welterweightUX

          

On the Brain Traffic blog yesterday, Kristina Halvorson threw a bunch of blog topics at her readers. Her goal is to set off a volcano (oooh, sorry, that may still be a sore subject for some of you) of Content Strategy-related posts. She wanted to get people thinking and talking. And acting. Of course acting!

One of the topics was “What’s my elevator speech when someone asks me what a content strategist is?”

So, this post is inspired by that. I won’t be talking about CS specifically, but more of what I do as a user experience person.

Not sure how tall of a building people mean when talking elevator pitches, but I’ll guess that the building has 5 stories. In that case, you should probably take the stairs. But whatever. You’re feeling lazy today. Here’s 1 bullet point for each story.

As a UXer, I:

• MUST learn everything I can about who user is. Once I do, I can begin to make informed decisions about how to nudge a design in a direction that will make them successful.

• Continually scheme to make websites better. By better, I mean easier to use. This demands various methodologies: heuristic evaluation, user research, content strategy, information architecture, wireframing, user testing. And more!

• Wrestle the boogiemen of bad design decisions who taunt and haunt users.

• Collude with the devil, am a perpetually skeptical, vocally so—no approach is “good enough”, just as nothing is ever “perfect”. I ask, “Why don’t we try this instead?” and “Wouldn’t it be better if…”

• Am not an expert. Humble, strategic experimentation is the only way to get closer to workable solutions. User experience is not about having all the answers. It’s about offering alternatives. It’s about listening. Collaborating. And it’s about being unafraid of revising approaches again and again and again, anon.

(Elevator photo by Soymaligno - thanks!)

Yesterday, someone on Twitter said that the buzz around Content Strategy flies in the face of the long-held idea that people don’t read on the web.

I replied as eloquently as 140 characters allows: “U think the surge in content strategy negates the Fact that ppl don’t read online? It really nurtures the fact by flushing junk.”

Ok, here’s the thing
People do read on the web, but people don’t Read on the web. The capital letter here is like the difference between “God” and “god”.

Content strategy is purging
Even though the name Content Strategy has the word “content” in it, we still need to approach our profession knowing that most users don’t care about the bulk of stuff we create.

In her book Content Strategy for the Web, CS diva (whaaa?!) Kristina Halvorson harps on the ideas that less is better than more and the need to “scale back on content.”

Why?

Because not matter how grandly curated and executed your content is, most of it is still a chore for your users. Especially on B2C sites.

Content creators must always strive to purge as much junk as possible and pare everything down to its essence.

This supports the idea that people don’t read.

Don’t be defeated
As a Content Strategist, don’t let the fact that people don’t read online defeat you. Instead, use it as impetus for learning more about your user and their goals. This will help you can scale back further, get to the point quicker, be more relevant.

It’ll turn you into a God of content.

New blog on contente.org. It’s called Warriors!! Come Out and Play! and it’s about the user experience ghetto.

We need content to be the kernel of everything we do. It dictates how information is structured on sites, and influences how users interact. [read the whole thing]

I wrote an article called (Not) Seducing Users for my friend Nicole’s content strategy blog, contente.org. It’s about setting restrictions on your writing for the sake of your users.

Here’s a snippet:

Oddly, after a while, you’ll internalize the restriction. You’ll start creating paired back prose at first stab. It’ll become habit. You’ll write better when you know you can write better, always. [Read the whole shebang]

True story: In 2008, we were conducting a usability lab for a client on the outskirts of Chicago. While the computers and cameras were getting wired and fired up, we expressed concerns about the framing of content on the client’s site. “There’s too much text, all of it badly structured. Users want to scan,” we said, “They want to make it though quickly. They want bullet points.”

For most normal people (no, readers, you & I are not normal people), web content and its structure is pretty ho-hum. It’s likely to inspire yawns and glazed-over eyes. And that’s what happened to our clients.

Then the tests began. Most of the users got lost in the sea of words on the screen—to the degree that they had trouble completing tasks—, but they didn’t have the words to identify exactly what exactly was confusing them.

Then, several participants in, one of the testers said, “This is too much text. I wish the important stuff was listed in bullet points.”

Honest to god. My heart melted like ice cream in August sun.

And guess what happened during the debrief? Our clients got it. From the mouths of babes, and all that… That’s what it took to make it sink in, not some egg-heady UXers telling them so. It took a real user begging for simple dots to break things up into logical, easily digestible chunks.

The best part of this story is that I now have a real anecdote to tell clients. I can say, “Users want bullet points—here’s how I know…”

In closing:

• Bullet points?
• Bullet points.
• Three cheers for bullet points!
• Huzzah.
• (Guh, lame, I know.)

If you want someone to connect with your brand/company post-haste, don’t fool around with them. Use your homepage to shout at them: Hey! This is who we are and this is what we do!

Does this sound like a coarse approach? It doesn’t have to be. And if done right, it won’t be.

There are tons of sites out there who’ve keyed into this idea. They use prime real estate on their homepages to introduce themselves and their services to site visitors in succinct, meaningful ways.

Here’s a trio of examples that do a good job of taking the guesswork out of a visitor’s experience. Movement throughout the sites is supported in several ways:
▪    Navigation
▪    Visual cues
▪    Calls to action

When it comes down to it though, the focal point is, in plain-spoken English, saying who and what the firms are. And guess what? Visitors are immediately engaged. With blazing speed, they can decide if the companies offer what they need…or not. Decisions are made in seconds. Then they can continue on their way, either deeper into or away from the sites.

Brain Traffic

Pixel Thread

Roll

Of course, this exact scaled-back approach may not work for all industries or business models, but there are ways this directness can be modified to sing any site’s purpose. Clarity is something all of us owe to everyone who visits our sites.