1.5. Why Information Architecture Matters You now understand what information architecture is and what it isn't. So, why is it important? Why should you care? Why should your company or your clients invest time and money in the design of their information architectures? What is the return on investment (ROI)? We'll tackle these tough questions in detail later in the book, but for now, let's hit the highlights without getting bogged down in subtleties. When you calculate the importance of information architecture to your organization, you should consider the following costs and value propositions:
The cost of finding information -
What does it cost if every employee in your company spends an extra five minutes per day struggling to find answers on your intranet?[§] What is the cost of frustrating your customers with a poorly organized web site? [§] Jakob Nielsen deserves credit for publicizing the fact that the costs of poor navigation-system design in a large enterprise can add up to millions of dollars of lost employee productivity.
The cost of not finding information -
How many bad decisions are made every day in your organization because employees didn't find the information they needed? How much duplication of effort results from this disconnect? How many customers do you lose because they can't find the product they want on your web site? How much do you spend every day providing telephone support to existing customers because they hate navigating your online technical-support database?
The value of education -
What is the value of educating your customers about new products and services related to the ones they're actively seeking on your web site?
The cost of construction -
What does it cost to design and build a web site? How much does it cost to redo it six months later because it doesn't support findability or doesn't scale?
The cost of maintenance -
Similarly, what does it cost to ensure that good designs don't crumble over time? Will the people who maintain your site know where to put new content and when to remove outdated content?
The cost of training -
For internal, mission-critical information systems that support call centers, for example, what does it cost to train employees to use that system? How much could you save if it wasn't so complicated to use?
The value of brand -
No matter how beautiful your web site is, if customers can't find what they need, your brand loses value in their eyes. How much did you spend on those brand-building TV commercials? And the list goes on. In your particular situation, there are sure to be a whole slew of opportunities to make money, save money, improve employee or customer satisfaction, or just plain make the world a better place. Figure out what they are and communicate them as clearly and directly as possible. We're not saying this is easy. In fact, it's very difficult to calculate an exact return on an information architecture investmentthere are simply too many variables. This is really no different from most other areas of activity within the business world. It's just that people in more traditional areas like sales, marketing, engineering, human resources, and administration have had more time to get their stories straight. |
