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

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.

You take your car into the shop every couple of years to get its front end aligned every couple of years, so why not do the same for your Web? In large organizations where departments and divisions develop and manage Web content on their own subsites, some of the greatest challenges are:

1. How to maintain compliance with a consistent look-and-feel across the entire corporate Internet presence

2. How to ensure that users coming into the front end of the site (the homepage or topsite) can find a consistent navigation model, even though each subsite may have very different content and navigation models, and

3. How to periodically undertake design and navigational changes/improvements without having to force the entire organization into a costly and resource-intensive redesign cycle.

As a corporate Web presence grows, all the content management technology in the world isn’t going to save you from content growth issues (“content cramming”) if you don’t have a sound content strategy to govern standards and development of the site.

What do users care that you have new bells and whistles to streamlined content management and document management? Without a content strategy developed by a team consisting of business leaders, communications managers, Web managers and IT managers, your Internet presence can sometimes become a large, confusing cluster of content.

It happens innocently enough. Each subsite continues to develop new content and publish it to their own homepage with little or no governance from a content strategy to tell them how to align with the front end of their site. Pretty soon the entire corporate site starts to look like a home renovation disaster — you know, where someone keeps adding new rooms and wings and features to their home haphazardly until it becomes a monstrosity. You can improve the whole by looking only at one part of the whole.

On the other hand, each subsite within an organization’s Internet presence has to have autonomy to develop and publish content based on its own business drivers and its own content objects. Your shipping division might not be able to use the same kind of navigational cues for its subsite that, say, the accounting department would want to use. Even some aspects of the look and feel need to be different for each to reflect their different functions and makeup within the organization. If you try to universalize everything within the corporate Web site, you’ll have to bring everything down to the lowest, blandest common denominator, and that won’t help your end users. At all.

As many organizations and usability experts are learning, the key is a corporate content strategy with strong executive support, “front end alignment” to make your homepage and other topsite pages consistent for the end user, and a centralized/decentralized content management model that allows content control and scalability, both corporately and departmentally.

If the homepage and other topsite pages are managed centrally by a corporate Web team, these pages can provide a kind of sitemap or guide or index of content to the end users (who usually start with the homepage anyway), while allowing the departmental and divisional subsites to manage their own content in their own way based on their own business drivers. That way, if users can do their wayfinding at the front end or topsite level, they don’t have to worry about knowing how to navigate the many different subsites to find what they want. This also allows you to create a user navigation model that takes a more “outside-in” rather than “inside-out” view.

As well, maintaining key global navigational panels that are applied globally through server-side includes, for example, can help ensure that all pages throughout the site show consistent navigational labeling. This also helps with partial redesigns or refreshes to the site — you can change these panels (such as a header row) centrally and apply them globally without having to require any effort from the departmental subsites.

The front end or homepage is the most important page in terms of its function as a gateway and a guide to all content within the site. It also serves as our visual paradigm for everything else we expect to see beyond that point. While periodic redesigns and revised content strategies are essential as our business evolves, our technology changes and our content expands, sometimes all you need to do is re-align the front end to make sure your corporate Web vehicle is sailing down the highway and not pulling you off the road.

When Web customers click on a link, that’s an interaction, but when they submit a contact request, that’s a transaction of information – they’re send you their personal “content” and expecting the site to respond accordingly. They’re sharing their personal information and inquiries, and the Web site administrator is providing customer service in return. 

Back in the day when the Web was young, most commercial Web sites had very little content, yet never failed to include someone’s name and email address on the homepage. Google forward 10 years later and the “Contact” or “Contact Us” content is most often tucked into the header nav or footer nav. Click on it and you might get a mailform, a simple “Contact our Webmaster” link or, with some serendipity, you may find an actual phone number and mailing address. 

A December 2005 Jupiter Research report found that since 2000, the number of sites that responded to email inquiries within 24 hours continued to decrease. Only 45% of sites surveyed responded to email inquiries within 24 hours, and 39% of sites took three days or longer to reply, or did not respond at all. 

Last year when I was on the judging panel for the 2005 WebAward it struck me that of all the dozens of Web sites I was reviewing – and many of which were award winners in one category or another – it was rare to find a site that had extensive contact and customer service information. Most commercial Web sites, including public sector and NGOs, simply do not provide excellence in “customer service experience” when it comes to their customer contact transactions: 

1. CONTACT INFORMATION IS HARD TO FIND.

Contact info is hidden, obscured or limited to a simple “Contact the Webmaster” email link. To improve your site’s usability, make sure visitors can easily find contact information by displaying prominently on the homepage and in all headers/footers. Contact-related content should be transparent, comprehensive and responsive. 

2. NOT ENOUGH CONTACT INFORMATION.

If an organization wants to hide, why is it on the Internet? All Web sites should provide at least the names of the key people responsible for the organization and the site, as well as their contact phone numbers and email links. For larger organizations with publicly accessible offices, mailing addresses and street addresses should be provided as well. 

3. WEB SITES DON’T RESPOND OR TAKE TOO LONG TO RESPOND.

When a visitor contacts a Web site, the assumption is that a person responsible for the site within the organization will respond to their email at least by the next business day. Getting swamped with emails through your Web site? That’s your problem, not the customer’s. Don’t make your Web customers stand in a virtual lineup all the time just to get a simple email response. 

4. WEB CONTACT IS TOO IMPERSONAL AND INTANGIBLE.

After a customer clicks to submit their email, what evidence do they have of their transaction? The Jupiter Research report found that, of 92% of Web sites offering email as a customer support option, only 41% acknowledged receipt of customers’ messages with automated email responses. Also, in autoresponse emails and tracking emails, more sites should include a unique customer service number for tracking as well as an email address and/or telephone number as well as a customer service manager’s name that they can contact if they are not satisfied with the service they are receiving. 

5. CUSTOMER SERVICE EXPERIENCE IS POOR WHEN SITES RESPOND TO WEB CONTACT TRANSACTIONS.

Make sure the follow-up to Web site contact transactions is friendly, personal (include a service agent’s first name and contact information) and effective. If it seems a request cannot be resolved by email, provide the customer with a way to elevate the request so that the issue/request can be resolved.