Strategy: Content Strategy

If you’ve ever had your computer give you a readability score or a grade level for something you’ve written, you’ve run a readability formula. Readability formulas are easy to use and give you a number. This combination makes them seductive. But a number isn’t useful if it isn’t reliable, valid, or helpful.

In this article, we’ll explain how readability formulas work and give you seven reasons why you shouldn’t use them. We’ll also show you better ways to learn whether the people you want to reach can find, understand, and use your content. Read More

During an information architecture project, creating index pages for items within categories can result in a lot of unexpected work.

Organizing and classifying a Web sites’ content when you’re developing its information architecture (IA) is one of the key activities you must undertake to deliver a usable site. Designing an information architecture to ensure users can reliably reach the information they want—and in less time—is the main focus of an information architect’s work. To accomplish this goal, information architects employ user-centered design methods, keeping users at a project’s center.

Over the years, the design and development of user interfaces for products and services has evolved, resulting in design conventions and best practices that we follow when designing a user interface. However, following common practice can occasionally lead us astray. This article cautions you against following a common information-architecture practice that can have negative consequences in terms of costs: the creation of index pages that correspond to a single item in a category. Read More

There are several key elements that are missing from a large number of Web sites, and these missing elements often lead to bad user experiences and the total ineffectiveness of those sites.

Leahy’s Law states: if a thing is done wrong often enough, it becomes right. As a result, volume becomes a defense of error. During a recent review of hundreds of Web sites, I found Leahy’s Law to be descriptive of the content on most Web sites. That is terribly unfortunate for the Web site owners who are trying to attract the attention of their prospective and current customers and entice them to take a desired action—often no more than a phone call or an email message requesting more information. The same errors of omission exist on most sites—whether their purpose is sharing information or selling products or services.

In this article, I am going to explore the written Web site content whose purpose is to cause prospective customers to take action—or that results in their not taking action—from the perspective of its achieving a company’s sales and marketing goals. This discussion assumes the company has a service or product to sell. If you’re not interested in the motivational aspects of sales psychology and what their proper use can do to help a company’s sales efforts, then stop right here, because you will not like this article. Yes, I am one of those people—a professional salesman who has over 36 years of experience—who has turned his attention to assisting companies in properly communicating with their current and prospective customers through their Web sites and other media. I’ll describe a few of the main reasons Web sites often don’t fulfill their owners’ expectations for sales or marketing tools or provide support for their branding strategy, then offer some simple and creative solutions to these problems. Read More