Marriage Lessons: Content Strategy and Information Architecture

Sometimes, the marriage of content strategy and user experience can be a tricky thing. The relationship forces an individual primarily focused on making a site usable, functional and beautiful to play nice with a strategist, who is focused on what populates that lovely work of code. Often times the two practices seem to be at constant odds with one another, but when content strategy and user experience work with common purpose (to make the Web a more usable place), amazing things can happen.

The secret to a happy and healthy UX/Content Strategy marriage comes not only with shared purpose, but lies within the ability for one to be an advocate for the other’s work. I can say with no reservations that without the guidance of Erika, my partner of the last three years, that my work would have suffered. She makes me appear to be much smarter than I actually am and aside from being a constant advocate for content strategy, you couldn’t ask for a nicer person to have to spend your days with.

So you can imagine how unhappy I am to report that she left me (well, the agency) on Friday.

To say that Erika’s departure is painful is a gross understatement. You see, there’s a special bond (a link if you will) that digital geeks who seriously LOVE building sites share. I believe that we worked so well together because for as long as I’ve known her, Erika has approached Web sites with content in mind.

Erika and I have shared similar paths, as did anyone who began working with code and Web sites in the 90s. At that time, coders had to be cognizant of the content, because there were no other members of a web team. We were the “Webmasters,” “Web Editors” and “Site Masters.” We were the sole owners of the code, the copywriters and the editors of content and the presence we were called upon to create. We had no choice than to be intimately connected to the design and the material that populated it.

It wasn’t until the web started evolving beyond “brochure ware” that we were called to start thinking about content differently for web users. During that time, UX started down a different path and content strategy began to emerge, but for Erika, and many other UX pros, content strategy was already embedded into their DNA and they’re better for it.

Recently, the explosion of focus on content strategy has brought much attention to the space and folks who didn’t have this early experience in design (and even several who did) are starting to get territorial over deliverables and responsibilities. A lot of content strategists and UX pros have started writing about the relationship and exploring it in greater detail. For the most part, I believe the discussions have been positive.

Two strong examples of the positive looks that come to mind include: Kristina Halvorson’s article for UX Mag and my Campbell-Ewald colleague Chris Moritz’s talk on the Overlaps and Underpinnings of CS and UX.

These are great places to start and both remind us that there is room for both the user experience professional and the content strategist to do their work. We just have to remember that we all have a common goal … to make the Web a more useful and usable place.

Consequently, Campbell-Ewald is looking for a top-notch information architect. You’ll get to work alongside people who love the interactive space and are doing some fantastic work in content strategy and interactive design. Check out the job listing and come work with us in the Mitten: Information Architect Job Posting.

Hug your IA today!

Chain Link Photo used via Creative Commons License. Photographer: Matti Mattila

Things We Owe Clients: CONTEXT!

Aside from providing a point of view and plan for creation, governance, and delivery of content, the most important thing a content strategist should be able to provide its client is context for what it produces. Our job as a content strategist is not to sell a huge content creation approach. We owe our clients the effort of providing better context for the content they provide consumers.

This post (or maybe rant is a better word) comes on the heels of reviewing some very good presentations and explanations of what content strategy is and others that physically make my stomach turn over (Read As: If I see one more giant content marketing presentation disguised as content strategy I’m gonna go crazy!).

There are too many content marketers out there disguising themselves as content strategists. There, I said it. I think a lot of these small shops are out there selling content marketing as the end all, be all to a brand’s problems and saying that they back it up with content strategy, and it’s just not true.

Good content strategists must help to define the context for content that is created and published before suggesting a huge increase in volume and promising brands that relentless publishing will help them to become a “thought leader.” To be perfectly frank, without context, content marketing and content period, is lost on readers.

I like how Tristan Harris frames up context:

“Context is information that informs your understanding of the world, literally allowing you to derive more meaning from an experience.

I liken context to being what a detailed recipe is to someone who has never baked a cake before. Without the context provided by the recipe, all we have is whatever is in our refrigerator and (possibly) our personal experiences with tasting a piece of cake. As strategists, we must define ingredients that relate to content production before it begins and provide the relational elements and materials to make sense of the different pieces of content. This provides contextual relevance to the people consuming the content, thus providing them greater understanding and deriving more meaning from their experience with what we’ve provided.

These elements might include stuff we already think about:

• Keywords
• Categories
• Hashtags
• Source
• Taxonomic Data
• SEO

Or some stuff we might not, but should be considering:

• Geo Location data
• Voice of the related content
• Structure & Design of contextual support

Context guides the content and frames it, but it also needs a true voice. ENTER THE CONTENT STRATEGIST!

So much of contextual info is provided as related links, footnotes or through other experiences that fall short of painting a complete picture. As such, it lacks personality and ends up being easily ignored by people just might need it most. This is where the content strategy discipline really needs to work its magic.

We need to start building context into our messaging strategies, our governance plans and into our analysis of content. It should be examined, amended and revised as often as possible.

We put so much time into layering in the SEO, the product information and the message into content, that we forget that often times people need context for the topics we’re covering and that’s why content marketing programs can often fall flat on their face.

Help provide me content that is relevant to where I am right now. Does the delivery, message or voice of your content need to vary based on the time of day I’m reading it? These are all things we need to begin to consider as good content strategists. To eschew context is plain lazy and it’s a disservice to the people we’re trying to help (and in that statement I mean end users and our clients).

So, if you’re one of the content marketers or so called content strategists I’ve mentioned above, start thinking about context before you start recommending a massive play for content creation. We might better solve our client’s problems, by auditing and inventorying their current content and really analyzing how we can give it more contextual relevance to their users.

Ok. I’m going to step off my soapbox now.

On The Importance Of A/B Copy Testing In Content Strategy

I have a love/hate relationship with A/B Split Testing, especially when it comes to Web copy. Love that A/B testing can deliver significantly improved response, but hate that many brands may base all future copy decisions on a single test that delivered or over delivered on expectations.

Relying on a singular result, creates missed opportunity to refocus or edit content for other circumstances, site users, time periods or changing business factors. This is why it is crucial to have a sound content strategy to help determine variables, governance and success metrics for copy based on the user personas that were developed for your Web site.

If we can agree that content is your Web site’s greatest asset, the user persona should be the guidepost you’re using to increase its value any time we change messaging, and we can validate this premise through A/B copy testing.

And only through repeated and frequent testing will we be able to make changes that help us:

What factors should be considered in A/B Split Copy Testing?

1. Start with a metric in mind.
What are you trying to accomplish with the test? Are you after more subscribers, conversion rate increase, or a greater return on investment? Just like wanting to know what we want our users to do helps us define content strategy, goals for testing will determine parameters, which in turn will determine the potential success of our efforts.

2. Establish a control copy page/persona
Think back to your elementary school science class friends. Establishing a control persona will help us to establish the copy that we will test all varitions against, always keeping step one in mind as we develop considerations for variables.

If you are just getting started with A/B testing, your control page will be your current copy that is underperforming before any variation is served. When new copy outperforms the existing control copy, consider it your new benchmark (control persona) in any subsequent testing.

3. Determine a reasonable interval for the test
Determine how you’ll gather the data and for how long you need to gather it. This time period will vary from site to site, but should allow for the gathering sufficient data to gauge real insight about your A/B tests. If your site has a lower number of daily unique visitors, the test may run significantly longer to determine a clear copy winner.

4. Significantly vary your copy
Go big or go home. Slight word changes won’t necessarily give us enough of a true variable. Be radical with copy changes. If we’re spending the time and money to test differences, be sure they’re clear enough to users to determine if the change should really be made. If two to three radical variations can be tested against the control, make it happen!

5. Test, refine and test again
Test the alternate copy against the control (there are lots of different software suites and services that you can use to do A/B testing or you can do it yourself through something as simple as CGI Scripting). Ideally, each copy/persona will be tested against every other variation, but if you don’t have the funds or it becomes impractical to run multiple tests, test two pages at a time and keep the best as your control for subsequent tests as mentioned above.

In a perfect world, our brands, bloggers and friends have the time and the resources to follow a process like this and perform true split testing, but even if we have neither we can still create sequential A/B testing through throwing up one version of our site with one version of copy for a given period and then test alternative versions for the same time period after gathering data. Results may not be as reliable as true A/B split testing, but we can still gather incredibly valuable information from the exercise.

In Conclusion
Copy testing will help us maximize conversion rates, solve site problems, and challenge our assumptions. If you’ve got a fussy client, who continually wants to beat his chest about a product claim, good A/B testing might just show that all the user really cares about is what color it may be or the fact that it fits into their back pocket. And if we can start showing wins on this level, we can open the door for HUGE opportunities when we get beyond testing small changes.

Once initial factors and bugs in content are worked out, we can do bigger things, like designing and writing radically different versions of our pages, for brand new personas, where almost everything is different. And when we can test dramatic changes for new audiences, we’re most likely to achieve breakthrough improvements in conversion rates and potentially that all-important ROI.

Content Rule of Thumb: If You Feel Full Reading, Stop Feeding

There is probably no SEO misconception that I despise more than the “more is better” argument. A good rule of thumb when it comes to content on your web site? If you’re feeling tired (and full) when you’re reading your content, stop feeding it to your visitors.

A very wise woman recently wrote:

“Online, when it comes to informational, marketing, or promotional content, more is almost never more.”

We need look no further than a pair of popular cleaning product makers to see this process in action. When we examine the homepage for Lysol and compare it to Clorox, a few clicks will show just how much more content is jammed into one versus the other.

As you can see below, Lysol’s site is jam packed with Did you Knows, Germ Information, PDFs, menus, sub-menus and enough cookie crumbed pages to choke a small child.

Conversely, the Clorox page features a great deal more whitespace, has fewer downloadables, and no submenus linking into deep pages. It also segments users based on their cleaning locales of interest (someone did their personas!).

So, who has the better SERP ranking? Clorox beats the crap out of Lysol with far less content.

A Google search of the keywords “Cleaning Products” put Clorox.com number one in the sponsored links and the top result of actual products (7th in the organic list). Lysol didn’t appear in the organic search on the first page, nor did it on the next 20. While it appeared in the sponsored links underneath Clorox, I didn’t have the heart to keep digging to see if they made the organic SERPs within 40 clicks.

Not only are the Clorox.com search results better, it’s also far easier to find the information you’re looking for. The fonts are larger, the headlines are shorter, written specifically for a web audience and sub headlines provide an accurate description of what we’ll find within a link or article page. Product information is weaved in nicely with informational articles, there are graphics that engage users while informing and useful tools that help decide the best way to treat stains.

Bottom line, good content helps improve search ranking, but it has to be useful, tagged and relevant.

So before you go off and publish a mammoth Web site with tons of pages, articles and information, with high hopes of a higher SERP ranking, ask yourself a few questions.

• “Does this information add to my brand story, user experience or increase engagement?”
• “Would I lose anything if this content wasn’t here?”
• “Can this information be better organized, bulleted or edited down?”
• “By including this content, am I preventing my users from getting content they need?” (THIS ONE IS MY FAVORITE!)

Useful, usable Web sites are not not about providing every single piece of information that anyone could ever think of. It’s about providing solid content that is on strategy, that means something to your visitors and that is properly tagged optimized and placed to be useable for machines and humans. Tag better, write better, and spend more time optimizing and editing less content to get more of a result.

If you get overwhelmed and feeling too full looking at your site, chances are your users feel exactly the same way.

Photo: Sandeep Nair

Improved Content = Improved Search Ranking

Whether you’re relatively new to search engine optimization and search marking or an old pro, you’ve probably heard someone say “ Content Is King,” more times than you can count. It’s not just apples and oranges anymore, because someone (or in content’s case, something) won’t like either. So, allow me to reiterate the point one more time – just in case you weren’t paying attention.

Content is king when it comes to search engine optimization.

Bottom line, if you have strong, engaging web copy, you’ll see increases in search engine rankings and traffic because there is a greater likelihood you’ll be linked by other sites and be fodder for discussion. While human beings might love your content talking about apples and oranges, SEO content has to target search engines as well, which loves Kiwi.

As Erik Cisler of Wpromote Search Engine Marketing points out, SEO content must ultimately target human beings.

“Good content means targeting not just keywords, but key ideas that appeal to people. A lot of SEO content is written under the guise of being a ‘How To’ guide or an FAQ on a company’s site. That’s cool, great idea – but what if, I dunno, you actually approached those articles as legitimate sources of information,” Cisler says. (Unfortunately I lost the link tot he blog entry he posted this on!)

The point he’s really making here is that while writing optimized content that search engines will understand is all fine and good, there is absolutely no reason not to try to sell the readers while targeting a particular search engine’s algorithms. That’s where great copywriting enters the equation.

Let’s just face it. The copy on your Web site has to be able to persuade leads or consumers that your firm has what they need after the eyeballs hit the page. Sure, you may have copy jammed with keywords that will bring in the masses, but it’s just as important to have that copy persuade them that you’re better than your competition, who very well could be offering your same services at a considerable value. In order to land that consumer’s time and pocketbook, your site has to prove why someone should by from YOU.

And yet, brands seem to have a particularly difficult time grasping this idea. Many companies are depending too heavily on the popularity of their brand to drive traffic, as opposed to providing engaging content that happens to be laced with the right keywords. It’s truly a balancing act, and unless you can say your company happens to be a computer and software giant named after a piece of fruit and has a rabid consumer base that will buy anything and everything you offer, you need great copywriting and great content strategy.

Only an overarching content strategy, based on your business’ marketing goals as well as the needs and habits of consumers, will provide you with SEO friendly copy that will engage consumers.

In other words, avoid single pages that only use keywords that make the search engines go ga, ga. Provide content and product descriptions that do the same thing for your customers. Give them the facts to make an informed decision and a reason to come back. If that copy is sharable, something your customer would feel comfortable passing along to a friend, even better. Make your engaging SEO content sharable, embeddable. Most of all, it should inspire a reaction.

Chances are, you’ve received this type of copy for years in direct mail pieces and still see it everywhere you look.

“Don’t miss out on this exclusive, special, once-in-a-lifetime offer…”

You can laugh, but this form of content can and does work. It works even better if you have a product that consumers actually want.

Whether you’re doing it yourself or working with an agency, remember that SEO content is not about writing to make the search engine happy. Your SEO focused content should never undermine the legitimacy of your product or service. Yes, weave in the key phrases, have solid code and lots of title tags, but remember, the search engine isn’t going to buy anything from you and it won’t go out and share your site and product with its friends on Facebook.

Persuasive writing creates engagement. Engagement means more comments, pass along value, and assures that your content is being tweeted, posted, dug, stumbled upon and indexed by spiders that aren’t just from search engines.

Engagement plus persuasive writing, plus SEO friendly will ultimately yield a better page rank and get your site higher in those all too important organic search rankings.

So, embrace the fact that SEO content is more than just apples and oranges and stuffing pages full of keywords. Eighty percent of your battle is selling your customer once they get there. When you have better content, you’ll have a better ROI.

Photo: Meliha Gojak