Context in Content Strategy: Personal Situational Context

Context in Content Strategy: Personal Situational Context is the third in a series of five blog posts discussing the need to account for context in the practice of content strategy. Did you miss the first two?

• Read Part One: Context in Content Strategy: Defining Context
• Read Part Two: Context in Content Strategy: Personal Behavioral Context

So, we’ve established that context is crucial to content strategy and that personal behaviors play into our capability to comprehend material on a Web site. What’s missing from the equation? I’d argue that it’s a user’s reason for seeking out a site (and its content) in the first place — needs that have arisen from a situation.

Establishing elements of Personal Situational Context provide a framework for your content’s very existence. Situations can serve as a guidepost for developing an editorial strategy that is shaped by the personas we’ve developed using Personal Behavioral Context. Similarly, when we believe our users are being faced with new situations that require content, we can use the fusion of Personal Behavioral Context and Personal Situational Context to develop new material or revise what already exists.

What types of situations should we be accounting for? That really depends on what those pesky content and business goals are (we talked about them briefly in the Personal Behavioral Context Post). In the case of Drake Motors Ltd., we’ll examine two (though there are many) potential situations for Kyle Fisher, our fictional buyer we met last post.

Situation A – I want to replace my current SUV with a new vehicle. I’m comparing Drake motors to the competition.

Situation B – I’m beginning the car buying/leasing process and want to explore all of my options.

At face value, one might assume the same content is sufficient to address both situations, but content strategists and information architects know better. When we look at various NEEDS that make up a given situation while content planning, we start to see the subtle differences that apply to each scenario.

In the diagram above, you’ll notice that there are several needs that guide our user’s take on a situation. The individual “TASKS” that spider from the needs are the key points or concepts our content should address. When we have content tasks that address the needs, we’ve provided guidance, and with luck, resolution for the given situation.

Resolved situations result in a happy users. Happy users (in theory) lead to conversion on our site goals, which should lead to real world ROI.

Isn’t it fantastic when everything starts coming together?

Now, lets break down how we start to make it happen.

If we take a second look at the persona developed for the post on Personal Behavioral Context, we can tell that Kyle Fisher is a pretty active guy. He plays a lot of hockey (that’s a lot of equipment), travels with his family often (meaning he needs more than a sedan) and puts about 7,000 to 8,000 more miles on his vehicle annually than the average driver (that’s a lot of gas and money spent).

Based on Kyle’s activities, it’s safe to say he has different requirements for his vehicle than someone who spends the bulk of their non-work life playing chess or building puzzles. Thankfully, Drake Motors has product that fits the bill and (based on our content audit) we have some existing content that will address the needs of his situation. Check out a few of Kyle’s needs and resulting content we can use in our chart for Situation A.

The above are by no means the only things we should be factoring for when it comes to Kyle. That said, analyzing his situational needs give us insight into ways we can organize our content in a unique way.

For example; since we know Kyle is a buyer and not a browser, we should deliver a different type of content and messaging tone based on that information. We should include more sales and incentive messaging along with support information that meet Kyle’s needs (like styling awards, fuel economy, safety and technology features, videos, etc.). Additionally, we can validate this content through third party support material, such as consumer or media reviews. All of this content should be easily accessible via the Model Overview page. Why? Because an individual model is Kyle’s frame of reference for his situation. It follows that this content should be there for him to help support that frame of reference.

All this talk about optimizing content for a specific situation might beg the question — how do we know Kyle is in market in the first place? One way is to utilize a segmentation strategy. Volkswagen’s UK Site does a great job of this by serving up a one click choice on arrival. Other methods of segmentation can be achieved via navigation, through geo-targeting, browser type, ambient factor or through some sort of survey or web tool.

Now, let’s take high level look at how we’ll serve content up differently for Situation B.

Since Kyle isn’t in market, we won’t focus on selling an individual model and won’t push him towards one right away. Instead, we’ll start trying to figure out what he might be looking for in terms of features and provide him a better overview of everything Drake Motors has to offer based on those interests.

One thing I wish more automotive sites would do is come up with a creative way find out what users “like,” if anything, about their current vehicle and attempt to uncover more about what they want in a new vehicle during browsing process. This knowledge is already top of mind at all times for most buyers who begin browsing or window shopping.

New car buyers tend to covet advanced features that make the vehicle safer, more technologically advance or provide a new aesthetic. So why is it that the majority of automakers slap a vehicle lineup and a host of configurations up on a page and expect it to make people flock showroom? There’s no context for blanket listing of features and reading through packages for a specific vehicle is not how a casual browser is even beginning to shop for a new car. Most, especially female buyers, begin browsing by a specific feature, a price point or vehicle category before they even begin to get down to a specific model and its exclusive content.

I won’t bog down the post by digging into another situational chart, but rest assured that we can begin provide the information Kyle needs for Situation B through direct navigation or a specific site function, such as a “help me choose.” If we’ve utilized a segmentation strategy, we can provide an entirely different web experience or something as simple as an interactive element that allows users to engage with the entire lineup or feature set vs. an individual model.

Ford does a fantastic job of this. The company recognizes that Technology has become such an integral part of their brand story that they separate it from the model overview pages for users visiting their page specifically for SYNC or Ford MyTouch information. I’d argue that more OEMs should start thinking about their early shoppers in this way. By doing so, we add another layer of context that makes what we provide users on a Web site more than “brochureware.”

Phew!

Now that we’ve framed up Personal Behavioral and Personal Situational Context for Kyle, we can fuse them together to create Situational/Behavioral Context (the basis for content scenario templates). In the next post, I’ll provide an example of one of these templates and what that means, both for what content we have and what still needs to be produced. We’ll also set the stage for a fifth post (I realized I just can’t fit it all into four) that layers in ambient data, which will get a bit scientific thanks to a mashup of Human Computer Interaction theory and cognitive neuroscience. Stay tuned and please comment!

Context in Content Strategy: Personal Behavioral Context

Context in Content Strategy: Personal Behavioral Context Is the second in a series of four blog posts discussing the need to account for context in the practice of content strategy. Did you miss the introduction to the series? If so, you can find that here.

If we’re in agreement that content strategy can’t live without context, one of the very first things we should be looking into when we’re content planning and working with user experience and information architects are the personal behaviors of our prospective users.

How do we begin doing that? First and foremost, we need to start at the beginning of the content strategy process and examine the content we have. Yes, just like every other content strategist, I’m going to insist that you look at it — ALL of it. Catalog it. Put it in a spreadsheet. Know what it is and be able to understand what it means to the usability of the site and the conversion goals that have been established for it.

Speaking of goals; you need them — for every section of your site. A lot of folks will put this onus on the site designer, but as strategists and stewards of smart content, we owe input and critique on EVERY section of a Web site. Navigation, individual pages and the content that fills them all require reason for being. If you don’t have a goal for an individual piece of content or a page on your site, you have your first red flag.

Once you have your audit (I’ve provided a sample Drake Motors Ltd. audit for you here [img]) and your goals (conversion and otherwise), we can establish user personas to develop content against.

Most marketing personas create a fictional person and blend a variety metrics to provide insight into what makes them tick. Typically, they contain the socioeconomic factors the person lives within, what magazines they might read, what type of device they may access our content on and what types of media will be most important to them. These types of personas are absolutely crucial for the development of a Web site like the one that Drake Motors Ltd. would have, but your personas may or may not include all of the information that’s outlined in the example below.

Where do user personas come from? In ad agency land (the setting I practice content strategy in), they come from a blending of social media technographics, market research, consumer insight interviews, subject matter experts, focus groups and a host of other available data points.

And while all of this information is incredibly helpful in defining an editorial strategy and messaging strategy for each persona, it’s really only helping us to create segments. Still, these humble personas are the keys to the kingdom of context, because you my friends know about content strategy! From these initial user personas we can start creating hypotheses to flesh out personal behavioral data.

When we account for personal behavioral context, we must focus on three main areas:

1. Physical Factors – These factors account for the doing behaviors.

Questions we should ask of ourselves include: What are the environmental stimuli? What activities are users doing when they access our content (working out, researching, studying, etc.)? What are their daily habits? Are they disabled or able bodied? What sensory stimuli may be affecting the environment around them? (Some of this can be grabbed from a social technographic study if it’s deep enough)

2. Emotional Factors – These factors relate to behavior made through feeling.

Questions we should ask of ourselves include: Are users stressed when they access our content? Are they feeling confident? Are they tired? Are they desperate? Are they wanting to spend money with our company or does our product or service make them feel afraid, uncomfortable or uneasy? Is it easy or difficult to interact with our business or web site for the average person?

3. Cognitive Factors – These factors relate to learning behaviors.

Questions we should ask ourselves include: What are the users’ cognitive assumptions when accessing our content? What are users’ maximum potentials for learning? Can we make assumptions or do we have metrics that provide us knowledge about their education level?

The first place we will likely want to drift when we start asking ourselves these questions is to a feeling of hopelessness. There’s no way in hell we can account for all of these factors, right? How can we possibly tailor an experience that satisfies all of the needs of all users when such a wide array of attitudes, experiences and environmental factors can influence a user at any given time?

The short answer is that we can’t account for EVERYTHING, but we can start asking the questions in our qualitative interviews with focus groups, discussions with our clients and their subject matter experts (product insight specialists). This allows us to begin to create contextual maps for content based on differing behavior types. From there, we can create specific content templates (examples are coming, I promise!) that can be used within our content management systems to filter content for a variety of conditions (time, geo-location, sex, age, device, situation, access point, etc.). We can also start to utilize personal recommendation engines, user feedback, user generated content and focus our written content to the lowest common reading level.

All of this template structure and contextual mapping can ultimately influence the architecture of a site. This is precisely why it’s so important that (1.) Content Strategy be involved at the earliest possible stage of a build, redesign or site refresh and (2.) that content strategy and IA work as partners throughout the entire process (including testing, implementation and QA).

It seems like a lot to digest, but after we have all this information and have developed what is now a truly useful persona we can start giving our fictional folks situations (Personal-Situational Context or scenarios that require content) that relate to their habits and behaviors to determine the true content need. Once we’ve done that, we compare the need against or qualitative and existing content audits. When we marry personal behaviors, product insights and consumer insights with situations that will apply directly to our products or services, we can get really dangerous with how specifically we can target folks with our content (Situational-Behavioral Content Strategy).

Next Post: We’ll do the above, using the content audit and the general user personas discussed here and marry it with some of our behavioral contextual assumptions. We can then mash this data up against a few personal situations different personas might face during the car buying process to create contextually relevant content scenario templates (which I’ll provide in both image and OmniGraffle form, in case you’re interested in integrating this into your process). When we mash those things up with ambient data and our site goals, we’ll be able to recommend a revised, contextually relevant content strategy. Basically, we’ll outline a few equations for you. Personal behavior A + personal situation B calls for content template X. It’ll be great.

Finally, a few notes that came to me after proofing this post.

First, in the interest of intellectual honesty, a lot of the props about the concept of Personal Behavioral Context in web design must be given to a really fantastic information architect, Mr. Andrew Hinton. He works in usability and codes and writes a stellar site called Inkblurt. The diagrams I’ve utilized to illustrate personal behavioral context were actually built upon some originals he did for a 2009 workshop for the Information Architecture Institute. Whenever I use these diagrams I like to plug him because they have had to be modified so little to make perfect sense for content and context strategy it feels like stealing.

Secondly, I just started reading Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content by the very smart Colleen Jones. While I’m not finished with it yet and I haven’t yet had a personal conversation with Colleen, I can tell that we share a lot of the same thoughts on the importance of really knowing your audience and bringing more context into the content strategy and web design space. Check out the book and Colleen’s stuff if you’re digging what I’m laying down so far.

Avoiding Missteps: Accounting For Testing and Refinement in Content Strategy

Sometimes, first dates can leave us with mixed feelings. We take special care to make sure no hair is out of place, that we smell nice and do our best to make sure everything goes according to plan. First dates can be an expensive, exhausting and – depending on your skills – either be a very rewarding or entirely dissapointing experience.

Practicing content strategy for the first time is very much like a first date. It requires careful planning, a lot of get-to-know-you-type conversations and, ultimately, will probably cost you a little more money than you expected it to. If all goes well, that strategy will pay off and bring many years of happy returns, but like any new relationship, content strategy takes time, examination and refinement.

It’s here that many strategies, and relationships for that matter, fall down. If we don’t account for reflection and refinement, we can’t determine how successful we could really be.

Good content strategists start with an audit and inventory of all the content you currently have. This process can be done specific to your online properties, if you’re looking only at the Web/Mobile/Location mediums or acrosss your entire organization at the enterprise level. From that initial audit and inventory, gaps should have been identified and opportunities to refine existing content to fit existing or new audiences (personas) would have been properly communicated to the you, the client.

Executing the production of new content according to our strategy would be the next step. If they’ve done their job, your content strategist will have synched up with your analytics team and determined some success metrics for our content. And with metrics, content that’s on strategy and a usable site in place, everything should go swimmingly right? In theory, absolutely. Here’s how you go about testing to find out if that’s really the case.

So, here’s how you start setting up for the review of those success metrics to determine how to further test and refine your process and existing content.

1. Test to find out if your content is easily consumed

You spend time testing your Web site’s usability, shouldn’t your content get equal treatment? Some kind of test needs to be put into place to test the viability of your content. It’s not as simple as increasing clickthroughs or user time spent on your site, though that will provide an initial baseline as if it’s even being found.

Start with basic questions. Is the content readable? Is it too long (this applies to video or text) Do your users understand it? Could re-wording things be the key to creating influence? Is your message solving your user needs or potential problems? These are all questions we can start to answer with A/B Testing, or simple focus groups. You can be as scientific (think A/B testing, Eye Tracking or utilizing fMRI) or as basic as you want (Usability Testing, User Interviews) to be when it comes to testing for whether or not your content can be easily consumed. The name of the game here is not to launch and leave it, assuming that our strategy is the right one.

2. Take Personal and Situational Behaviors Into Consideration While Testing

Are your personas working hard enough for your content strategy? Did the content strategist account for personal behaviors when developing a content plan? What situations were generated as potential scenarios that require content? If context were acconted for in the up front planning, we’d have already accounted for factors beyond basic socio-economic and media consumption habits and looked at our content as a task or fuciton that helps address a need to a specific user situation. If we haven’t, that should be accounted for in testing for refinement as context will always make our content more useful, meaningful and relevant to users.

Test, refine and test again
This process is never over. You have to keep at it. As content strategists, we owe users increased levels of context and usability. Our job is to not only get them to our Web sites, but to make their lives easier, answer their questions before they have them and leave them feeling satisfied with the overall experiences on our sites. Content is the vehicle to that satisfaction, so we need to keep testing it. Just like that relationship… we’ve gotta keep on keepin’ at it.

Photo used under creative commons license. Photographer: Stuart Bell

Context As A Content Strategy: Let’s Hash It Out!

For the first time in my professional career, I took a pretty big leap. I told a room full of very, very smart user experience professionals at Internet User Experience 2010 that I believe content strategists are not doing enough to adequately prepare for the next big thing. I also mentioned that I believe that Context, not content, is the real king when it comes to the web.

I’m happy to report that my thoughts and early stab at setting up the foundation for Context Strategy were both well received (see slides below).

Still, I’d like to reiterate that this process still needs refining and that we need to start finding better ways to account for personal behaviors (personal behavioral context) and personal situations (personal situational context) in order to take content strategy to the next level. When we combine personal behavioral and personal situational contexts we have the basis for what we’d potentially need to create a contextual based content strategy.

My next steps are to start exploring fields for content audits and persona development to begin accounting for context, while researching tools (including Eye Tracking, Functional MRI and biometric data) that can be synthesized on a project by project basis. Like I say in my presentation, I really need help formulating this discussion to get to a place where we can all start creating more meaningful content for users on the Web.

Comments on my presentation or the idea of Contextual Content Strategy in general are more than welcome. Let’s hash this thing out people!

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.