Paladin is pleased to announce our 2009-2010 Sponsorship with the Chicago chapter of IABC (International Association of Business Communications). IABC/Chicago chapter is for professional communicators in industries such as public relations, employee communications, community relations, graphic design, marketing, media production, and much more. The chapter is focused on business development and networking. Visit their site and become a member today. Check out the calendar of the events for the year and be on the look out for our Paladin team at events. We look forward to an exciting year!

http://www.iabcchicago.com/events/index.htm

Lately, I’ve been reminded that business Web sites often come in one of two flavors.  Perhaps you can recognize them:

1. What we do – These are sites that focus on attracting business.  They devote most of their pages to describing their services, human capital resources, success stories and the like.
2. Who we are – These are the sites that have chosen to focus on attracting talent.  A significant percentage of the site is devoted to recruiting, so they showcase the work experience, profiles of their office locations and career opportunities.

These are broad brush-strokes and there’s nothing inherently wrong with either approach.  Of course, some overlap occurs when talking about the work experience (showing a potential client how thorough you are) or describing your services (showing potential recruits the level of impact they can have).  Many sites dedicate space to both services and recruiting.  But they could be so much more.

The best sites offer a third option, one that combines the flavors above with a way that keeps clients, prospects and potential new hires coming back again and again.

The knowledge site

Call it the Neapolitan solution because it’s three flavors in one – services, recruiting and knowledge.

The difference, of course, is in what knowledge you make available.  The idea is to make the knowledge you share valuable and useful without giving away the store.  Give them just enough new information on a regular basis – or provide access to a database of information if that aligns with what you do – to whet the appetite or keep you top of mind when the time comes to actually purchase your services.

If you’re a design firm, for example, you could offer case studies on how good designs have made a difference between success and failure in a campaign, or offer tips for how to approach branding, color or layout.

Professional services firms can present examples of best practices in operational efficiency or performance management.  Publishing companies can offer reviews and insights culled from their latest editions.  Industry news, white papers, articles, summaries of round table events – the opportunities to position your organization as a valuable resource are endless.

This isn’t a difficult or particularly new concept but for some reason it’s a rare one to see being utilized.  But examples can be found: just look at what Paladin is doing by publishing these blogs.

What kind of a Web site are you?

It’s not easy to do this.  It takes imagination, management appetite, resources and, just as important, maintenance.  It takes collaboration over the long haul to create the content and promote its existence on a regular basis.

It’s long past time when a company could get away with being an electronic brochure.  The war for talent and the fight for business demand that you reach out to clients and prospects – or give them a reason to reach out to you.

Small businesses are especially vulnerable these days and are looking for ideas to generate revenue.  The good news is that those ideas are right in front of them, in the knowledge gained through the experience of their people, the tools they use, and the services they provide.  The not-so-good news is now that knowledge needs to be transformed into a format where it can be shared.

But it can be done.

Do you have any examples of favorite sites that exemplify the Neapolitan approach?  Remember what your mother said about sharing…

Card sorting is a beneficial and often forgotten tool of the trade for Information Architects.  If you want to revamp, redesign, or start from scratch with your website then you should take advantage of card sorting.  If you already have a staff that uses the Internet then you should have a good audience for the card sort.

The most difficult thing about a card sort is getting people to think outside of the box.  If you have an existing website and you want to redesign it, you may not want to use your site in the card sort.  This is especially true if you are using the card sort for an intranet portal.  Chances are that your staff uses your intranet portal as silos of information and once they see familiar categories they will have a very difficult time at rethinking their current methodologies and practices.

To start your sort you will need at least 1 package of index cards.  They don’t have to be giant in size, but don’t use the mini cards.  You want people to be able to read what you have written on the cards.   The next step involves writing categories or navigation headers on each card.  If you are starting from scratch with a new site, take a look at some of the other websites in your industry.  Write down those navigation terms and headings that make sense for your business as well as some you think don’t fit as well.  When creating a card sort it is easy to become very involved in the process and to start customizing the sort for your ideas only.  Remember, you are using this sort to get feedback from everyone on the new site and you want to make sure that it is usable by multiple audiences.  Now because some websites can be very deep in tiers, you should stick with creating no more than three levels of the site.  This would include the top navigation, and then two sub-levels.  Make sure you have created enough cards for these levels.

Once you have created all your cards, you will need a large conference room or you can use multiple offices for the sort.  Ideally you should have at least two groups of people, and these people should be mixed together by experiences, cultures, gender, and education.   If you have a large conference room available, first start off by explaining the purpose of the card sort and the rules for the card sort (see below).

Now that you have your two teams of people (note: this will require that you have two copies of your cards), mix up each set of cards and give them to the teams.  Ask the teams to create the top-level navigation and the other sub-levels.  Because this is not a three-dimensional exercise, just ask the teams to lay out the cards either on a table or the floor in a top-to-bottom scheme.  The top-level navigation will be at the top, and the under each navigational header for the top level, place the next level, and so on.  To save space, a common practice is to stack cards on top of each other.  If you don’t have the large conference room, just place each team in a separate office and check on each from time to time.  In some ways this can be a better situation so that the teams don’t feed off of each other.

A time limit will need to be placed on the sort.  Give the staff at least thirty to forty-five minutes for the sort.  They should not need more than ninety minutes, and they will probably be bored at this point anyway.  After the sort has reached the time limit, take a picture of each team’s work.  The next step is up to you and time restrictions.  If you have planned this exercise to use an entire afternoon, a helpful post-sort activity is to bring the two teams to one room and go over the different ideas that each team came up with.  A whiteboard is helpful here and each team can write on the board their top-level navigation headers and some examples of sub-levels.  Discussion between the two teams here is very beneficial because the teams will learn how different people use the Internet and web sites.

If you are using the card sort for a redesign of the site and performing the sort with staff that already use the existing site, you will have problems with this exercise.  Your staff probably may not think the site needs to be changed, as it would involve changing work patterns.  You may want to do a sort with a competitor’s website and not tell your staff who the site belongs to.  At the end of the activity, compare the two teams and then try to apply the commonalities to your site.

Card sorts can be very beneficial to web site work or web-based applications.  One of the disadvantages of the card sort is the time it takes to not only setup the sort, but also the time involved in analyzing and reporting the data back to the users.

Sample Card sort rules:

(1) time limit - this should be enforced strictly
(2) No use of laptops/computers - this is to prevent users from looking at websites on the Internet
(3) Assign a team leader so that team members keep on task