Improving Website Organization

[MUSIC] 0:00 With the amount of content available online today, 0:04 organizing information intuitively is more important than ever. 0:07 Specifically, I'm talking about how you define the major sections of your site and 0:12 naming those sections with labels that are obvious and clear. 0:16 If you don't do this, users may run into some problems. 0:21 They may experience frustration or leave the site if sections don't make sense. 0:25 It's like if you took the Starbucks app, and instead of organizing its menu by 0:29 drinks and food, you changed it to morning and afternoon. 0:34 Like, what's the difference there? 0:39 I drink coffee all day long. 0:41 So can I find it in both places? 0:42 If users have to think about what your labels or 0:45 groupings mean to them, you've done something wrong. 0:47 Not only should the labels tell you what content is in a section, 0:51 but also what you can do there. 0:55 Problems might also arise if you have too many choices, so 0:58 the experience of sifting through all the options becomes exhausting. 1:02 Take a look at how Target organizes its sections within this navigation menu, 1:06 that's pretty long. 1:12 And if you drill down into, say toys well, 1:13 it's still a challenge to find what you want. 1:16 So monitor your different channels to gather feedback or collect data 1:20 about your users, so you'll know if they're finding the information they need. 1:24 If not, then here are some helpful ways to improve your content organization. 1:29 One great way to pinpoint problems is to bring up your site map, or 1:35 create one if you haven't done that yet. 1:39 Get together with your team, and 1:42 apply any user complaints directly to the website structure. 1:43 Here's what I mean. 1:48 For example, you might hear that users can't find the installation instructions 1:49 on your website for the app you've built. 1:53 Now, you know that it's located in the same section where users download the app, 1:56 because there's a page in there called Installation Instructions. 2:00 However, people are looking through the main menu, and they see these links. 2:04 Home, About, Download, and Contact. 2:09 There's no clear spot for help or instructions, so you need to take action. 2:14 You could solve this problem by adding a help section, so 2:21 you'd have a new content group where you list all your helpful documentation. 2:24 Or you could reveal more of the structure by adding a menu hierarchy, so 2:29 more content can be seen while users browse through the menu. 2:34 But sometimes the issue isn't that your content is buried, 2:39 it's that users don't understand the value of what you've created. 2:43 This is a site called Bubble, which provides a platform if you wanna 2:48 create a web app without all that pesky coding. 2:52 One issue here is this Ideas link in their main menu. 2:55 Now if you come to a site where you can create apps without coding you might 2:59 assume Ideas would be a list of good ideas for apps you could create here. 3:02 But when you click, you see a sub menu offering three more choices, 3:08 Product, Stories, and Vision. 3:13 And now I'm more confused. 3:17 Turns out the Product section is a series of instructional posts 3:19 about cool things you can do with their product. 3:23 Stories offers a mix of stories about people who use their product and 3:26 other interviews. 3:31 And Vision is a collection of posts about the company in general. 3:33 The way you organize content and label it needs to support the interest and 3:38 goals of your users. 3:43 So what you create has to have some value, but that value needs to be clear. 3:45 So that means labeling groups of content in ways that have relevance to your users. 3:51 Vision might sound empowering to you, but to your users who are thinking 3:57 about creating an app on your site, they don't know if Vision means you're 4:02 about to show them apps for seeing things, or if you want to give them an eye test. 4:07 So if pages are not being used or people aren't finding things, look to your labels 4:12 to make sure you're not burying your valuable content behind misleading terms. 4:20 If Bubble wants users to understand the value of their produce posts, 4:26 they should call them something like How To's instead, Stories is too vague. 4:31 Case studies might be more on target if you're sharing client success stories or 4:37 yeah, success stories would work too. 4:42 And instead of Vision, calling the section our section Our Vision 4:45 would clue people in that these are posts about the company's mission. 4:50 If you ever struggle with naming a content group, try the card sorting 4:55 technique we went through earlier in the course, it's a great way to get ideas 4:59 about well you've communicated the value of your content within a group. 5:04 And there's another technique, called tree-testing, 5:09 in which you show someone a text version of the structure of your site, and 5:12 ask them to follow the branches so to speak, and 5:17 select the spot where they think they'd find an important piece of information. 5:19 For example, if Cracker Barrel restaurants asked someone to explain where they'd go 5:25 to find nutrition information for 5:30 their food, they'd look through this simple set of branches for the answer. 5:32 This kind of test will tell you if your labels or groupings are working. 5:37 So as you're evaluating your own website organization, 5:43 monitor your feedback in analytics and look for these problems. 5:47 But be proactive and consider these questions on your own. 5:51 Have you created sections that match up with user needs and expectations? 5:55 Do those sections have clear names, and 6:00 are they organized in a logical and intuitive way? 6:04 Your current structure defines how content is organized, but 6:08 it also helps sets the tone for users on the site, so 6:12 make sure it is easy to understand so they'll have a stress free experience. 6:15