Slides from presentation given by Ove Dalen and myself in UXCamp 2010 in Berlin

1. Why content strategy is essential to the user experience Berlin, 28th May 2010

2. Long neck - long tail

3. 1 % of the content represents 99 % of the page views 10 million pages 3 million pages have never been visited

4. Don’t hide the important stuff in crap

11. Statistics from Mars 2010

12. What is a kindergarten? Kindergarten is an educational activity designed for children under school age.Kindergartens are approved according to guidelines in the Act relating to kindergartens, Act of 1 January 2006

14. The web editor web secretary publish stuff when they are told to they publish a lot

15. Norwegianclient Knewtheircontentwasn’tgoodenough Needed an analysis/auditoftheircontent Important to do somethingthatwasmanagement-friendly to finance an increasedactivity in content Turned to Netlife Research: canyouhelpus??

16. Contentanalysis The roots: theclassicalcontentinventory An opportunity to weedout bad content Combinesquantative and qualitativemethods A method to prioritizewhichcontent to improve And at last: givesyou a status ofyourcurrentwebsite(s)

17. Howwedid it Two persons evaluating 4 bigsites i 2 weeks First twodays: workingtogether side by side Readingexistingdocumentationonwebstrategy and guidelines for web content Establishing a commonplatform for theanalysis Evaluatingcontenttogether

18. Simple: just a spreadsheet

19. Quality

20. Reasons for low/mediumquality

21. Explanationwhen medium/bad contentquality The text is not understandable No uniquesellingpoints Bad prioritized No obvioususer goals Bad call to action I don’t understand theproduct or sloppyexplanation I do understand theproductbutthesellingpointsarenogood Severalgoodpointsburied in thebottomofthetext Is thispagereallyneeded for theuser? ”Clickhere” What??!!

22. Examplifythe bad

23. Key findings in theanalysis The design template is a straitjacket for thecontent Difficult to findthe ”right” product – toomanypages Addon-serviceswhogettheirownpagearefilling up thewebsite Manyoftheproductsaredifficult to understand Lackofpricescreatesuncertainty

24. Pitfalls The method for evaluatingcontent is not in anywayrealistic It’seasy to get lost in thewebsite No commonplatformonwhat’sgoodcontent It scaresthe hell outofthewebwriters (at leastwhentheanalysis is done by someoneoutside!!) Don’tevaluateyourowncontent

25. Don’t just evaluatethe bad Make a top 10 list ofthe best contentonthesite Examplifywhat’sgood

26. So, did it help? They’vegotthemoney to improvetheircontent They’vegot a mandate to heavilydeleteproductpages – Yiha!!! Soon to develop more content-friendlytemplates The templateswill be developed by designers and webwriters – together The webwritersneed to be stalled in wait for bettertemplates Theyaresoon to arrangewritingsessions – withthewhole webteam

27. Our new approach Approx 10 positive statements about quality Approx 10 positive statements about relevance Answer: Yes No Partly

28. Statements about quality Text is organized for web reading Text is understandable for the target group Page has relevant and clear calls to actions Page is visible in search engines SERPs … and so on

29. Statements about relevance Text support 1 of the 3 most important user goals Text support 1 of the 3 most important strategic goals … and so on

33. Thnx Ove Dalen ove@netliferesearch.com 00 47 918 59 180 www.netliferesearch.no www.iallenkelhet.no www.twitter.com/ovedalen Eirik Hafver Rønjum eirik@netliferesearch.com 00 47 92 40 31 65 www.netliferesearch.no www.iallenkelhet.no www.twitter.com/eirikhafver

34. Appendix: importantsources Killer web content – Gerry McGovern The Long Tail – Chris Andreson The Elements of User Experience - Jesse James Garrett Content strategy for the web – Kristina Halvorson Information is a task – Gerry McGovern Don’t trust your gut instinct – Gerry McGovern The real difference between Google and Yahoo– Gerry McGovern Building Respect for Usability Expertise – Jakob Nielsen The Discipline of Content Strategy– Kristina Halvorson I’m not an idiot, but I play one online – Jeff Sexton You’re so not welcome- Erin Anderson Where’s the beef?– Kristina Halvorson

35. Examples - quality Good title - NO Clear CTA – YES/Partly Sufficient content - NOOOOO Text design – YES Understandable – NO Human voice - Partly

36. Relevance Does it inspire users to contribute – partly Easy to get a clear overview over the WS – NO Easy to plan your day – NO Does it inspire people to join the conference – partly Easy to contribute - partly