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To make menus and links simpler you have to think like a customer. You also have to reduce the number of links and focus on the task at hand.

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menu usability content link focus reducing

It’s the presentation I’ve been delivering when design agencies invite me over to talk content strategy. In agency parlance, this is the Predicate “capabilities” deck and elevator pitch: but of course it’s nothing close to either—not yet.

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content strategy content information architecture presentation

You’re a web professional: a designer, developer, information architect, or strategist. Your team has the web design disciplines covered: research, strategy, user experience design, standards-based development, and project management. But something’s going wrong with your projects; the user experience just isn’t meeting your expectations. You’re reasonably sure you know why: there’s a problem with the content.

You’ve tried all the obvious solutions: installing a powerful, easy-to-use content management system, or demanding that the client supply content upfront, or even writing all the copy yourself; but none of them seem to have much impact.

You realize that your team could use some help from the discipline of content strategy, but for whatever reason, hiring a dedicated content strategist isn’t a feasible option. So what can you do to add some content strategy to your projects?

The answer, as with so much in web design, is: Do It Yourself.

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content strategy content information architecture

This year, I was invited back to Malmö Sweden to give a new workshop at the From Business to Buttons conference. Because I was so close to the home of Hans Christian Andersen, I organized the presentation around a fairy tale. Like most fairy tale people, the ones in my talk made some mistakes.

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content strategy content best practice introduction presentation

Hosting a company's content and services on 3rd-party social networking sites involves both tactical risks (lower usability) and strategic risks (less user loyalty).

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usability youtube social media content best practice mega-IA

Over the past year, the content strategy chatter has been building. Jeffrey MacIntyre gave us its raison d’être. Kristina Halvorson wrote the call to arms. Panels at SXSW, presentations at An Event Apart, and regional meetups continue to build the drum roll. But how do you start humming the content strategy tune to your own team and to your prospective clients? Listen up and heed Aretha Franklin. No, really.

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content strategy content strategy information architecture seo webdesign

Here’s the first thing to remember about frame switching as it applies to copywriting:
All copywriting stories are “nested.”

Matryoshka+doll-1In writing copy you inevitably create – at a minimum – one frame of reference: the one between your authorial voice and the reader.

In fact, copywriting teachers often advise aspiring writers to “talk” onto the page as if they’re talking to a best friend, simply because that mental exercise animates that almost invisible frame of reference in the mind of the writer.* Writers who forget that frame of reference tend to produce artificial, corporate-speak copy.

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copywriting e-marketing content storyboarding storytelling

The announcement from Yahoo!, Live & Google that they will be supporting a new "canonical url tag" to help webmasters and site owners eliminate self-created duplicate content in the index is, in my opinion, the biggest change to SEO best practices since the emergence of Sitemaps. It's rare that we cover search engine announcements or "news items" here on SEOmoz, as this blog is devoted more towards tactics than breaking headlines, but this certainly demands attention and requires quick education.

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duplicate content seo canonical

The “about me”-page is one of the most overlooked pages in development and one of the highest ranked pages on many websites. In a world that’s becoming increasingly connected through the Web, it’s important that you engage your audience in a personal and friendly way, otherwise you risk just being another faceless web designer among a sea of websites.

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about us webdesign design pattern content best practice

Many organizations have a strange attitude towards information. Its creation is nearly always disassociated from its use. Information is rarely seen as useful or purposeful. It’s just there because people need it. It doesn’t help you do things. It’s simply there for you to read just in case you need some information.

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information content content strategy strategy information architecture findability

Want to keep your customers despite tough economic times? Don’t add yet another feature to your Web site. Stop worrying about redesigning it. Instead, take a hard look at improving your site’s content.

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content content strategy conversions user experience strategy

An ecommerce website, boiled down to its dry essence, is a virtual salesman at best and a slow-to-deliver electronic vending machine at worst. Consciously or not, online stores are conceived, designed, and created to sell products while making as little personal contact with a customer as possible. And as such, well-written product descriptions can have a significant impact on a store's success.

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e-shop e-commerce content ROI product information copywriting content strategy

How do we know whether content is any good? This simple question does not have a simple answer. Yet, I think having a good answer would help us show our employers and clients why their content needs to improve and how their content compares to the competition’s. As a start toward an answer to this question, I offer a set of content quality checklists for seven different lenses through which we can view content. I see these checklists as the groundwork for content heuristics, which would enable us to do heuristic evaluations and competitive analyses efficiently. With good content heuristics, we could make a case for better content without painstakingly doing an analysis of all of the content up front. Imagine, making a case for better content quality in a few hours instead of a few weeks.

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copywriting content quality content plan best practice checklist

"Say something worth talking about. Unlike any other medium, the online experience is linked, networked... through sites, email, newsletters, discussion lists, forums, weblogs, wikis, cell phones, PDAs and more. If you have products or services that people actually want, then invest some time in talking about them in an interesting and different way. Talk about them in a way that stands out, makes your readers smile, laugh or scream in outrage. Don't be safe. Say it as it is. Say it loud. Say it in a way that strikes home and is memorable. Do that, and you'll have done something worth talking about...and the network will reward you."

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content content plan copywriting

It’s not new to say that we now live in an age in which survival in business depends on your ability to communicate effectively through the internet.

What is new is the realization that just having any old website isn’t enough. The quality of your site and the nature of its content are paramount and your ability to communicate with your audience is the key.

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design usability webdesign copywriting content user experience design content plan

Users often see online content out of context and read it with different goals than you envisioned. While you can't predict all such goals, you can plan for multiple uses of your text.

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usability content copywriting best practice

Content influences offline purchasing behavior in profound ways. Its online influence is even greater.

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content persuasion strategy features value

Communication is one of the foundational elements of a good website. It is essential for a positive user experience and for a successful website that truly benefits its owners. All types of websites are affected by the need for good communication in one way or another. Regardless of whether the website in question is an e-commerce website, a blog, a portfolio website, an information website for a service company, a government website or any other type of website, there is a significant need to communicate effectively with visitors.

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copywriting communication content content strategy content usability

Not that familiar with “content strategy?” That’s ok. It’s in my job title, and I struggle every time I’m asked what I do for a living. Many people have no idea what it means, but even more people bring their own (wrong) assumptions to the conversation. Usually they think it has something to do with writing copy. That’s not entirely false, but it’s kind of misleading.

The analogy I’ve been using recently is that content strategy is to copywriting as information architecture is to design. I find this analogy to be especially encouraging because six years ago, as the crest of the first wave of the web was about to break, people had no idea what “information architecture” meant either.

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content strategy content copywriting content plan user experience design

To those of us who work daily and intimately with words, the phrase “lorem ipsum” sounds out a special kind of death.

Lorem ipsum, that loyal chum of designers, is the placeholder signaling text-goes-here the world around. Text goes here, that is, in this ominous black box. It works, after a fashion: it gives us a valuable feel for the contours of a webpage, providing an undifferentiated pour of words down a page’s columns. It also distills copy down to an ornament, making decorations of our content assets and all but insisting the content will sort itself.

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content strategy content copywriting content plan user experience design