Successful Self-Service Strategy

When it comes to customer service, simplicity is critical. Companies can improve customer experiences primarily by limiting the amount of effort it takes for customers to find answers to their questions and accomplish their tasks. Here lies the appeal of Web self-service, which for many consumers has become the preferred communication channel.

Instantly available, 24/7 online customer self-service portals are gaining ground over conventional agent-assisted support, marking a significant shift in consumer attitudes toward the technology. And, contrary to popular belief, interest in Web self-service technologies is not just coming from younger consumers. The technology is changing the behavior of consumers of all generations. In fact, a recent study by Forrester Research found that 72% of consumers, regardless of age, prefer self-service to picking up the phone or sending an email when it comes to resolving support issues. This certainly is welcome news for organizations looking to cut customer service costs and maximize revenue.

There are several elements to consider for successful self-service strategy.

The success of Web self-service depends on the quality and quantity of the information available and the ease with which it can be accessed. Online customers are extremely impatient and information-hungry, so the material available to customers through self-service needs to be succinct and direct, even in response to queries that are not.

The self-service option has to be easy to find on the Web site. To call more attention to the portal, organizations can prominently place a link to the self-service portal on the homepage and other common support pages that feature company, product, and services information. And, since a self-service portal is an extension of a company's Web site, it should have the same look and feel as the rest of the site.

Once on the portal, 80/20 rule applies which means that you assume that 80% of site visitors are looking for about 20% of the content, so that 20% should be easy to find.

As for the content itself, it should be clear, to the point, and easy to understand. This can be achieved by including graphic elements, such as diagrams, charts, and bullet points. When doing so, make sure the graphics are optimized for the Web. If they're not, the Web site could take too long to load, which might cause some customers to abandon it for a more costly agent-assisted channel. Consider keeping content to an eighth-grade reading level, so the average 13- or 14-year-old can make sense of it.

Ensuring accessibility also means that the site should support a variety of Internet browsers, operating systems, assistive technologies for the blind, and, of course, mobile platforms. The latter is becoming more important, especially when one considers that almost a third of all Web traffic today comes from mobile devices.

To make a self-service section even more effective, it can be combined with an automated guidance system that enables site visitors to enter questions and then takes them to specific responses without forcing them to scan an entire database for the answer they need.

One such system is marketed by WalkMe, a San Francisco start-up that enables Web site owners to enhance their online self-service options with interactive on-screen step-by-step instructions displayed as pop-up balloons. The balloons can be programmed to appear automatically when the site visitor rolls his cursor over certain items or when he clicks on a help button.

Customers who can't find answers on their own in a self-help knowledge base might be inclined to call a customer service line, but they are more likely to type their question into a Google search bar, and companies have no control over the results that the Google search returns. This presents a number of problems for a company. Not only has the visitor left your site, but he can find information that you may not want him to see.

Virtual agents are another option companies can use to help customers find what they're looking for. IntelliResponse's Virtual Agent technology simplifies its Web self-service options. The software helps site visitors to find the single right answer to their questions. To keep information current and relevant, it strips outdated FAQ entries, learns over time how to group and respond to questions, and captures data about customer service queries to find precisely what customers need so your organization can fine-tune how it presents information on its Web site.

Companies can also use Web chat to help customers through the self-service maze. It's a tool that's already widely accepted by consumers and businesses alike. LiveWebAssist chat enables agents to push prepared content such as photos, graphics, or Web link, to customers on the site with a single click.

Along with chat and virtual agents, companies can use assisted browsing, or cobrowsing, to move self-service interactions along. This functionality lets the agent—or possibly the virtual agent—temporarily take control of a customer's computer screen. Not only does this improve the self-service experience, but, when interactions move to the contact center through either phone or chat, co-browsing can reduce the average handling time.

It is important to measure response time. Perhaps the most effective measure is the number of customer questions that are submitted and get a response. This can apply to those questions where the customer finds the answer on her own as well as those that are answered through a social community or by a representative of the company. Consider these elements:

• the number of issues resolved per month through social communities. This includes the number of new questions posed to and answered by the community, the percentage of issues resolved by members of the community rather than company employees, and the number of "this article helped me" votes received.
• the number of issues resolved every month through FAQs and company knowledge bases. This includes the number of page views that both receive per month.
• the average cost to resolve issues through channels that involve a company employee. These include phone, email, and chat.

And then, as with any customer service channel, it's important to collect user feedback about the self-help experience. As with any other customer service channel, this can be done through customer surveys, Web analytics and search logs, customer interviews and focus groups, usability testing, and collaborative design processes.

For self-service to be done right, it should be in the interest of the customer. You do not want customers to use self-service because they are forced to. You want them to use it because it serves their needs.

Galaxy Consulting has 16 years experience in optimizing self-service on companies web sites. We can do the same for you. Contact us today for a free consultation!

Is Your Web Site Optimized for Mobile Devices?

Many people are highly dependent of their mobile devices for every day interactions, including mobile commerce. Our society is becoming highly mobile and connected. In the latest Shop.org and Forrester Research Mobile Commerce Survey, it's estimated that U.S. smartphone commerce will grow to $31 billion by 2016.

Those organizations that can best serve mobile customers will have an advantage in the competition. With a surge in mobile traffic comes the added potential to connect with and sell to customers through mobile commerce. Having a concrete mobile infrastructure plan and strategy is no longer an option, as it had been in recent years, but rather a must to compete in any customer-facing situation.

But despite this upward trajectory, retailers and other consumer-oriented companies still express some hesitancy about investing in multi-device environments. There is still some apprehension by companies, when it comes to moving forward with mobile planning. Companies still struggle to maintain uniformity across multiple device experiences when there are various screen sizes, operating systems, hardware specifications, and loading speeds to consider. One fear is that of the unknown, but security, data management, and simply proving a use case and subsequent return on investment are concerns as well.

The key issue in smartphone shopping continues to be the form factor, which can make navigation more difficult for customers. In addition to slower page load times on smartphones, some customers are concerned about the security of the transaction or simply complain that the experience just is not the same.

A successful mobile experience, like many other customer experiences, is about fulfilling customers' needs. First-time users of a mobile site or app tend to be less satisfied with their mobile experiences than frequent users because of their lack of familiarity with layouts, navigation, and functionality according to the survey of the mobile users. Knowing the different kinds of mobile devices customers use is critical. It is pertinent to develop a strategy that encompasses all types of customer scenarios.

Before embarking on any one mobile strategy, it is important to learn how your company's customers most likely would use their mobile devices. In addition to enabling customers to interact how they wish, any company looking to optimize its mobile presence must naturally consider the effects on the business as well, and how mobile usage will impact other lines of business and cross-channel marketing efforts.

In addition to justifying a use case and ROI for mobile, companies that wish to get into the mobile side of business must be aware of its limitations. Under ideal circumstances, companies want to engage with their customers and cultivate a one-to-one relationship while taking into consideration CANSPAM and privacy regulations. It is very important to adjust taxonomy and information architecture for the mobile experience. A lot of searches are made using mobile devices, so search also has to be optimized.

Optimizing your mobile site or developing a native application is no simple task. There are security considerations, as well as device-specific functions, to consider. Don't take a cookie-cutter approach. Some companies make the mistake of simply cloning online information without considering that consumer behavior on the mobile phone is dramatically different. Justify mobile ROI with consumer insight.

Consider security. Create a military-grade security infrastructure, while maintaining user-friendly design. Hire the best user interaction designer to design the security setup interaction.

Utilize mobile wisely. Once someone has discovered your brand through search, referral, or a marketing message, and they download the app, this may indicate a loyal customer. The app can be a great way to maximize and monetize that loyal relationship because it's in a controlled environment.

Galaxy Consulting has experience optimizing information architecture and search for mobile devices. Contact us today for a free consultation.

What is Usability and How Does it Relate to Business?

Your business is relying more heavily on technology than it ever has, and it is likely to continue in that direction. But in order for your technology to work for your business and make it successful, there must be at least some degree of usefulness to your technology.

That may sound like a no-brainer at first, considering that it is the entire reason your business has adopted technology. However, a surprising number of enterprises fail to adhere to usability and user design principles. Usability, as it suggests, is the field of studying a document’s usefulness to the user. How easy is the website to navigate? Is there enough white space? Is information structured logically? Are elements easy to find? These are just some of the questions a usability test might attempt to answer.

Schedule a Usability Test

If you want your organization to succeed, and you want to improve the quality of your information, consider scheduling a usability test with participants that will offer insight into your publications or information systems. The results of the test should help you determine the areas of your information and design that need to be improved. It can help establish what works and what doesn’t work. Web usability testing is the most common type of usability test, that is usability testing of a website. Any type of document or information system can be put to the test, however, internal or external. A consultant that is familiar with usability testing can test for these issues.

The Era of Responsive Design

User design has become a major development over the years in websites, applications and other information systems. The idea is to make information as easy and intuitive to understand and access as possible. Two terms have developed in this field: User interaction (UI) and User Experience (UX). UI refers to the usefulness of an application or site’s functionality as it relates to the user, and user experience refers to the form or design aspects that help the user locate information or appreciate the visual quality of the content. Usability testing can help determine if your UI/UX should be improved and how.

Eye Tracking

Eye tracking, believe it or not, has been employed as a way of studying usability for decades. Google uses eye tracking to study the interaction between a user and their behavior on a webpage to determine the best way to serve ads to users online. Eye tracking works by providing a heatmap that can visually display user behavior, such as where their eyes spent the most time observing elements on a page.

This data is important for organizations to understand where their users are going on their websites or other documents and how they are interacting with them. Most of the content in the right-hand column of many pages, for example, is often unnoticed or less noticed than content on the left, or at the very top of the page. Users spend very little time attempting to locate data online. On mobile devices, the time frame is even shorter. You must catch the user’s attention immediately, literally.

Information Context and Logic

Information should have context and proper logic if anyone is ever expected to try to understand it. Usability testing can help make sure that information is not only relevant and useful, but that its context and logic follow guidelines on how content should be created and implemented.

The information itself has to be of good quality to start with. Bad information tends to be ignored, especially in today’s culture of fast-paced computer-based interactions. The metrics for usability should not stop at the screen. In other words, it’s not all just about design. Design must be handled appropriately, but information quality, context and logic are just as important because that is the treasure inside the packaging that the user expects to acquire.

Information must follow logical order in terms of navigation, themes, key ideas, narration, order of operations, etc. These elements are extremely important to users who have expectations of how information should be presented to them. Their assumptions should guide your inspiration for method and mode of delivery.

Maintain Reputation and Trust

A part of usability that is rarely discussed is trust and reputation. These are important factors as digital technology becomes involved in nearly all facets of life today. Now, Google, the largest search engine and search enterprise, rewards websites with better search rank if they have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certification. That shows you how important this has become. The Internet is threatened by criminals and others who are making legitimate business difficult with their scams.

Getting a SSL certificate is one way to maintain your security, reliability and reputation. It also will build some trust. Using sub-domains rather than an actual primary domain for your company is another reason users will not trust your business. Your business should have its own domain. Company information like addresses, phone numbers, staff names, company biographies and author biographies also help reinforce trust.

Other Elements for Usability

Information architecture is important for usability. One important element is page outline and mechanics. Users like to see information laid out on the page very organized and clear, so they can index the information for what they need and ignore what they don’t (immediately) need. Breaking content up into clear titles/subtitles, callout boxes, bulleted or numbered lists and other page design elements will improve the quality of your information and if it is hosted on a public website, it will even rank higher in Google and other search services.

Social media is also become part of the usability process. Is content easy to share online?

Also, examine the content’s links and other elements for consistency and clarity. Approach each element with a cautious editor’s eye to make sure that the elements are working as much to the user’s advantage as possible.

Realities of Online Self-Service

Forrester Research says that business leaders must dramatically revitalize the self-service experience offered on customer facing websites just to keep pace with evolving consumer expectations. There are key realities of modern online service that expose the gap between customer expectations and website performance, and how you can take steps to close that gap starting now.

1. Customers have grown tired of your old online help tools.

Customer satisfaction with today's most common web self-service features is abysmal and is getting worse. In 2011, only 51% of consumers who used online help sections or FAQs for self-service were satisfied, down from 56% in 2009. As more companies rectify this by deploying next generation self-service solutions and virtual agents, fewer customers will tolerate antiquated self-service help tools online.

2. Customers now expect a superior experience online, not just a good one.

Exceptionally positive online experiences are now setting the bar for what customers expect when they visit virtually any website in search of answers and information. According to Forrester, 70% of online consumers expect businesses to try harder to provide superior online customer service.

3. Consumers arc impatient and protective of their time.

Consumers cite "valuing my time" as the most important thing a company can do to deliver a good online customer experience. Yet most websites are complex, hard to navigate and filled with content that provides multiple possible answers rather than a single, swift path to resolution.

4, Customer service has gone mobile.

Mobile phones are now ubiquitous. Nearly 88% of US adults own them, and 27% of US adults are already considered "super-connected" consumers, using their phones for information. research and commerce. What is more, digital tablet sales are predicted to outpace sales of PCs by 2015. Convenience and ease-of-use are the hallmarks of these mobile form factors. Websites that offer experiences contrary to these attributes will only raise the ire of today's increasingly impatient and unforgiving mobile consumer.

5. Social media is increasingly embraced as a customer service tool.

Back in 2009, just 1% of consumers used Twitter for customer service. This number jumped to 19% in 2011. Delivering a consistent service experience across multiple channels is critical, especially today, as consumers are not shy about using social media sites to publicly complain and vent frustration about any interactions with companies that fail to satisfy.

6. Dissatisfaction online = hijacked revenues.

One of the most appealing benefits of delivering a positive experience in the web channel is the opportunity for organizations to provide information that supports and encourages purchase decisions. Online, the shift from a customer service conversation to a purchase consideration conversation can be a very natural and systematic progression. This progression is thwarted, however, the moment a self-service experience fails to satisfy.

The impact of the self-service experience on revenues should not be underestimated. Fully 45% of US online consumers agree with the statement: "I am very likely to abandon my online purchase if I cannot find a quick answer to my questions."

These trends underline the urgent need to revitalize the online service experience offered by most companies. Online self-service is in need of resuscitation. Useful web self-service and virtual agent technologies that can deliver an enhanced customer experience are currently underutilized.

Where To Go from Here?

What should your organization do as the first step toward improving the online customer experience?

Begin with an honest and objective assessment of the self-service experience your website offers today. Looking at your customer facing website, ask yourself these three questions...

1. Is there a single, highlly visible starting point for self-service activity?

Today's consumers are task oriented when they go online. Your customers want their self-service journey to begin immediately and move swiftly to completion. Looking at your home page or most highly trafficked customer service page, ask yourself if the average customer would be able to identify the clear starting point for any customer service-related task in a matter of seconds. Any required navigation or clicking through to new pages is viewed as time waste and is out of alignment with their expectation.

2. Is issue resolution generally a multi-step or a single-step, activity?

When looking for information online, customers want a single accurate answer that is accessible in one step. Any content page that offers more than one alternative answer or path to an answer, requires your customer to take additional steps for sorling, scanning content and/or comparing answers. On your website, when results are served, is the customer presented with a single answer, or multiple results to sift through?

3. How will you measure how your site is performing?

A quantitative assessment of your self-service performance is the first thing you will need to establish for any improvement to the self-service experience. A free online self-service assessment tool, created by Forrester and InielliResponse, is vendor-agnostic methodology you can use for scoring your site's performance and charring a path for improvement.

Methods and Techniques for Information Architecture Design

Yesterday, I described information architecture design patterns for web sites and best practices for this design. Today, I am going to describe methods and techniques for information architecture design.

There are a few different approaches commonly used for information architecture design.

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a low cost, simple way to figure out how best to group and organize your content based on user input. Card sorting works by writing each content set or page on an index card, and then letting users sort them into groups based on how they think the content should be categorized.

There are several types of card sorting methodologies. The basic method starts out with cards in random order and users sort them in the way they think they should be grouped. In reverse card sorting, the cards are pre-sorted into groups, and users are then given the task of rearranging them as they see fit. Open card sorting lets users name the groups they’ve created for the cards, while closed card sorting will have group names in which the participant places the cards into.

Various methods can be used to analyze the data. The purpose of the analysis is to extract patterns from the population of test subjects, so that a common set of categories and relationships emerges. This common set is then incorporated into the design of the site, either for navigation or for other purposes.

There are a number of tools available to perform card sorting activities with survey participants via the internet. The perceived advantage of remote card sorting is that it allows a larger group of participants to be reached at a lower cost. The software can also assist in the process of analyzing card sort results. The advantages of a remote card sort must be traded off against the lack of personal interaction between card sort participants and the card sort administrator, which may produce valuable insights.

Wireframes and Prototypes

Basic wireframes can do a lot more than just give an outline of the design layout of a site. It also informs us how content will be arranged, at least on a basic level. Putting content into wireframes and prototypes gives us a good sense of how the content is arranged in relation to other content and how well our information architecture achieves our goals.

When you are wireframing, and especially when you are prototyping, you should be working with content that at least resembles what the final content of the site will be.

Site Maps and Outlines

Site maps are quick and easy ways to visually denote how different pages and content relate to one another. It is an imperative step that "mocks up" how content will be arranged.

These content outlines show how all the pages on your site are grouped, what order they appear in, and the relationships between parent and child pages. This is often a simple document to prepare, and may be created after a round or two of card sorting.

For existing sites or content that must be placed in a web site, a content inventory is usually the prelude to this phase.

Information Architecture Design Styles

There are two basic styles of information architecture: top-down and bottom-up. The thing that many designers must realize is that it is useful to look at a site from both angles to devise the most effective IA. Rather than just looking at your projects from a top-down or bottom-up approach, look at it from both ends to see if there are any gaps in how things are organized.

Top-Down Architecture

Top-down architecture starts with a broad overview and understanding of the website’s strategy and goals, and creates a basic structure first. From there, content relationships are refined as the site architecture grows deeper, but it is all viewed from the overall high-level purpose of the site.

Bottom-Up Architecture

The bottom-up architecture model looks at the detailed relationships between content first. With this kind of architecture, you might start out with user personas and how those users will be going through the site. From there, you figure out how to tie it all together, rather than looking at how it all relates first.

Different websites require different types of information architecture. What works best will vary based on things like how often content is updated, how much content there is, and how visitors use the site.

Information Architecture for Websites

Without a clear understanding of how information architecture (IA) should be set up, we can end up creating web sites that are more confusing than they need to be or make web site content virtually inaccessible. Here are some popular IA design patterns, best practices, design techniques, and case examples.

Information Architecture Design Patterns

There are a number of different IA design patterns for effective organization of web site content. Understanding these IA models will help you pick the most appropriate starting point for a site’s information structure. Let us talk about five of the most common web site IA patterns.

Single Page

The first pattern is the single page model. Single page sites are best suited for projects that have a very narrow focus and a limited amount of information. These could be for a single product site, such as a website for an iPhone app, or a simple personal contact info site.

Flat Structure

This information structure puts all the pages on the same level. Every page is just as important as every other page. This is commonly seen on brochure style sites, where there are only a handful of pages. For larger sites with a lot more pages, the navigation flow and content findability gets unwieldy.

Index Page

A main page with subpages is probably the most commonly seen web site IA pattern. This consists of a main page (we know this more commonly as a "home page" or "front page"), which serves as a jump-off point for all the other pages. The sub-pages have equal importance within the hierarchy.

Strict Hierarchy Pattern

Some websites use a strict hierarchy of pages for their information design. On these sites, there will be an index page that links to sub-pages. Each sub-page (parent page) has its own subpages (child pages). In this pattern, child pages are only linked from its parent page.

Co-Existing Hierarchies Pattern

As an alternative to the strict hierarchy, there is also the option of co-existing hierarchies. There are still parent and child pages, but in this case, child pages may be accessible from multiple parent pages/higher-level pages. This works well if there’s a lot of overlapping information on your site.

Best Practices for Information Architecture Design

There are a number of things you need to remember when designing the information architecture of your site. Most importantly, you need to keep the user experience at the forefront when making choices about how best to present and organize the content on your site.

Don’t Design Based on Your Own Preferences

You are not your user. As a designer, you have to remember that site visitors won’t have the same preferences as you. Think about who a "site user" really is and what they would want from the site.

Research User Needs

Researching what your users need and want is one of the most important steps in creating an effective information architecture. There are a number of ways to research user needs. You could get feedback through interviews, surveys, user side testing, and other usability testing methods prior to the site launch to see if users are able to navigate your site efficiently.

Once you know what your users actually need, rather than just your perception of what they need, you will be able to tailor your information architecture to best meet those needs.

Have a Clear Purpose

Every site should have a clear purpose, whether that’s to sell a product, inform people about a subject, provide entertainment, etc. Without a clear purpose, it is virtually impossible to create any kind of effective IA.

The way the information on a site is organized should be directly correlated to what the site’s purpose is. On a site where the end goal is to get visitors to purchase something, the content should be set up in such a way that it funnels visitors toward that goal. On a site that is meant to inform, the IA should lead people through the content in a way that one page builds on the last one.

You may have sub-goals within a site, requiring you to have subsets of content with different goals. That is fine, as long as you understand how each piece of content fits in relation to the goals of a site.

Use Personas

Creating personas, a hypothetical narrative of your various web site users, is another great way to figure out how best to structure the site’s content.

In its very basic form, developing personas is simply figuring out the different types of visitors to your site and then creating "real" people that fit into each of those categories. Then throughout the design process, use the people you have profiled as your basis for designing and testing the site’s IA.

Keep Site Goals in Mind

It is important that you keep the site’s goals in mind while you’re structuring content. Pick the right IA pattern for those goals. Use goals to justify why the information structure should be the way you designed it.

Be Consistent

Consistency is central to exemplary information architectures. If eight of your nine informational pages are listed in a section, why wouldn’t you also include the ninth page there? Users expect consistency.

The same goes for how information is structured on each page. Pick a pattern and stick to it. If you deviate from that pattern, make sure you have a very good reason to do so; and make the deviation is consistent in similar cases. Inconsistencies have a tendency to confuse visitors.

Tomorrow, I am going to describe methods and techniques for information architecture design.

Case Study - Wind River - Twiki Information Architecture

In the "Case Studies" series of my posts, I describe the projects that I worked on and lessons learned from them. In this post, I am going to describe the project of re-structuring content and information architecture of a content management system based on Twiki in Wind River.

Wind River is a software engineering company that used Twiki as their content management system. TWiki is a Perl-based structured wiki application, typically used to run a collaboration platform, content management system, a knowledge base, or a team portal.

Content organization and information architecture in Twiki were such that users had difficulty in finding information they were looking for. This situation made it difficult to find, re-use, and update content.

This also discouraged further adding of the new content and thus created areas where no documentation existed and the knowledge instead of being shared was being stored in personal computers. Storing the content in personal computers presented a risk of it being lost because it was not backed-up.

There was a lot of obsolete content because no content owners have been formally identified and no retention schedule has been set up. Collaborative work on the documents and projects was accomplished by users sending links to Twiki pages. Without these links it was very difficult to find information. There was no information governance in place and so content management processes were very sporadic.

The task was to re-organize the content organization and information architecture of the system and to set up information governance to solve these problems.

I strongly believe in user-centered design, so I performed the users study. I identified stakeholders within each Wind River team and created the questionnaire for collecting users' requirements for the system re-organization and the usability issues.

Based on these requirements, I re-organized the content structure and information architecture of the system. The major key to this re-organization was that the structure is very simple and intuitive. I made navigation very simple, created very intuitive labels, made sure that there is not too much information on one page and a user does not have to scroll down a very long page, that each page has a correct breadcrumb, and created taxonomy of webs (the building blocks of Twiki). Based on this taxonomy, I re-organized the location of documents. I also enhanced the system search.

For each content type, document owners were identified and retention schedule was set up with the function to flag the content that would reach an expiration date according to the retention schedule. This flag function would send an email notification to the content administrator that a certain document reached an expiration date. This alert allowed the content administrator to contact the document owner for the decision on what should be done with this document: review and update, move to an archive, or delete.

User acceptance testing of the system was performed. Users were satisfied with the system's new information architecture and indicated that it became much easier to find information.

The system with new content structure and information architecture was deployed.

Information governance was set up. Group and individual training was conducted on ongoing basis.

The project was a success. Company management and users were very cooperative in helping to make this project a success. It helped to increase efficiency and productivity and thus saved Wind River cost because employees did not waste any time on searching for documents or recreating documents that already exist.

Lessons learned

1. User-centered design is paramount to the project success. When you design and build the system based on users’ requirements, they are going to use it. Users have the sense of ownership of the system which provides excellent starting point. They know that the system you are building will be what they need.

2. Top-down support is critical for the project success. Management support is a huge factor in employees' encouragement to use the system and in setting up and enforcing procedures for information governance.

3. Assurance of users from the very beginning that they will not be left alone with the system provided their cooperation.

4. User acceptance testing helped to encourage employees to start using the system. When they participate in this process, this gives them the feeling of ownership of the system.

5. Ongoing training after the system deployment with the new content structure and information architecture made user adoption smooth.

Information Architecture Components - Search Systems

In my previous posts on information architecture components, I mentioned that information architecture components can be divided into four categories: organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and search systems. I described organization systems, labeling systems, and navigation systems in my previous posts. In today's post, I am going to describe search systems.

Before creating a search system for your site, consider the following questions:

Does your site have enough content? - Consider the volume of content, balancing the time required to set up and maintain a search system with payoff it will bring to your site users. If your site includes many pages with information, then search probably makes sense.

Will investing in search systems divert resources from navigation systems? - If your navigation systems do not work properly and you are trying to solve this problem, do not implement your search system until you fixed your navigation system's problems.

Do you have the time and know-how to optimize your site's search system? - If you don't plan on putting some significant time into configuring your search engine properly, reconsider your decision to implement it.

Are there better alternatives? - If you don't have a technical expertise or money to configure the search engine, consider creating a site index instead.

Will your site's users bother with search? - for example, users of greeting cards site may prefer to browse thumbnails of cards instead of searching.

Choosing What to Search

Indexing everything does not serve users well. The creation of search zones, pockets of homogeneous content, allows users to focus their searches. For example, users of e-commerce site would be interested to search products. You could later create another search option covering the whole site.

Search zones are subsets of a web site that have been indexed separately from the rest of the site's content. You can create search zones in as many ways as you can logically group them. The decisions you made in selecting your site's organization schemes often helps you to determine search zones as well. Search zones could be: content type, audience, role, subject/topic, geography, chronology, author, department/business unit. Like browsing systems, search zones allow a large body of content to be divided in new ways, providing users with multiple views of the site and its content.

Web sites contain at least two major types of pages: navigation pages and destination pages. Destination pages contain actual information you want from a web site. Navigation pages include main pages, search pages, and pages that help to browse the site. Search should take users to destination pages. Navigation pages should not be included in the search results.

It is valuable to allow users to search specific components of your documents. This would allow users to retrieve more specific, precise results. This can also make search results more meaningful.

Presenting Results

A guideline to display search results is to display less information to users who know what they are looking for (for example, only author and title), and more information to users who are not sure what they looking for (for example, summary, abstract, keywords). You can also provide users with a choice of what to display. Consider your users information needs when making this decision. If in doubt, show more information.

Regardless of how many ways you indicate that there are more results than fit on one screen, many if not all users will not go past that first screen. So, don't provide too much content per result, as the first few results may obscure the rest of the retrieval. However, let users know the total number of retrieved documents so that they have a sense of how many documents remain as they browse through the search results. Also, provide a navigation system to move through these search results.

If there are too many results, provide an option of revising and narrowing search results. Locate "revise search" link next to the number of search results. Too many or to few search results are both good opportunities to allow users to revise their searches. Allow users to modify the search without re-entering it.

There are three methods for the listing search results: sorting, ranking, and clustering.

Retrieval results can be sorted chronologically by date or alphabetically by any content type - title, author, department. Sorting is helpful to those users who are looking to make a decision or to take an action (for example, list of products). Sort option should be the one that would help them to accomplish this task. Chronological sorting is useful if content is time sensitive, for example, press releases. It is very useful for presenting historical data.

Ranking is more useful when there is a need to understand information or learn something. It is typically used to describe retrieved documents' relevance, from most to least. Approach ranking carefully as users will assume that the top results are the best. Retrieval results can be ranked by relevance, by popularity, by users or experts rating, and by pay-for-placement.

Alternative approach to sorting and ranking is clustering retrieved results by some common aspect, for example, by category or by a ranked list. These clusters provide context for search results by providing the folder that seems to fit users' interest best. In addition, they are working with a significantly smaller retrieval set and a set of documents that come from the same topical domain. There are two types of clusters: automatically derived clusters and cluster based on categories created by human "experts".

Explain to users what they did and where results came from. Describe what content was searched, what filters were applied, any current settings, like sort order, etc.

Present users with the ability to save, print or email results. A type of "shopping cart" can be used to store selected search results.

Search Interface

It is best to keep your search interface as simple as possible: present users with a simple search box and search button. A good place to place the search box is next to site-wide navigation system at the top of the page. Be consistent in placing the search box. Determining what your users' assumption are should drive the default settings that you set up when designing the simple search interface.

You may also have advanced search interface. It should allow the manipulation of search results. This interface is typically used by advanced searchers and frustrated searchers.

Search is iterative process. Allow users to move back and forth between browsing and searching.

Adopt a "no dead ends" policy. It means that users always have another option even if they retrieve zero results. The option can consist of means of revising the search, search tips or other advice on ow to improve the search, means for browsing, a human contact of searching and browsing does not work.

Information Architecture Components - Navigation Systems

In my previous posts on information architecture components, I mentioned that information architecture components can be divided into four categories: organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and search systems. I described organization systems and labeling systems in my previous posts. In today's post, I am going to describe navigation systems.

Getting lost is associated with confusion and frustration. While getting lost on a web site is not a life or death situation, it is confusing and frustrating for users when they can't find what they are looking for. Navigation systems support browsing. When users are not sure what they are looking for, they are not going to use search, they are going to browse.

Navigation systems can be divided into two main sub-systems: embedded navigation systems and supplemental navigation systems.

Embedded Navigation Systems

Embedded navigation systems include global navigation systems, local navigation systems, and contextual navigation systems. Global navigation systems and local navigation systems are also called structural navigation.

Global (site-wide) Navigation Systems

Global navigation system is present on every page throughout a site. It is usually a navigation bar at the top of each page. Most global navigation bars provide a link to the home page. Many provide a link to the search function. These site-wide navigation systems allow direct access to key areas and functions of the site, no matter where the user travels in the site. This system has a huge impact on usability of the site. They should be the subject to iterative user-side testing.

Local Navigation Systems

Local navigation systems allow users to explore the immediate area. These navigation systems provide access to the content on a specific page of the site. They are aligned with the local content. They are usually placed on the left hand-side of a page.

Contextual Navigation Systems

Contextual navigation systems provide links specific to a particular page, document, or object. They can be represented as "see also" links which connect users to related products, services, articles, topics, etc. These systems are also called associative navigation. They answer questions such as "how do I?", "what is next?", "what else have you got?" Moderation is the primary rule for creating these links. Used in access, they can add clutter and confusion.

Implementing Embedded Navigation

The main challenge is to balance the flexibility of movement with the danger of overwhelming the user with too many options. Key to success is to recognize that global, local, and contextual navigation exists together on most pages. So, they they are integrated effectively, they complement each other. When they are present together on one page they should not overwhelm the user and drown out the content.

Supplemental Navigation Systems

Supplemental navigation systems include site maps, indexes, and guides. They are external to the basic hierarchy of a web site and provide complementary ways of finding content. Search also belongs to this category but it is so important subject that I will cover it in a separate post. These systems are also called utility navigation as they connect pages and features that help users to use the site itself. They can also include sign-in pages, profile pages, credit card information, etc.

Site Maps

Site Maps provide a broad view of the content in the web site and facilitates random access to segmented portions of that content. They can use text-based links to provide the user with direct access to pages of the site.

A site map is most suitable for web sites that have very good hierarchical organization. If the architecture is not strongly hierarchical, and index or alternative visual representation might be better. For a small site with only few pages, a site-map is not necessary.

Rules for creating site maps:

• reinforce the information hierarchy so the user becomes increasingly familiar with how the content is organized;
• facilitate fast, direct access to the content of the site for those users who know what they want;
• avoid overwhelming the user with too much information.

Site Indexes

Site index presents keywords or phrases alphabetically without representing the hierarchy. They work well for users who already know the name of the item they are looking for.

Large, complex web sites often require both a site map and a site index. The site map reinforces the hierarchy and encourages the exploration, while the site index bypasses the hierarchy and facilitates known item finding. For small sites, a side index alone may be sufficient.

A major challenge in indexing a web site is the level of granularity. Do you index each page or set of pages? The answer depends on what users are looking for. You need to know your audience and understand their needs. You can analyze search logs to see what users are searching for.

Guides

Guides include guided tours, tutorials, micro-portals focused around a specific audience, topic, or task. Guides supplement the existing means of navigating and understanding site content. They often serve as tool for introducing new users to the content and functionality of the site. They can also serve as marketing tools for restricted access sites.

Guides usually feature linear navigation but hypertextual navigation should also be available to provide additional flexibility.

Rules for creating guides:

• the guide should be short; 
• at any point, the user should be able to exit the guide.;
• navigation should be located in the same spot on every page so that users can easily step back and forth through the guide;
• the guide should be designed to answer questions;
• screenshots should be crisp, clear, and optimized, with enlarged details of key features;
• if the guide includes more than a few pages, it may need its own table of contents.

Advanced Navigation

Personalization involves serving up tailored pages to the user based upon a model of the behavior, needs, or preferences of that user. It is used as an example in human resources systems involving giving a user options to view his/her options in compensation or benefits.

Customization involves giving the user direct control over some combination of presentation, navigation, and content options. Yahoo is a good example of customization. It allows user to customize their pages.

Personalization and customization can be used to refine existing navigation systems.

Main Considerations for Designing Navigation Systems

When designing a navigation system, it is important to consider the environment the site will exist in. You always need to consider the context.

The navigation system should present the structure of the hierarchy in a clear, consistent manner, and indicate the user current location which usually is fulfilled through the use of a breadcrumb. Make sure it is correct.

User should be able to easily move between pages. However, balance the advantages of flexibility with the danger of clutter.

Navigation systems should be designed with care to complement and reinforce the hierarchy by providing added context and flexibility.

And finally, here is the "stress test" of your navigation system:

1. Ignore the home page and jump directly into the middle of the site.

2. For each random page, can you figure out where you are in relation to the rest of the site? What major section are you in? What is the parent page?

3. Can you tell where the page will lead you next? Are the links descriptive enough to give you a clue what each is about? Are the links different enough to help you choose one over another, depending on what you want to do?

Information Architecture Components – Labeling Systems

In my last post about information architecture, I mentioned that information architecture includes four components - organization systems, labeling systems, navigation systems, and searching systems and I described organization systems.

In this post, I am going to describe labeling systems.

Labeling is a form of representation. Labels represent a relationship between users and content. So, the goal of a label is to communicate information efficiently that is without taking too much of a web page space or of a user's time. Labels show the user your organization and navigation systems. Unprofessional labels of a web site can destroy a user's confidence in that organization.

There are two types of labels: textual and iconic labels.

Textual Labels

Textual are the most common labels. Types of textual labels include: contextual links, headings, navigation system choices, and index terms.

Contextual links are the text withing the body of a document or chunk of information. They are usually used to create a connection between different pages of a site. These links rely on context. To ensure that contextual links labels are representational, ask yourself a question: "what kind of information will the user expect to be taken to?"

Labels as headings are used to establish a hierarchy within the text. The hierarchical relationships between headings are usually established visually through consistent use of numbering, font sizes, colors and styles, whitespace, and indentation or combination of these parts. It is a good idea to present these headings as a hierarchy. It is important to maintain consistency. Heading labels should be obvious and should convey the sequence. These labels need to tell the user where to start, where to go next, and what action will be involved in each step along the way.

Navigation system labels require more consistency that any other type of label. Users rely on a navigation system to be "rational" through consistent page location and look. So, these labels should be no different. Effectively designed labels are integral to building a sense of familiarity, so they should not change from page to page. Here are some examples of this type labels: Home, Search, Site Map, Contact Us, About Us, News and Events, Announcements. Do not use the same label for a different purpose.

Labels as index terms are often referred to as keywords, descriptive metadata, taxonomies, controlled vocabularies. These labels are used to describe any type of content: sites, pages, content components, etc. Index terms support precise searching. Index terms can also make browsing easier: the metadata from a collection of documents can serve as the source of browsable lists or menus. A very good example of these labels is an index of a site with links to each page.

Iconic Labels

These labels most often used as navigation system labels. They can sometimes serve as headings. The problem with iconic labels is that they present a much more limited language than text. That is why they used for navigation system or small organization system labels where the list of options is small. But they are still risky to use because a user can get confused.

General Guidelines For Creating Labels

Context, content, and users are three key principles that affect all aspects of information architecture including labels. Narrow the scope of your labels whenever possible. Use narrow business context. Keep labels simple and focused.

A good rule is to design labels that speak the same language as a site's users while reflecting its content. If there is a confusion over label, there should be an explanation. On the main page, labels should stand out to users. Labels should clearly represent the content.

Consistency is extremely important. Why? Because consistency means predictability and predictable systems are easier to use. Consistency is affected by few issues: style, presentation, syntax, granularity, comprehensiveness, audience.

Points to consider:

• Consider writing all your labels in a list to get the visual representation of them. You might sort this list alphabetically - this way you may see some duplicates. Then review the list for consistency of usage, punctuation, letter case, etc.
• Establish naming conventions.
• Consider using a controlled vocabulary to maintain consistent terms.
• Analyze your content and create categories.
• Do user-side testing and please do not underestimate it.
• Perform card sort exercises.
• Use search log for analysis.
• Anticipate the growth of the site and plan ahead so that labels you might add in the future don't disagree with the current labels.
• Decisions about which terms to include in a labeling system need to be made in the context of how broad and how large is your site.
• Labeling systems may need to be adjusted as necessary.

Have fun labeling!

Information Architecture Components – Organization Systems

Information architecture components can be divided into four categories:

Organization systems – how do we categorize information, for example by subject or date.

Labeling systems – how do we represent information, for example scientific or folk terminology.

Navigation Systems – how do we browse or move through information, for example clicking through a hierarchy.

Searching systems – how do we search information, for example executing a search query against an index.

In my today’s post, I am going to describe organization systems component of information architecture. Organization systems are composed of organization schemes and organization structures.

An organization scheme defines the shared characteristics of content items and influences the logical grouping of those items. An organization structure defines the types of relationships between content items and groups. Organization systems form the foundation for navigation and labeling systems.

Organization Schemes

There are exact and ambiguous organization schemes.

Exact organization schemes divide information into well defined and mutually exclusive sections. For example, alphabetical order of a phone book. If you know the person’s last name, you can look in that letter of the alphabetical list. This is called known-item searching. You know what you are looking for and it is obvious how to find it. The problem with exact organization schemes is that they require a user to know the specific name of the object they are looking for. Exact organization schemes are easy to design, maintain, and use.

Types of exact organization schemes include alphabetical, chronological, and geographical.

Ambiguous organization schemes divide information into categories that defy exact definition. They are difficult to design and maintain, and they can be difficult to use. Is tomato a vegetable or a fruit? However, they are often more important and useful than exact organization schemes. Why? Because users don’t always know what they are looking for. Information seeking is often iterative and interactive. What you find in the beginning of the search may influence what you look for and find later in your search.

Ambiguous organization supports the method or grouping items in meaningful ways. Therefore, while ambiguous organization schemes require more work, they often are more valuable to the user than exact schemes. The success of these schemes depends of the quality of the scheme and the placement of items within this scheme. User testing is very important for this type of scheme. There is ongoing need for classifying new items and for modifying the organization scheme to reflect changes in the scheme.

Types of ambiguous schemes include are topic or subject, task, audience, metaphor, hybrids.

Topical schemes organize content into subjects.

Task scheme organize content by processes, functions, or tasks. Most common example of web sites using this scheme is e-commerce sites where a user interaction is centered on tasks, for example buy, sell, pay, etc.

Audience oriented schemes are useful for sites that are frequented by repeat visitors of a certain audience. For example, Dell web site separates its content into "Home" and "Business". Audience schemes can be open or closed. An open scheme would allow users of one audience to access content or another audience. A closed scheme would prevent users from using content of another audience.

Metaphor schemes use association with known subjects. They should be used with caution. They must be familiar to users.

Hybrids combine elements of multiple schemes.

Organization Structures

The structure of information defines the ways in which users can navigate. Major structures are hierarchy, the database-oriented model, and hypertext.

The foundation of almost all good information architecture is a well designed hierarchy or taxonomy. In creating a taxonomy, it is important to not make categories mutually exclusive. You need to balance between exclusivity and inclusivity. Sometimes an item may belong in more than one place. It is also important to balance between breadth and depth in the taxonomy. Breadth refers to the number of options at each level of the hierarchy. Depth refers to the number of levels in the hierarchy.

If a hierarchy is too narrow and deep, users have to click through a lot of levels to find what they are looking for. If a hierarchy is too broad and shallow, users are presented with too many options on the main menu and the lack of content once they get to the option level.

Consider the following: recognize the danger of overloading users with too many options; group and structure information on the page level; subject the design to user testing. For new web sites, lean towards a broad and shallow hierarchy. This allows the addition of content. Be conservative in adding more depth as you need to prevent uses to make too many clicks.

In a database-oriented model we structure the data using metadata. Metadata links the information architecture to the design of database schema. By tagging information with metadata, we enable searching and browsing.

A hypertext system involves two primary types of components to be linked. These components can from systems that connect text, data, image, video, and audio. This structure provides flexibility but also causes users confusion because hypertextual links are often personal by nature. This structure is good to use to compliment the hierarchical or database models.

It is very important to provide multiple ways to access the same information. Large web sites would require all three types of structure. The top level will be hierarchical, sub-sites are good candidates for database model, and less structured relationships between content can be handled by hypertext.

Information Architecture Methods

There are few methods that are used in information architecture. Some of common methods are: site maps, annotated page layouts, content matrices, page templates, personas, prototypes, storyboards, wireframes.

Site maps

Site maps are perhaps the most widely known and understood deliverable from the process of defining an information architecture. A site map is a high level diagram showing the hierarchy of a system. Site maps reflect the information structure, but are not necessarily indicative of the navigation structure.

Annotated page layouts

Page layouts define page level navigation, content types and functional elements. Annotations are used to provide guidance for the visual designers and developers who will use the page layouts to build the site. Page layouts are alternatively known as wireframes, blue prints or screen details.

Content matrix

A content matrix lists each page in the system and identifies the content that will appear on that page.

Page templates

Page templates may be required when defining large-scale websites and intranets. Page templates define the layout of common page elements, such as global navigation, content and local navigation. Page templates are commonly used when developing content management systems.

Persona

Persona is a fictional character with all the characteristics of the user. Personas are created after the field research process, which typically consists of members of the primary stakeholder (user) group being observed on their behavior, and additionally answering questionnaires or participating in interviews, or a mixture of both.

Prototypes

Prototypes are models of the system. Prototypes can be as simple as paper-based sketches, or as complex as fully interactive systems. Research shows that paper-based prototypes are just as effective for identifying issues as fully interactive systems. Prototypes are often developed to bring the information architecture to life. Thus enabling users and other members of the project team to comment on the architecture before the system is built.

Storyboards

Storyboards are another technique for bringing the information architecture to life without building it. Storyboards are sketches showing how a user would interact with a system to complete a common task. Storyboards enable other members of the project team to understand the proposed information architecture before the system is built.

Wireframes

Wireframes are rough illustrations of page content and structure, which may also indicate how users will interact with the website. These diagrams get handed off to a visual designer, who will establish page layout and visual design.

Wireframes are useful for communicating early design ideas and inform the designer and the client of exactly what information, links, content, promotional space, and navigation will be on every page of the site. Wireframes may illustrate design priorities in cases where various types of information appear to be competing.

Information Architecture and Usability

The distinction between information architecture and usability may seem like semantics, but there are significant differences between the two disciplines.

Though they are often discussed interchangeably, and practitioners are often well-versed in both, information architecture and usability differ in their scope and areas of focus.

The difference between information architecture and usability is important to understand because information architecture is more than just understanding what users want and need. A usability-only approach to information architecture is only one piece of the puzzle.

Information architecture problems often account for a large percentage of usability problems, but there are many other things unrelated to information architecture that have an impact on usability.

Usability encompasses two related concepts:

• Usability is an attribute of the quality of a system: "we need to create a usable intranet". 
• Usability is a process or set of techniques used during a design and development project: "we need to include usability activities in this project". 

In both cases usability is a broader concept, whereas information architecture is far more specific.

Usability is a detailed subject, taking into account things like font size, colors, visual proximity, usage context, search, error messages, navigation, form design, and labeling. Of these, only a few are true information architecture issues. Navigation, labeling, site architecture and search results all have an impact on the usability of a site, but they are not the only things that affect usability.

An effective information architecture is one of a number of attributes of a usable system. Other factors involving the usability of a system include:

• visual design 
• interaction design 
• functionality 
• content writing 

The process for creating an effective information architecture is a sub-set of the usability activities involved in a project. Although weighted to the beginning of the project, usability activities should continue throughout a project and evaluate issues beyond simply the information architecture.

In terms of great usability information architecture, it is the information architecture that makes it easy for users to find desired information or functionality. On a website, the information architecture can also add important context to the current page (for example when a user begins their visit deep within the website, having come directly from a search engine).

A "bricks and mortar" architect must balance the demands of aesthetics, structural integrity, heating, lighting, water supply and drainage when creating building blueprints. Similarly, an information architect must create navigation schemes for web sites, content management systems, etc. that are at once concise, descriptive, mutually-exclusive, and intuitive. Both types of architects seek to create spaces for humans that are safe, predictable, enjoyable, and inspiring.

Usable navigation systems should: 

• Be easy to learn. 
• Be consistent throughout the web site, CMS, etc. 
• Provide feedback, such as the use of breadcrumbs to indicate how to navigate back to where the user started. 
• Use the minimum number of clicks to arrive at the next destination. 
• Use clear and intuitive labels, based on the user’s perspective and terminology. 
• Support user tasks. 
• Have each link distinct from other links. 
• Group navigation into logical units. 
• Avoid making the user scroll to get to important navigation or submit buttons. 
• Not disable the browser’s back button. 

Steps to develop an intuitive information architecture: 

1. Find out what the mission or purpose of the website is: why will people come to your site?

2. Determine the immediate and long-range goals of the site: are they different?

3. Pinpoint the intended audiences and conduct a requirements analysis for each group.

4. Collect site content and develop a content inventory.

5. Determine the website’s organizational structure, which can include:

• hierarchical
• narrow and deep 
• broad and shallow 
• sequential  
• tag-based 

6. Create an outline of the site, which can include:

• Content Inventory: a hierarchical view of the site content, typically in a spreadsheet format, which briefly describes the content that should appear on each page and indicates where pages belong in terms of global and local navigation. 
• Site Maps: visual diagrams that reflect site navigation and main content areas. They are usually constructed to look like flowcharts and show how users will navigate from one section to another. Other formats may also indicate the relationships between pages on the site. 

7. Create a visual blueprint of the site, which can include:

• Wireframes: rough illustrations of page content and structure, which may also indicate how users will interact with the website. These diagrams get handed off to a visual designer, who will establish page layout and visual design. Wireframes are useful for communicating early design ideas and inform the designer and the client of exactly what information, links, content, promotional space, and navigation will be on every page of the site. Wireframes may illustrate design priorities in cases where various types of information appear to be competing. 

8. Define the navigation systems:

• Global navigation: Global navigation is the primary means of navigation through a website. Global navigation links appear on every page of the site, typically as a menu located at the top or side of each web page. 
• Local navigation: Local links may appear as text links within the content of a page or as a submenu for a section of the website. Local navigation generally appears in the left-hand margin of a web page and sometimes is placed below the global navigation. 
• Utility links: Utility links appear in the header or footer of every page. These may include infrequently used links such as: Contact Us, About Us, Customer Support, Customer Feedback, Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, Site Map, Press Room, etc. Search boxes often appear in the header of the site as well, so the Search feature is available on every page of the site. 

9. Conduct user research. Once you have a draft navigation structure, conduct appropriate usability research to collect feedback from the target audience. Methods may include: card sorting, cognitive walkthroughs, contextual task analyses, and usability testing.