Section 3.2. Consulting the Cards

3.2. Consulting the Cards

Now that you have a clearer idea about the overall direction of your site, it's time to start fleshing out the details and molding the underlying shape of your project. One particularly enjoyable way to do this is to shuffle some content cards, just like the oracles of old. The superstitious among us needn't worryyou aren't toying with dark forces beyond your control. It just appears that way to your client or employer, and anything that reinforces your mystique can only improve your job security.

3.2.1. Creating Content Cards

You don't need the Tarot for this procedure. A pack of ordinary index cards is more than sufficient. Here's how it works: with your list of goals in front of you, and keeping in mind your assumptions about your target audience, fill out the cards with ideas for content, one idea per card.

To get you moving in the right direction, start at the top of your list of goals. Read out the goal, and meditate upon this question: "O Content Cards, how can I achieve this goal on my web site?"

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At this stage of the game, don't think in terms of the final product. Don't worry about how these pieces of content are going to link up or how you're going to collect them. Just get your ideas onto the cards.

For example, assume that you're building a web site for your business. The first goal might be to introduce potential clients to who you are and what you do, so you incant the mystical formula: how can I achieve this goal on my web site? Your content cards might look something like this:

• A brief history of our business

• Summary of our core competencies

• Brief profiles or biographies of our management team

• Chart that shows the growth of our stock over the last three years

• Chart that shows the rise in profits or sales over the last three years

• Downloadable brochure

• Downloadable business card

• A photo of our home office

• A photographic tour of our main facility

• Testimonials from current clients

• Statement of our underlying customer-service philosophy

• Statement of our 90-day guarantee

When you feel like you've adequately addressed this goal, move on to the next one, and repeat the process. At this point, keep all the content cards in the same pile. Don't try to organize them yetthat's coming soon.

As you work through your list, don't be surprised if you come up with ideas that fit better with one of your previous goals. This is perfectly normal. The human brain seems to delight in these kinds of tricks. If you find yourself backtracking, don't try to stop it. Just write out the content card and add it to the pile, and return to the current goal at your mind's leisure.

Depending upon the scope of your site, you may have dozens of content cards, maybe even a hundred or more, or you might be struggling to fill twenty. In general, the more ideas, the better, but don't try to push it. Let the site show you what it wants to be. (Try giving that explanation at the next staff meeting. Your reputation as a sorcerer is assured.) The only hard and fast rule is that you should have at least one content card for every goal in your list. If you don't, you aren't meeting all your goals.

BEST BET

In general, the more content cards, the better; make sure you have at east one card for every goal in your list.

3.2.2. Organizing Content into Categories

Here is where the fun begins, where the true magic of your content cards reveals itself in its fullness. You'll need some desk space for this one, so sweep away the clutter before you start.

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You'll be astonished at how many ingenious ideas come about when fresh sets of eyes look for connections in the cards. If you aren't just a one-person operation, you might make copies of your content cards and have several people on your team divide them into categories individually. Then, compare their groupings with yours.

Collect your content cards into a single stack, and deal out the first card directly in front of you. Now read the second card, and compare it to the first. Do these pieces of content feel like they're related? In other words, do they belong to the same general category? If so, place the second card on top of the first one. If not, place the second card beside the first one. Move on to the next card. Does it belong to the same category as either of the first two? If so, discard to the appropriate pile. If not, create a new pile. You get the idea.

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Don't use the original goal that inspired a content card as the sole criterion about whether it belongs to a particular category. Your categories may follow the goals of your site very closely, or they might not. For the purposes of this exercise, try to view your content cards as independent of their original goals, and see how else these pieces of content might link up.

After you deal the last card, count the number of piles on your desk. For most sites, anywhere from three to six piles is about right. If you have fewer than three, your categories are probably too general. Look over your cards again, and see if you can create another couple of piles. If you have more than six, which is highly common, your categories are probably too specific. Try to combine related piles into a single, larger pile. However, once again, don't force your site into an arbitrary structure. It's possible that very large sites might well cover more than six discrete content areas, while very small sites might fit into one or two areas. The three-to-six range is a guideline, not a rule. That said, most sites, even the very largest and the smallest, tend to work best within this range, so give a good-faith effort to trim your site down or bulk it up before you suspect that your site might be an exception.

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Fewer content categories are better, so, when in doubt, go for the smaller number (as long as it isn't smaller than three). Once your site is up and running, breaking off new content categories when they warrant their independence is easier than collecting two or three separate strands and weaving them together again.

One common pattern to watch out for is to organize by type rather than by meaning. You might have grouped together all the image-type content cards, for instance, or, like in Figure 3-1, you may have placed all the down-load-type content cards in a single pile. This kind of thinking is perfectly logical. Even so, it isn't the most useful ordering scheme for a web site, because your visitors browse your site according to the content that they want to find, not necessarily the form that this content happens to take. Try putting yourself in your visitor's place. Where would you first look if you wanted to find a press release or a product brochure? You probably wouldn't go for the Downloads section. You'd search out the News or Products areas first. Redistributing type only piles of content cards according to meaning, as in Figure 3-2, makes for a more web-friendly way of thinking.

Figure 3-1. One pile of cards contains all the download-type content

When your piles are in suitable shape, take the first pile of cards, come up with a brief name that describes its category, and jot it down at the top of each card in the pile. Don't dwell on the names for hours on end. The obvious ones are usually the best: Products, Services, Sales, Contact Us, About Us, and so on. These category headings will eventually become the main sections of your site.

Figure 3-2. The piles reorganized by meaning rather than type

After you label the cards, consider each pile in turn. Gather up all the cards of a particular pile, and deal them into more specific groupssubcategories of the main category heading. Then label the cards according to their subcategory; Figure 3-3 shows the general Products category with two subcategories, Current and Past. If you don't find any obvious subcategories in any given pile, especially if the pile is rather small, that's fine, just as long as you're not being lazy about it. Your site will be better off in the end if you organize the content thoroughly and accurately.

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As before, fewer subcategories and sub-subcategories are better, especially when you're first starting out. Watch out for unnecessary depth!

Conversely, some of your subcategory piles, particularly the larger ones, may feel like they could use additional structure. If so, gather each subcategory pile in turn, deal them out into sub-subcategories, and tack the new designations onto the labels of the cards. You can repeat this process as often as your site requires, but be careful about going deeper than three levels of organization. Sub-subcategories like products/current/American market and products/current/European market are fine if you need them, but products/current/American market/Philadelphia is probably pushing it. To organize at this precise level of detail, try removing one of the higher categories first before you resort to levels four and beyond. If you market products by city, then you probably don't need to divide the cities into American and European. The name of the city tells you everything that you need to know.

Figure 3-3. Current and Past subcategories in the Products category

BEST BET

Don't venture beyond sub-subcategores, or three eves of organization, unless you have a good reason.

Why keep within three levels of organization? It goes back to your visitors, as it always does, and something called the three-click rule: your visitors should be able to find the content that they want within three clicks from anywhere on your site. If you think of each level of structure as a clickhome page to reviews section, reviews section to rock section, rock section to Pink Floyd pagethen those are your three clicks. Remember, your visitors are impatient people. That's why they're on the Web and not in a library somewhere or wandering through a shopping mall. Their attention spans are short. They want your content now, not five seconds from now or however long it takes for the additional clicks. Also, a simple, straightforward web site is easier to navigate than a large, complex one. The fewer levels there are in your site structure, the less likely you'll lose your visitors.

TECHTALK

The three-click rule states that your visitors should be able to find the content that they want within three clicks from anywhere on your site.

Now, whenever somebody mentions the three-click rule in a room full of web designers, all conversation about everything else immediately stops, and the great unresolved debate about whether the three-click rule actually works picks up where it left off last week or last month or four years ago. Far be it from this humble tome to resolve the matter once and for all. Suffice it to say that the three-click rule works at least for some designers, and everyone agrees that fewer clicks are better, so the three-click rule can't be too far from the truth.