Berlin mai 2010

Why content strategy is essential to the user experienceBerlin, 28th May 2010

Long neck - long tail

10 million pages

3 million pages have never been

visited

1 % of the content represents 99 % of the page views

Don’t hide the important stuff in crap

Statistics from Mars 2010

What is a kindergarten?

Kindergarten is an educational activity designed for children under school age.Kindergartens are approved according to guidelines in the Act relating to kindergartens, Act of 1 January 2006

The web editor

• web secretary

• publish stuff when they are told to

• they publish a lot

Norwegian client

• Knew their content wasn’t good enough

• Needed an analysis/audit of their content

• Important to do something that was management-friendly to finance an increased activity in content

• Turned to Netlife Research: can you help us??

Content analysis

• The roots: the classical content inventory

• An opportunity to weed out bad content• Combines quantative and qualitative

methods• A method to prioritize which content to

improve• And at last: gives you a status of your

current website(s)

How we did it

• Two persons evaluating 4 big sites i 2 weeks

• First two days: working together side by side•Reading existing documentation on

webstrategy and guidelines for web content

•Establishing a common platform for the analysis

•Evaluating content together

Simple: just a spreadsheet

Quality

High

Medium

Low

Delete?

Site 1

High

Medium

Low

Delete?

Site 3

High

MediumLow

Delete?

Site 4

High

Medium

LowDelete?

Site 2

Reasons for low/medium quality

46%

18%1%

9%

26%

Text difficult to un-derstand

No unique selling points

Bad call to action

Lack of user goals

Bad prioritized

Explanation when medium/bad content quality• The text is not understandable

• No unique selling points

• Bad prioritized

• No obvious user goals

• Bad call to action

I don’t understand the product or sloppy explanation

I do understand the product but the selling points are no good

Several good points buried in the bottom of the text

Is this page really needed for the user?

”Click here” What??!!

Examplify the bad

Key findings in the analysis• The design template is a

straitjacket for the content• Difficult to find the ”right” product

– too many pages• Addon-services who get their own

page are filling up the website• Many of the products are difficult

to understand• Lack of prices creates uncertainty

Pitfalls

• The method for evaluating content is not in any way realistic

• It’s easy to get lost in the website• No common platform on what’s good

content• It scares the hell out of the webwriters

(at least when the analysis is done by someone outside!!)

• Don’t evaluate your own content

Don’t just evaluate the bad• Make a top 10 list of the best content on

the site• Examplify what’s good

So, did it help?

• They’ve got the money to improve their content

• They’ve got a mandate to heavily delete productpages – Yiha!!!

• Soon to develop more content-friendly templates

• The templates will be developed by designers and webwriters – together

• The webwriters need to be stalled in wait for better templates

• They are soon to arrange writing sessions – with the whole webteam

Our new approach

• Approx 10 positive statements about quality

• Approx 10 positive statements about relevance

• Answer: • Yes

• No

• Partly

Statements about quality

• Text is organized for web reading

• Text is understandable for the target group

• Page has relevant and clear calls to actions

• Page is visible in search engines SERPs

• … and so on

Statements about relevance• Text support 1 of the 3 most important

user goals

• Text support 1 of the 3 most important strategic goals

• … and so on

Thnx

Eirik Hafver Rø[email protected]

00 47 92 40 31 65

www.netliferesearch.no www.iallenkelhet.no

www.twitter.com/eirikhafver

Ove [email protected]

00 47 918 59 180

www.netliferesearch.no www.iallenkelhet.no

www.twitter.com/ovedalen

Appendix: important sources • Killer web content – Gerry McGovern• The Long Tail – Chris Andreson• The Elements of User Experience - Jesse James Garrett• Content strategy for the web – Kristina Halvorson• Information is a task – Gerry McGovern• Don’t trust your gut instinct – Gerry McGovern• The real difference between Google and Yahoo – Gerry

McGovern • Building Respect for Usability Expertise – Jakob Nielsen• The Discipline of Content Strategy – Kristina Halvorson• I’m not an idiot, but I play one online – Jeff Sexton• You’re so not welcome - Erin Anderson• Where’s the beef? – Kristina Halvorson

Examples - quality

• Good title - NO• Clear CTA – YES/Partly• Sufficient content - NOOOOO• Text design – YES• Understandable – NO• Human voice - Partly

Relevance

• Does it inspire users to contribute – partly

• Easy to get a clear overview over the WS – NO

• Easy to plan your day – NO• Does it inspire people to join the

conference – partly• Easy to contribute - partly