Information Architecture 101 | Dailey Marketing Group

Ideally, if you were going to build a house from scratch you would first start by understanding who would be living in it and what their patterns of behavior are. How many people will be occupying the house? What are their ages? What tasks will they perform? What do they need? With that in mind, you can start “architecting” the blueprints for the house’s design. This helps to ensure the house is used properly and is enjoyed by all its participants.

How many of us start construction on our website before we have spent adequate time learning users’ needs first? Information architecture is nothing more than taking the time to understand and then design your site around your user base. It’s also the method of organizing content into meaningful groups to make it intuitive. Additionally, the user navigation and folder structure of your website are also a part of information design. This can be a complex topic with many facets, but I will touch on a couple points to get the gears turning.

Why Is Information Architecture So Important?

Well, a very organized site that’s very easy to navigate will be pleasing to your visitors and help them become customers. From an SEO (define) perspective, a site that’s well thought out from the beginning will likely adhere to SEO best practices. The benefits are usability and a higher ranking. Suffice it to say that taking the time up front to design correctly will serve you well in the long run. To learn more about usability tips, see this article.

A Good Foundation

Let’s start by looking at the foundation. Domain names help to communicate important information to users and to search engines. Picking a domain name that topically fits the theme of your website is foundational. It helps your users feel they have an understanding of what your site is about. It’s good to try and keep it short and to the point which will help make the domain memorable. The key here is starting with a topic in which to build that can contain all of the sections and categories that will come underneath it.

Categories and Keywords

So if domains help set up the foundation, then categories and sections help us set up and frame the site around the theme. For an SEO, this process starts with keyword research to the labeling and navigation process. As you begin laying out the hierarchy of your site, consider starting with your core keywords. Then take those keywords and divide them into groups. Those groups now represent the basic sections of your site. Each section should be optimized around the core keyword chosen.

Below, each of these sections are the category keywords sets you’re targeting, each with pages with more categories. These may have a few or several levels depending on how complex your concept is. By constructing your site this way, it helps to keep things organized and aids in the SEO process.

Pages and Directory Structure

As you start building out each page of your site, it’s good to keep a clean structure and good organized code. Not only does this help out the search spiders, but cleaner code translates to less errors and an easy to follow site for maintenance. One way to help with this is to keep your code compliant with known standards like WC3. From an SEO perspective, using your keywords effectively in file names can help create URL strings that make sense to search spiders as well as users. See this article on site structure for more information.

Accessibility is another consideration that many people miss. Search engines like sites that have correctly labeled images. Remember to label your images with good descriptive alternative text attributes. This is also a good usability practice to aid disabled people so they can properly interpret your site. Here are some tips for making your site universally accessible.

Linking

A well thought-out linking structure will help your users connect to logical flows of information. To aid in the SEO process, good basic linking will help with the flow of page rank. Also, be careful not to have too many links, as this deters your users and the logical flow loses clarity. To learn more about linking, read my two-part article on link building basics.

These are just basic concepts of information architecture. This can be a complex field with fun terms like taxonomy and interpretation sessions that we cannot go into here, but you should know that it exists and plan to incorporate it into your site from the beginning. To learn more about getting started with information architecture, start by checking out the Information Architecture Institute. Without information architecture, you’re likely to build a house for the wrong type of residents.

Voice of the customer. Engagement. Loyalty.

What do these buzzwords mean? How do we use them to drive value? Where are the best practices?

These often-used terms have connotative and denotative meanings that can be quite different depending on who uses them and how they are used. We continue to see uncertainly about loyalty, engagement, and voice of the customer. Questions about these buzzwords keep coming fast and furiously.

The confusion indicates that in this challenging economic environment, the focus on loyalty and engagement is becoming ever more important. Customers, clients, employers, brands and channel partners believe that voice of the customer, Web 3.0, the Groundswell, etc., can give them a well-needed competitive edge. Yet they don’t know how to execute these initiatives effectively. They’re looking for best practice examples of groups creating engagement, excitement, and commitment to help the answer the overriding question: How?

On one hand, brands and consumer package good companies tell us that they want to re-engage their customers and have more direct communication with them, and that social, mobile and emerging media is helping them to do this. On the other, they want to have better and more actionable data results. They want to see the true 360-degree view of the customer, yet realize that they’re not privy to data from other sources — such as channel partners, merchants, and distribution channels — that allow them to complete this circle.

Getting the true voice of the customer doesn’t just mean using social, emerging, and mobile media. It also means focusing on traditional media channels such as the contact center, direct-mail response, customer loyalty program, surveys, etc.

Merchants, banks, hotels, restaurants, travel, and entertainment companies pose to us a litany of the same questions. These entities want to work together and collaborate in a manner we have not witnessed in quite some time. Capturing a 360-degree view of the customer means knowing what Jack Jones is spending at Applebee’s, on Delta, at JC Penney, and at 53 Bank. They want this level of broad insight because they know it will enable them to make more effective communication decisions and tailor the form, factor, and fashion of these timely communications in order to increase its effectiveness.

But they continue to ask: How?

How do I get this information? How can I create loyalty? How can I create engagement? How can I make the insight I have more actionable? How do I drive the behavior that I need to drive? How do I change the mindset within my organization to be more accommodating and amenable to this new transition?

The answer to each of these is twofold:

(1) Listen.

Listen, not in a lip service fashion, but listen with the belief that there is wisdom in crowds. Listen with the purpose that small is the new big. One blogger, one online community not addressed can have serious impacts on a brand. Being truly committed to listening to and engaging customers requires a corporate mandate guided by a visionary leader who compels the organization to look at their actions and address these questions honestly:

• When companies say they are committed to voice of the customer, yet they are only focused on call center responses, is that a true voice of the customer?
• Or when companies say they are committed to voice of the customer, yet they are only focused on social, mobile and emerging media responses, is that a true voice of the customer?
• Or when companies say they are committed to voice of the customer, yet they only use third party opt-in data, is that a true voice of the customer?

(2) React.

Once you listen you need to react with the purpose to engage and empower the dialogue with your audience. There’s no doubt the pendulum has swung from the brand to the client. For every success story that becomes lore within this new “social community” and “engagement marketing” space, we hear five where the “visionary” that sold them on the new technology that would revolutionize their brand, their company, their product, their offering has failed.

That’s because it comes down to commitment and a realization that the world of marketing is going to be more dynamic now than it has ever been. Customers, clients, employees, brand participants want control. Yet control means engaging in an interactive dialogue with the brand and brand participants. It means making the input for the various channels concise, relevant, interest and actionable.

I was recently at a loyalty conference where one of the speakers purported that we should treat our “best customer” with the best rewards and engagement. I thought to myself, what is your best customer? How do you define that customer and what are the best rewards and engagement for them? There’s no place for this type of old school thinking in this new media market of engagement, loyalty and voice of the customer.

I challenge you to listen — to truly listen — to react, and then to engage.

In April 2010, an astonishing 15 billion online searches were done in the U.S. alone, with Google (and Google sites like YouTube) accounting for over 60 percent of them. Those searches were done by people just like you and me, who are simply trying to find answers to satisfy their needs.

Other than Facebook and e-mail, searching is one of our primary daily activities online. The search interfaces and results pages we’re constantly interacting with are shaping our every day experiences and website expectations. Being the demanding online creatures we are, we expect this experience to continue being richer and more relevant.

But if your site is like most of those out there, you’re failing significantly at meeting your visitor’s ever-demanding expectations from search engines. What I’m referring to is your internal site search and the quality of the experience it provides. Everything from how easy it is to search, to the relevancy of the results, all the way to the actual display of those results. Google has countless engineers constantly tweaking its algorithm and have long realized that providing 10 blue links on a search results page was just, well…lame!

Whereas it’s unrealistic to expect you to invest the resources Google does into optimizing your in-site search experience, it’s still no excuse to turn a blind eye to the emerging trends and changing behaviors of online searchers.

It was in May of 2007 that Google launched “Universal Search” results to provide a richer experience for its searchers. Have your search results caught up to this change three years later? Now it isn’t just Google that’s setting these expectations. There’s a reason why a website like Amazon.com accounts for over 25 percent of all e-commerce transactions in the U.S.

So, it’s safe to say that there are some lessons to be learned, and here are some of them:

5 Googly Lessons to Consider

1. What did you mean? Did you mean “running shoes” when you searched for “sneakers”? Did you spell it “fouton” instead of “futon”? 

 Too many sites do not accommodate misspelling, phonetics, or synonyms, though there’s no shortage in tools that can help. What can be more frustrating than going to a site that has what you want but won’t let you find it?

2. I’ve got nothing to show you. Signs that the world is coming to an end include false prophets, a major plague, and Google displaying “0 Results Found.” Your site shouldn’t either.

If your in-site search engine is unable to match the visitor’s query with a result, suggest intelligent alternatives (extra emphasis on the intelligent part), or at the very least, offer them a list of your most popular products, best rated, etc., or even a phone number to speak to someone to help them.

A zero results page is just the geeky way of telling your visitors “Go away, I don’t want your money.”

3. KISS: Keep it simple, stupid! Google offers a simple search input box and two buttons – that’s it! Nothing fancy, no advanced search.

The advanced part is all done behind the wizard’s curtain and should stay there. Most people are intimidated by advanced search options and contrary to our hopes, have little or no knowledge of search operator commands. Put them at ease with smart links and navigation that can help drill down to find exactly what they’re looking for.

4. Are you showing enough? Chances are, you’re probably not. Think of all the different options on the new Google search interface. If I search for a black cocktail dress, I can sort my results by anything from latest arrivals, to videos, to what’s nearby.

Google Images gives you an expanded view with details of an image, simply by mousing over it. Do your results give people a “quick look” or do they have to click and move on to other pages to see product details?

5. Keep up or get out. Last and definitely not least, keep an eye out for emerging trends. People’s search behaviors will continue to evolve as they become less patient and more savvy. Be prompt in adjusting and accommodating, or your competitors will.

 So, go back to your sites and check if you’re applying any of these five best practices. If you want to learn more, join me at SES San Francisco for the Beyond the Click: What Shoppers Need Now session, where I’ll be sharing some tips and tricks you can do on the algorithm and cosmetic side of your search results pages to take your customer experience and your conversion rates to the next level.

When nonprofit marketing and fundraising programs fail, organizations too frequently blame the tactics. “We tried an email newsletter, but no one read it.” “We sent out a direct mail fundraising letter, but it didn’t raise much money.”

Closer examination of those tactics often reveals that the audience was poorly defined and the message was too generic. If the hammer doesn’t hit the nail on the head, take a look at the skills of the carpenter, not the hammer.

Marketing and fundraising that tries to reach the general public, or everyone, actually reaches very few people (It’s sometimes called spray-and-pray marketing). The general public includes newborns and elders, rich and poor, jet-setters and the homeless.  You don’t want to reach all of those people, and you couldn’t even if you wanted to. So stop trying, and start focusing on the people who really do matter most to your success.

Here are three ways to start defining your target audience.

1.  By Basic Demographics. Are most of your target audience men or women? How old are they? Do they live or work in certain place? Are most a particular ethnic group? Is income or education level relevant? Also consider factors that define how they spend their time. Where are they, and what are they doing there, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. or on weekends? What is their family status? Do they rent or own? Does this group of people tend to have strong likes or dislikes?

Answering questions like these will help you narrow down the general public into more specific groups that you can more easily target with appropriate messaging.

2. By Their Behaviors. What is this group of people doing or not doing related to your cause? Think about your calls to action. Are they doing the right thing, but inconsistently or not in the “right” way?

Let’s say you want businesses to donate products to your fundraising auction. Your committee brainstormed a list of 50 local businesses to ask. To more effectively target this list by behavior, you could separate out the businesses that have donated auction items in previous years for those who have not. Or could separate out those who you know have donated auction items to other nonprofits, but not to yours, and customize your messaging accordingly.

3. By the Stages of Change. If you are trying to convince people to modify their behaviors in significant ways (e.g. to become a reliable annual donor), the Stages of Change may be a helpful way to break down your target audience into smaller groups. The Stages of Change, known more formally as the Transtheoretical Model in health psychology, is often used in social marketing.

The first stage is Pre-contemplation, where the person doesn’t yet acknowledge that a problem or issue exists.  Next is Contemplation, where he acknowledges the problem or is aware of the issue, but has plenty of reasons why he can’t address it. Preparation comes next, where he says, “Okay, I’ll give it a try.” This is the also known as the testing phase. Next is the Action phase, where he is ready to do it and makes that change. The final stage is Maintenance and relapse prevention, where he works to make the behavior a habit.

Here’s how you can apply to this model to defining your fundraising audience. Let’s say you are trying to maximize end-of-year giving. The fundraising letter that you send to someone who has donated to your organization every year at Christmas for the last ten years should be quite different from the letter you are sending to someone who is brand-new to your mailing list. They are at different stages. The first donor is in the “Maintenance” stage because giving to you is already a habit. The new person on your list is not yet a donor. He is probably still in the “Preparation” phase, so your messaging needs to take that into account.

Focusing on specific groups of people, and not the general public, is a sure-fire way to improve your fundraising.