Taxonomy Best Practices

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A few simple guidelines can steer your taxonomy development. While some may seem obvious, they bear repeating, much as soccer players must drill on passing, blocking, and shooting whether they are beginners or professionals.

Use Industry-Accepted Vocabulary

The taxonomy is all about the terms that you use. If you are not an expert on the subject matter of your portal, find someone who is to assist. You will want to use the correct terms and understand synonyms for those terms as well. Nearly every discipline has its share of jargon, as well as more precise meanings assigned to common words.

Be Consistent

Try to use a single classification approach. If it makes sense to combine approaches, keep the classification consistent on the sibling level. Use consistent vocabulary and thesauri . Maintain a consistent degree of generality in sibling categories.

Control Depth

A flat taxonomy ensures that a user will be able to locate information quickly. On the other hand, the information should be sufficiently segmented to make the taxonomy worthwhile. A flat taxonomy ensures that users can find information quickly with fewer clicks. A good rule of thumb is to go no more than 3 “6 levels deep.

Control Breadth

A focused taxonomy ensures that users can easily digest the scope of information. Just as there is a limit to the patience of users in traversing a taxonomy from top to bottom, there is a limit to the width of the taxonomy. For most purposes, you should consider starting with 10 “15 top-level categories. Assuming you restrict yourself to 15 categories at lower levels and are using no more than 3 “6 levels, your taxonomy could then hold a maximum of 15 6 or 11,390,625 entries. A typist entering these terms at 100 words per minute would need about 80 days working 24 hours a day to complete the task. If you were more restrained and confined yourself to a 3-level taxonomy and a width of 15 entries, you would need to shoehorn your content into a mere 3,375 categories.

Divide and Conquer

Taxonomy development is much like spring cleaning at your house. It is a frightening prospect to tackle the entire project at one time, so you should start in one corner of your taxonomy house and complete a room at a time. You will have ample opportunity later to see your errors and refine your approach.

Keep Users in Mind

Be sure to consider the needs of your target users, and understand what they are trying to do on your portal and what mental baggage (or lack thereof) they bring with them. One of the frequent taxonomy mistakes is to assume outsiders have inside knowledge of your organization. Many taxonomies are built to reflect the bureaucratic structure of an organization rather than the functions of the departments. For instance, if a county government were to assign taxonomy development to each agency or office and then merge the results together, you would have a significant amount of overlap and duplication. Moreover, the taxonomy might contain "blind spots" for functions that didn't cleanly map to a particular office.

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Building Portals, Intranets, and Corporate Web Sites Using Microsoft Servers
Building Portals, Intranets, and Corporate Web Sites Using Microsoft Servers
ISBN: 0321159632
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 164

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