urgent nature, please call me at XXX-XXXX or drop by my office. If I do not respond to your email immediately, please be assured that I will follow-up on it as soon as possible.”

Of course, every time someone emails you, they will receive an automated message, and these will fill up the inboxes of chronic emailers – which should reinforce why you are trying to manage your own email volumes in a productive way!

2. CELLPHONES/BLACKBERRYS

Two things about voice communications devices create information management problems:

1. We have too many devices – we have a home landline phone, a personal cell, an office landline, a cellphone/Blackberry and sometimes even more.
2. We have too many voicemails, usually one for each of the devices mentioned above.

Make it a personal policy NOT to check your personal voicemail during the workday. At work, limit who has your business cell number to your boss, your assistant, and a few colleagues. If you have a landline, too, forward your landline to the cellphone when you’re out of the office, or vice versa when you’re in the office. Avoid having to login to several different voicemails by limiting the number of phones you use. But when you leave the office, leave your business cell and Blackberry at work if you can.

3. WEBSITES/FACEBOOK/MYSPACE/BLOGS

The World Wide Web is a great time-waster for employees and managers when they succumb to the temptation of browsing non-work-related sites during office hours. Well-intentioned Internet usage policies can help a bit, but instead of prohibiting such behavior, why not find ways to redirect your employees’ information explorations and exchanges into something productive? Channel your staff’s desire to express themselves by allowing them to create their own internal “homepages” profiling who they are and what they do, participate in collaborative workspaces (e.g. Sharepoint), or post to company blogs that are semi-moderated. New generations in the workforce will thrive on this, and you may find that this activity pays off in better internal communications, collaboration and knowledge management.

Garth A. Buchholz is an author, educator and corporate Web strategist at DigitalPractices.

View full-size diagram 

1. The content strategy determines the function of the etext (how it will be used, read, etc).

2. The function of the text determines how the etext should be designed.

3. The eText design impacts the how the etext can be experienced. (along with other factors such as physical environment, type of screen, etc)

4. The user experience impacts the publisher/user loop and helps determine how content is developed and maintained.

Copyright 2007-2009 Garth A. Buchholz | DigitalPractices All Rights Reserved

For free reprint permission, contact Garth@DigitalPractices.com

However, most people use more than one navigation choice during a single session search for content, and each choice during that session is determined, more often than not, by a specific task flow. For example, if you know what you’re looking for on a retail site, you’ll want to navigate by the product or service categories, but if you encounter problems, you’ll want to navigate by organizational structure (e.g. finding which part of the organization is responsible for a product or service) to seek help.

So in the first case, your navigation is driven by a scenario where you are purchasing something, and in the second case it is driven by a scenario where you are wanting to contact someone or some area of responsibility.  

The chart below outlines some general reasons users make navigation choices, although a more refined analysis can be done when one is looking at specific case studies or organizations. Keep in mind that at any stage of the search, depending on the user’ previous experiences, they may give up and abandon their navigation efforts altogether.

Rather than feeling that their own search/navigation methods failed, or are lacking the necessary skills, most people will instead feel frustration, resentment and even anger, and blame the site design or site administrators for their lack of success.

2. Don’t just “repurpose” documents; write “Webitorial” content. One of the worst things you can do is to simply “PDF” everything. “Repurposing” or means when you repackage a document created for print and simply attach it to a Web site in Word, Acrobat, Excel or other such popular formats. While sometimes this is necessary, it’s the laziest, most ineffective way to put content on the Internet. Instead of editorial writing, write “Webitorial” by re-thinking how the content can be rewritten, laid out and designed in context with its specific online environment.  Read The Challenges of Repurposing and point #6 in this Jakob Nielsen article.    

3. Online content is not just about words. In Latin, content basically means a wrapper that contains something else. It’s images, hyperlinks, applications, streaming media, etc. When you write for the Internet, think “presentation” and “interaction.” Factor in the other content objects that may be part of it. Analyze the environment where the content will be found. If you were writing for a television ad, for example, you wouldn’t simply write text without knowing what audio and visuals will be part of it.   

4. Words are graphical images, too.  The layout of a Web page impacts its readability. People often notice the font style, the color of the text, the size of the text and how the text appears as a visual block or grouping before they actually extract its meaning. Layout and design are critical in a visual medium like the Web, so learn about typography, too.

5. Chunk it out, chunk it down. Even if you’re writing an actual content object such as a Word document or a PDF, content on the Internet has to be easily scannable. Partly because of the Internet and broadcast media, people have far less patience and tolerance for large blocks of narrative text. When you create new Webitorial copy, make sure it’s “chunked out” (broken into smaller blocks of text separated by a break) or, if you’re editing something for the Internet, chunk it down. Another technique is to use bulleted or numbered lists wherever possible rather than embedding this information within a block of text. Remember – if no one reads it, what value will it have? 

6. Write strong meta-text (navigation titles, headlines, subheads, cutlines, labels, etc).  Writing headlines, subheads, cutlines (captions), labels and other “meta-text” (also called metacontent or microcontent) is often the most effective way to make your textual content readable on the Internet. Internet readers have a “search-and-retrieve” mentality – they prefer to scan for the information or keywords or links they need, while bypassing the rest.  Good headlines and content labels also help the reader to cognitively understand the organization and navigation of the content. 

7. Don’t reinvent the wheel – just link to it. How much of your copy could be trimmed down if you simply linked to other Web pages that offered the same information? Here’s my 100/25 rule of content originality on the Web: If the Web were like 12 people having a meeting in a boardroom:  One person would be saying something original; two people would be commenting on it; and nine people would simply be referencing what the first three had been saying. 100% of the content is created by 25% of the people. Readers like to interact on the Web, so give them links as non-linear “rabbit trails” they can follow. 

8. Use the traditional newspaper structure for “inverted pyramid” writing.  In most cases, good Internet writing is like newspaper-style writing because, like newspapers, it’s a fast read, involves a lot of content and has to catch the reader’s attention. Make sure your five W’s (who, what, when, where, why, and also how) are close to the top of the text. Details of lesser importance should follow, from general to specific – that’s why the pyramid is wide at the top and narrow at the bottom.  The idea is this: If the reader only reads the headline, they should have a good idea of what the article is about. If they read only the first few lines, they should have a very good idea of the main points in the article.

9. Make the writing compelling, personal and energetic. Active voice writing is always the best. Use consistent style and conventions. Use “you” when appropriate to personalize the text. Take a stand. Give your writing attitude. People like to read writing that feels truthful, creative, positive and individual. Avoid “marketese” or corporate jargon, but do write promotionally, as long as it’s truthful (if you sound bored about what you’re writing about, the reader will be bored, too.)  You can use “plain writing” style without sounding plain. And most importantly, keep it tight, unpretentious and free of unnecessary verbiage.

10. Know your Internet community. In print, you have to know your readers, and in broadcast, you have to know your audience. On the Internet, it’s also crucial to know your “community” of readers. Are you creating content for a portal? An Intranet site? An opt-in email newsletter? A Web log (blog)? What are their interests? Education? Age range? Biases? And what is their user experience on the Internet site you are writing for? How will they use the information, and how will the other information in that environment be used? When you write for the Internet, you write for a community…one reader at a time.   

Copyright 2006-2009 Garth A. Buchholz | DigitalPractices All Rights Reserved

For free reprint permission, contact Garth@DigitalPractices.com

If professional communicators want I.T. professionals to give them a little more respect, and quit calling their work “fluff”, they need to start adhering to some clear standards and technical rigor. Yes, communications is also a “technical” craft, even though it’s more often included under the heading of “arts” rather than “science”, and as someone who has been a communications professional, I know what kind of discipline, experience and skills it requires.

When I put on my “Web” hat, though, I have to say that I am disappointed at how many communications professionals are making excuses about why they don’t understand the Web, or how they don’t have the skills to develop content for the Web. Maybe some of our older colleagues (50+ years old) who worked in communications before the Internet era can say they haven’t developed the skill set to do Web communications, but it seems that many of our younger communicators (even those in their 30s) should be highly skilled in Web communications by now…yet they are not.

At the risk of offending many of my colleagues in the Communications field, here is an urgent call for the reform of our practices:

• Don’t be intimidated by those in information technology roles who hold highly specialized technical skills - the principles for developing good Web content are the same no matter what technology is used. Learn about what IT people do. Learn the jargon. Keep up on new developments in technology, even if it’s only at a superficial level. 
• Don’t relinquish control of communications work to people who are not communications professionals – whether you know it or not, there are standards and techniques for what you do, and if your colleagues or clients aren’t aware of them, document them and then follow them faithfully. If your communications practice doesn’t demonstrate rigor and discipline, you will never gain the respect of I.T. professionals or senior managers.
• Learn information design. Learn information design.  Communications has become more than just writing, speaking and presenting – it’s also about business, design and technology, all channels for communications. Learn about information design for the Web so that you have a more holistic understanding of everything that impacts Web communications.
• Don’t write for Web the way you write for print. Above all, learn the differences between print and electronic communications, and demonstrate superior skills in creating communications for both media. There is simply no excuse – no excuse – for not having the skills to write for online media. The Web is not a recent phenomenon anymore, it’s a cultural pillar, a leading arrow for change in the way we live our lives and communicate with each other. When it comes to the Web, don’t be a broken link.