Untitled Document
Table of contents | Next | Previous
Key considerations and decision processes: Matching consumer needs to your
Web site
Content accessibility on an intranet can directly impact an organization's
overall productivity. Organizations recognize the importance of information
architecture as both the primary prerequisite for designing and developing a
new content management system and as the means to organize information in a way
that is readily accessible to customers or employees.
One example is a call center that responds to customers by using an intranet
portal to maintain contracts and to give information. For this call center, the
range of time that is required for an agent to find the corresponding
information and to fulfill the required steps ranges from under two minutes to
four and a half minutes. Thus, if 80 attempts per day are made to find
information and each requires two minutes more than necessary, this call center
loses 160 minutes or 2.5 hours in productivity. Even without considering the
costs that result from lost productivity, the customer satisfaction will
decrease. When users cannot obtain the information that they need, the
organization has a dissatisfied customer or, worse, a lost customer. Then, the
effort to win back these customers is significant.
In addition to content accessibility, design flexibility becomes a key success
factor for the information architecture of a Web site. One task is to conduct
workshops with business stakeholders, including corporate communications and
process area representatives. Given that the Web site will evolve as more
business users provide input and, more importantly, contribute content, the
site architecture can be expected to evolve as well. It is critical that the
site framework be developed with flexibility for modification as a key goal.
In this section, we discuss topics that you should consider when planning the
information architecture.
Understanding the goals
When designing
an information architecture, you first need to understand the business and user
goals as well as the audience to whom the information is directed. Before you
can look at structures, individual applications, or design aspects, you must
define the business goals and the user goals.
Web content management projects should be driven by defined business
objectives, and the primary project goal needs to accomplish those
requirements. When the project starts, the business objective is often exposed
to discussion as more users provide input, because content providers have a
better understanding of the information that the Web site provides. However,
this understanding can mislead content providers into believing that they also
have a better understanding of the business needs. You need clear communication
from the business constituency to monitor the motivation of the core team and
the joint content provider. Unfortunately, Web content management projects
often are delayed because of misconceptions between the core team, the content
providers, and the users.
Before starting a Web site project, everyone involved must understand the
defined business goals and the user goals of the project. The challenge is to
involve content owners in the defining process and to remain focused on the
essentials. The user goals should be related to the users of your site
(internal or external) and the experience that you want them to achieve when
visiting the site.
These two sets of objectives, that is the business goals and user goals, must
be weighed against what is achievable in terms of budget, scope, and other
limitations. When the organization understands both goals, there is a much
higher chance that the content management project will be successful.
In our example of the River Bend Coffee and Tea Company, the business goals and
users goals are clearly defined after two studies were conducted and a
conceptual review was done with the core team. The sample findings of
these tasks are outlined in the following sections.
Understanding your audience
The
project effort will only show a return on investment (ROI) if the audience can
be reached with the business prospective. Any failure made at this point is
significant for the project.
First, you need to understand the demographics of the audience and why they are
interested in visiting the site. What is the business prospective and does this
equal the audience view of the business? Users do not have the same tolerance
with Web information that they have for printed or broadcasted information. If
you cannot meet your audience's needs, you rarely get a second chance to try it
again, especially when facing an external audience. In many cases, even
employees will revoke an information source that is ineffective.
As stated in the beginning of this section, the only reason to share
information about a Web site is to make it available for users. The Web site
experience is the one experience that is most appreciated by the audience. The
usability of a Web site is an essential subject. Usability is required to make
sure that the audience can complete the tasks. Usability can only be achieved
by meeting the needs and expectations of the target audience.
As a recommended best practice, it is important to involve users during the
process of designing the information architecture. By doing so, you help to
confirm the usability of the Web site and, in turn, to confirm an effective
underlying information architecture. Unfortunately, in many projects, only
content owners with a deep knowledge of the content are involved in the design
process. While the content owners know the content very well, it is important
to involve less experienced users to confirm that the navigation structure is
intuitive.
A good approach to understanding the target audience is to gather facts about
them. The more information that you can gather about characteristics that are
based on real facts, the closer you can get to finding gaps in the
understanding. At times, you might need to classify the audience into groups
with individual needs in order to better understand the needs. You might also
need to consider cultural, geographic, age, or technical differences. Some
audiences need individualism to have a positive Web site experience. What a
specific user might consider appropriate and inviting can be different from
other users. Often experiences from other Web sites can influence the users of
your Web site. A good Web content management product offers the flexibility to
set user expectations. By using traffic analysis, you can better understand the
interests and proceedings of users.
A Web site that is built based on the organization's good understanding of the
audience offers content in which the user is interested in a way that is
intuitive and convenient.
In the case of River Bend, the company conducted a workshop that captured the
needs of the user community through a survey of their user customer base.
Several key items came out of this survey:
- Information was all generic and not well organized.
- The existing site was hard to navigate.
- Specific information on the site was hard to search.
Another common mistake that occurs in projects such as these is that either the
questions or the answers are left to be too vague. Obviously, this leads
to assumptions being made that may or may not be correct. For example, in
the previous example, the results of "the existing site was too hard to
navigate" is ambiguous. It leads to other questions, such as: What
specifically was "hard" about the navigation? Consider for example the
following additional questions:
- Were the menus too long?
- Was there too much scrolling?
- Was the resolution too poor to read?
Upon doing a follow-up survey, the previous points were then further defined so
that they were useful:
- Organization
- When navigating the site, it is easy to loose where you are
- The grouping of content (teas versus coffees) was not clear
- "I didn't feel that the site was specific to my needs"
- Other sites offer recommendations and receipt ideas
- Navigation
- The menus were sometimes 4 or 5 levels deep, too hard to keep track of
- The content was so big that there was a lot of scrolling needed
- Search
- There was no intuitive way to search for specific coffees
Consider objectives and key success factors
For your Web content management
product to be a success, consider and define the key success factors that will
determine whether the Web site is meeting the objectives. Additionally, you
also must understand how you can measure the key success factors. Keep in mind
that higher Web site traffic is not necessarily an indication of a good Web
site. For example, repeat visits can only be counted as a success
indicator if the visits lead to a positive user experience or, in the case of a
commercial Web site, to increase business.
Numerous mechanisms are available to measure the success of a Web site. Such
mechanisms include a simple feedback form, an analysis of complex statistics,
and custom-made measuring criteria.
Objectives and key success indicators might include the following examples:
- Avoid underestimating the role of the information architecture.
- Make a distinction between the business goals and the user goals.
- Understand the business goals and the user goals.
- Organize information in categories and levels.
- Ensure that the information architecture provides the following features:
- Intuitive navigation
- Consistent structure
- User friendly navigation, for both the first-time visitor and the
frequent user, in a structure that serves the wide scope of various content
- Provide flexibility in the design as the information architecture
evolves.
The site framework should also be flexible and easy to modify:
- Ensure clear communication to those involved with the project. Involve
content owners in the defining process but remain focused on the essentials.
- Avoid using input from content owners who have an everyday comprehension
of the content.
- Avoid having a single person or department overlook all the content.
- Set one person as the decision maker.
- Ensure that the content is accessible.
- Ensure good knowledge of the audience's Web site experience.
- Make a distinction between different types of users.
- Set a realistic time frame.
In our example of the River Bend Coffee and Tea Company, a workshop was
conducted with the key business stakeholders. They defined business objectives
based on the feedback from their customer user community and the current state
of the business. The following key items, among others, resulted from that
workshop:
- Increase customer satisfaction with the site.
- Based on individual user profile, provide at l3 new recommendations of
other items that they might be interested in purchasing with each site visit.
- Present existing sales and promotional campaigns on the Web site in order
to drive more revenue.
Finding a highly effective application
One way
to ensure use of the Web site is to identify at least one highly effective
application or feature that everyone is likely to use frequently and make it
available only on the Web site. Most often an application or a particular type
of information can be identified easily. Then, you can make this application
easily accessible within the information architecture.
In our example of the River Bend Tea and Coffee Company, after the survey of
the customer end user community was completed and the output from the line of
business stakeholders was reviewed, the core project team conducted a review
session to come to agreement on the overall project plan. First they decided on
the highly effective application. In the case of our example, there were two.
The first application was defined as being the recommendation component.
It constantly makes new recommendations of teas and coffees that the user has
not yet tried but might have a high probability of liking based on their buying
and viewing trends. The second application was defined as the campaign
portion of the site where targeted promotions were presented based on user
profile information.
After you determine the business goals and define the audience for your Web
site, start thinking about how visitors will use your site and how the design
can ensure high usability. User Centered Design (UCD) ensures that the
objectives of users are taken into account when designing the site. A
characteristic of a UCD approach places the user at the center of all design
decisions when building a Web site. UCD also includes design in the manner of
structure and information architecture.
One common complaint from users is that they cannot find what they need on
the intranet. This does not mean necessarily that the site is designed poorly,
but that the spectrum of users is comprised of linear and non-linear thinkers.
A linear approach, a non-linear approach, and a combination of these two
approaches are equally valid.
To accommodate the broadest community of users, IBM recommends that you
develop three discrete design directions, focusing on page layout and
navigation. Then present the design directions to a focus group that is
comprised of a cross-section of users. The users will provide feedback
regarding specific direction about how you should design the site and the
content that you should highlight. A facilitator, which can be a qualified
person within the content owner, should be engaged to conduct the session, and
the session should be scripted with specific questions to ask the group.
A Web site with a high score in terms of usability includes the following
characteristics:
- Information is easy to find.
- The site is simple to use.
- Pages open quickly.
- Creating and maintaining content is a painless process.
- The site is adaptable to changes.
- The site must be secure (where applicable), stable, and scalable for both
the content and the user population.
As discussed in the section above, " Understanding your audience ", you might
need to classify the audience into groups with individual needs. You can divide
these groups of users at least into two subgroups:
- First-time users
- Professional users
In addition, include a second involved target group when it comes to UCD.
Consider the following experts who will work with the Web content management
system:
- Content authors (including content creators, approvers, and so forth)
- Site developers and site administrators
The success of a Web content management project also depends on the usability
for the every day editor's work. Their environment should be intuitive and
consistently structured as well.
Defining use-case scenarios
We have discussed
the process of defining the audience's expectations at a Web site. The next
step is to define how users achieve the information. A first approach is to
define a number of key use-case scenarios that represent the way that you
expect users to interact with the Web site. Define these use-case scenarios
from a user prospective in order to deliver an authentic scenario. They must
include information about the involved context. The chosen use cases should
include exceptional use cases to avoid the user reaching a standstill. The
amount of detail that each user needs depends on the specific objectives of the
Web site and the additional requirements that you identify during the project.
The goal is to identify and build a picture of common tasks that users are
willing to complete and how you anticipate the user completing these tasks.
This iterative process starts with research about the audience, continues into
the high-level design of the site, and is followed by a more detailed level of
design that includes the structure.
In our example of the River Bend Tea and Coffee Company, there were five
use-case scenarios:
- Persona: Content Author
- Description: An internal River Bend non-technical employee who needs to
quickly and securely search relevant content libraries to his specific group
role and create and submit for approval content based on a predefined UI
template.
- Persona: Content Approver
- Description: An internal River Bend non-technical employee who needs
to quickly and securely get immediate notifications when new content is waiting
for approval and be able to view, modify, delete, or approve content for
immediate publishing to the Web site.
- Persona: Customer User: Guest
- Description: An anonymous Internet user who initially spends no more
than 15 seconds on the site but who needs to an immediate understanding of the
company vision and what makes River Bend unique to its customers.
- Persona: Customer User: Coffee: Big Bean Level
- Description: A self-registered River Bend Internet customer who is a
frequent visitor and buyer of River Bend coffees and teas. This user
expects to be made aware of new and ongoing promotions, expects to get
recommendations of other products, services, and recipes, expects to quickly
search for whatever the user needs to find on the site, and expects to navigate
to a destination in the site within two to three clicks.
- This user has a level of Big Bean, which implies that this user gets
an automatic 15% discount based on buying patterns.
- Persona: Customer User: Tea: Tea Leaf Level
- Description: A self-registered River Bend Internet customer who is a
frequent visitor and buyer of River Bend coffees and teas. This user
expects to be made aware of new and ongoing promotions, expects to get
recommendations of other products, services and recipes, expects to quickly
search for whatever the user needs to find on the site, and expects to navigate
to a destination in the site within two to three clicks.
- This users has a level of Tea Leaf, which implies that this user gets
an automatic 5% discount based on buying pattern
Planning the site framework and site areas
As described earlier in this wiki, the site framework is the site map of a
Web site. The site navigator (that is, a navigator component) can be generated
from the site framework. The site framework is accessed through the Web site
navigation. As an example of how to plan the site framework and site areas, we
use the sample case of the virtual River Bend Coffee and Tea Company Web site.
The information architecture analysis consists of two parts:
- A top-down approach investigates the content to be displayed on the site,
plus the needs of the audience that is accessing the site. This approach helps
to formulate the scope of the site and supports our understanding of how the
overall site will be structured.
- A bottom-up assessment is performed, which starts from the most basic
level of the Web site, the content page. This process determines which
metadata, including categories and keywords, to use to profile documents.
The goal of this analysis is to determine the structure of the site and,
consequently, the navigation of the site. During this process, the following
core facets of the information architecture are developed:
- Site framework
- Category hierarchy
- Document type hierarchy
Site framework
There are two ways to organize the content on a Web site, hierarchical and
cross linking:
- Hierarchical organization
Hierarchical organization of content is represented in the following figure.
Each piece of content has a physical location at a level in the site. Because
content is usually accessed from a single entry point (for example, the home
page), hierarchical organization of content is particularly well suited to Web
sites.
Hierarchically structured content works best if you have well organized
content that can be easily sorted into different levels on your site. Most
visitors to a Web site understand the concept of hierarchies, such as chapters
in a book. Therefore, this is a common navigational aid. It provides at a
glance an idea of the site's structure. This type of content organization is
best suited to a less technical audience.
Hierarchical organization of content
Cross-linking content is illustrated in the following figure. With cross
linking, any page can be linked to any other page on the site, regardless of
its location within a hierarchy. This type of content organization works well
in Web sites that enclose many hierarchal levels and allows content that is
located on a deeper level within the Web site to be presented at a higher level.
Cross-linked content is well suited to a more experienced user and is
intuitive to use only if the linking follows a content context that the
audience easily understands. Frequently, only the Back button of the browser
allows the user to revisit pages.
Cross-linking content
In traditional Web sites, the site framework is an artificial concept based
on links between pages. In Lotus Web Content Management, the site framework is
defined first, and the links between the pages are generated dynamically. The
different sections of a Web site are defined in site areas, and content is
grouped under different site areas. Navigators are based on the site framework.
By clicking a navigator, a user can access all content in a specific section.
Menus display lists of content that can be located in any section. Menus
usually show content that has been assigned the same category, although much
search criteria exists that menus can use, including site framework and
document type.
Category taxonomy
The next stage is to create a hierarchical classification system that is
used when displaying content. Category taxonomy is simply the classification of
content into categories. When you create this taxonomy, you can use it to apply
a set of standard categories to content. The category taxonomy defines the
category attributes that can be assigned to content that is located anywhere in
the site. By referencing different pages of content that have been assigned the
same category, content from different locations can be grouped on one page.
A category refers to the subject matter of content or what your content is
about, for example news or even the product type black tea .
When creating a taxonomy of categories, the main goal is to make it easy for
the Web site users and search engines to find specific content. An added
benefit is that an organization can begin to apply standard practices around
the classification of content inside the organization.
The number of levels to create
If you find that you have so many documents covering various topics that
when searching for a document based on a category, an exhaustive list is
returned, it is time to think about creating new categories. You might want to
assign a category to do the following tasks:
- Make it easier and more effective to find the information for which you
are looking.
- Enable more effective searching on content (either within the site or by
search engines).
Two main standards groups are doing work in the area of categorization:
- The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative includes specifications of the terms
to be used when creating metadata. You can find information at:
http://dublincore.org
- The World Wide Web Consortium's Resource Description Framework (RDF)
provides recommendations about the way to represent resources on the Web. You
can find information at: http://www.w3.org
The initiatives of these two organizations provide companies with the ability
to standardize the metadata tags that they used on their site. These
initiatives provide standards for terminology to be used in category taxonomy.
However, they provide little assistance in the creation of the taxonomy itself.
Creating a category taxonomy
Categories are grouped within taxonomies. Categories are also grouped into
parents and children within a taxonomy. When building a hierarchy of taxonomies
and categories, it is important to consider how a menu will use your categories
in a search, because menus search both upwards and downwards within groups of
categories, as follows:
- If you base a menu on a top-level category, all content profiled with
categories belonging to that top-level category and their children appears in
the menu.
- If you base a menu on a parent-level category, all content profiled with
the parent-level category, its children, or its parents appear in the menu. If
you base a menu on a child-level category, all content profiled with the child
category or its parents is returned by the menu.
We recommend that, in most cases, you use only child-level categories to
profile content to allow more control over what displays in menus.
Taxonomies cannot be used in Web content management menu searches. If you
want a menu to return results based on content that is profiled with any
category in taxonomy, create a single, top-level category and base the menu on
the top-level category.
For our fictitious Web site for the River Bend Coffee and Tea Company, we
organized the content by the five sections Products, Company, Locations, News
and Contact, as shown in the following figure. Our reference implementation
site structure reflects this organization.
The River Bend Coffee and Tea Company navigation
The secondary site areas allow the user to specify an item to search on in
this area. The secondary area for Products includes coffee or tea . The
separation is obvious, and users can comprehend intuitively and exactly what
they can expect to find here.
Based on our example at the River Bend Tea and Coffee Company, the core team
next came up with following wireframe design based on the previous hierarchical
design.
Wireframe for authenticated customers
Example of the Main Page, or Anonymous users
Document type hierarchy
With Lotus Web Content Management, content is created by using authoring
templates. These templates are forms that contain content and can be grouped
into different document types. When it comes to defining the required document
types, it is common to hear content owners requesting a document type for every
propose. For example, the sales team wants a document type for products, human
resources wants document types for career information, and marketing sees a
need for a document type for news and company information. From a technical
perspective, these requirements fit in fewer authoring templates because they
are quite similar essentially.
Instead of creating a new template for every document type on the Web site,
templates can differ by page design, such as page layout, page style, and
components. Then, you can apply these templates to the many content document
types that you create so that the content propose is separated from its layout,
making content and presentation flexible. Proper construction of the shell site
ensures maximum reuse, flexibility, and performance.
Formulating ideas about other components to be used in the Web site, such as
graphics, menus, navigators, and so on, is also helpful. You can find details
on designing the Web site and implementing it in the "Building the sample site"
section.
Metadata, keywords, and categories
When content
is created, it is crucial that you define descriptive information for that
content so that it can be categorized and searched. Descriptive information is
called metadata , as defined by the W3C (http://www.w3.org/Metadata/) .
Metadata is machine understandable information for the Web. Metadata is
required as a part of the Web that contains information about information .
Metadata includes labeling, cataloging, and describing information that is
structured in such a way that allows Web pages to be properly searched and
processed in particular by computers . Metadata is most likely keywords about
the content of digital material in the form of labels that are only visible in
the HTML code that builds the Web page. The metadata should match with keywords
that a user associates with in the content.
In our example, we plan to generate metadata for Lotus Web Content
Management pages by specifying standard metadata fields. The search supports
the metadata fields that are described in the following table.
This information must be created automatically for each Web page. Refer to
the search methods detailed in the "Search" section of this wiki.
Determining the components of the Web site
To give an overview of components of the Web site, we look at the River Bend
Coffee and Tea Company that we use as the example site throughout this wiki.
The following figure shows an overview of the site, with key components
annotated. In the bottom portion of the document, each of the annotation
circles is defined.
The River Bend Coffee and Tea Company Web site is structured by using eight
components:
- The company logo is used as the head banner.
- The breadcrumb navigation is used to display the current page's context
within the site structure. The term breadcrumb refers to leaving a trail in
order to find your way back to where you started. This popular approach makes
it obvious to users which path they took. By using this approach, users can
move between these navigation levels and understand the information structure.
- The personalized greeting is displayed to the customer and, in this
example, also indicates their status level.
- The navigation menu is also mirrored in the breadcrumb trail so that the
user always knows where they are and can easily return to any place on the site
that they had visited with only one click.
- The content area displays the selected content.
- Based on the wireframe design, this is where the dynamically changing
campaign and recommendations are displayed. In our example for River Bend
Coffee and Tea Company, in the interest of conserving real estate on the page,
the core team has decided to write Java script that refreshes the area every
three seconds with a combination of campaign and recommendation centric
content.
- At River Bend Coffee and Tea, search can be executed from two areas. The
first is a basic text search of user-specific content from the banner area. The
second, more detailed search can be run from a content area that does an
advanced search of content text as well as metadata tags.
- Copyright notice is displayed.
The chosen navigation contains all levels of the River Bend Coffee and Tea
Company site. Thus, the audience is not required to jump to a second navigation
while researching the Web site. The navigator expands downward and can be used
to support further site areas.
Using workflow and syndication
One of the advantages of using a Lotus Web Content Management system is to
dispense the content creation process over different locations or within
different security levels. With multiple locations (servers) in a typical Lotus
Web Content Management environment, it is necessary to have a mechanism that
can synchronize content between the multiple locations. In addition, a typical
requirement has the content pass through a formal approval process before it
can be viewed on the Web site. Lotus Web Content Management provides two
complementary capabilities for these issues: workflow and syndication.
Creating a workflow
Workflows are required within Lotus Web Content Management to approve and
authorize content that is published in the Web site. You need to create at
least two stages, Draft and Published, inside a workflow. In the simplest case,
the content creator is also the person who publishes the content. This
configuration supports a rapid content creation process but is contrary to the
motive of workflow. However, this is the most often use of workflows inside Web
content management. Organizations find it favorable to accelerate the content
creation process by skipping the workflow.
| Important: The process
of content creation is always underestimated. The technology is simple, but the
planning is where the real work begins. |
There is a significant risk in underestimating the value of the workflow
process. The workflow approves the content quality and assures that content is
published in an organization policy manner. Without a workflow, the
consequences are that content can be published in a Web site that is identical
to printed statements. This is true for internal and external published
content.
A recommended workflow contains the stages Draft, Approval, Published, and
Archived. Every stage is logged inside a content history that makes
traceability easier. Lotus Web Content Management offers various options to
configure more dedicated workflows to serve further needs. An additional option
to define workflows that are not supported within Lotus Web Content Management
is to use its API and IBM Process Choreographer.
Using syndication
Syndication is the method used by an Lotus Web Content Management location
to exchange (replicate) data from one Lotus Web Content Management location to
another. Unlike workflow, syndication is not involved in the process of
approving content. Syndication is only responsible for replication of IBM Lotus
Web Content Management assets across multiple locations.
When creating a syndication process, Lotus Web Content Management allows you
two choices for the granularity of items to be syndicated:
When configured with this setting, all elements of the Lotus Web Content
Management location are replicated to the other location, including draft and
expired content. Typically, authoring and development locations need access to
all types of content for testing purposes. This setting is common when
syndicating between distributed authoring locations or between an authoring
location and a development location.
As opposed to the All Items setting, this option replicates only live
content. Live content is defined as content that has been approved via workflow
(live) but that is not yet past its expiration date. Typically, a production
location only receives live data, so this setting is common when syndicating
from authoring to staging or staging to production.
| Tip: Syndication always
syndicates copies of your technical assets (for example, presentation
templates, authoring templates, library components, and so forth). By default,
there is no setting to stop this syndication. You can configure Lotus Web
Content Management to workflow these items, |