6.1. Why You Should Care About Labeling Prerecorded or canned communications, including print, the Web, scripted radio, and TV, are very different from interactive real-time communications. When we talk with another person, we rely on constant user feedback to help us hone the way we get our message across. We subconsciously notice our conversation partner zoning out, getting ready to make her own point, or beginning to clench her fingers into an angry fist, and we react by shifting our own style of communication, perhaps by raising our speaking volume, increasing our use of body language, changing a rhetorical tack, or fleeing. Unfortunately, when we "converse" with users through the web sites we design, the feedback isn't quite so immediate, if it exists at all. There are certainly exceptionsblogs, for examplebut in most cases a site serves as an intermediary that slowly translates messages from the site's owners and authors to users, and back again. This "telephone game" muddies the message. So in such a disintermediated medium with few visual cues, communicating is harder, and labeling is therefore more important. To minimize this disconnect, information architects must try their best to design labels that speak the same language as a site's users while reflecting its content. And, just as in a dialogue, when there is a question or confusion over a label, there should be clarification and explanation. Labels should educate users about new concepts and help them quickly identify familiar ones. The conversation between user and site owner generally begins on a site's main page. To get a sense of how successful this conversation might be, look at a site's main page, do your best to ignore the other aspects of its design, and ask yourself a few questions: Do the prominent labels on this page stand out to you? If they do, why? (Often, successful labels are invisible; they don't get in your way.) If a label is new, unanticipated, or confusing, is there an explanation? Or are you required to click through to learn more? Although unscientific, this label testing exercise will help you get a sense of how the conversation might go with actual users. Let's try it with an average, run-of-the-mill main page from the U-Haul site,[*] which is shown in Figure 6-1. [*] In fairness to the good folks at U-Haul, their site is much improved since we grabbed this screen shot. But as the old design remains a wonderfully useful example of labeling problems, we've decided to keep it.
Figure 6-1. How do you respond to these labels? 
The U-Haul main page's labels don't seem terribly out of the ordinary. However, mediocrity isn't an indicator of value or success; in fact, many trouble spots arise from an informal cruise through the page's labels. We've identified them as follows:
Main -
"Main" refers to what? In web parlance, "Main" typically has something to do with a main page. Here, it describes a set of useful link labels such as "Get Rates & Reservations" and "Find a U-Haul Location." Why label these important links as "Main"? There are other possible labels, or visual design techniques could have been used to make the links stand out without mixing things up by using a conventional term like "Main." What exactly will be found under "College Connection"? It sounds like a branded program. Although it may represent useful content and functionality, that label sounds like part of U-Haul's corporate-speak, not the language of users.
Products & Services -
If I wanted a hand truck, I'd look under "Hand trucks," not "Dollies." This disconnect may be due to regional differences: U-Haul is based in Phoenix, and I'm from New York. But which is the more common usage? Or if both labels are comparably common, should U-Haul list both terms?
SuperGraphics -
Have you ever heard this term before? SuperGraphics are not graphics; they're apparently something better ("super"). English is wonderfully flexible, and new words are invented every day. But it's not realistic to expect impatient users to catch up with your linguistic creativity. Are "SuperGraphics" as important as "Products & Services"? What will we find behind the link "Pictorial Tribute to North America"photos, a travelogue? And just what does such a tribute have to do with leasing trucks anyway?
Corporate -
Do users understand what "Corporate" means? The term sounds, well, rather corporate, as if it might be intended for employees, suppliers, and others involved with the corporation. Perhaps the more conventional label "About Us" might be more appropriate. "Company Move" is a service for corporate relocations, not anything about U-Haul moving to new headquarters. Other links don't appear to belong here: like "Corporate Move," "Truck Sales" seems like it should go under "Products & Services." "Real Estate" and "Missing or Abandoned Equipment" are oddities that don't seem to belong anywhere. Is "Corporate" really another way of saying "Miscellaneous"?
Buy Online -
Like "SuperGraphics," this label describes a single link, which is wasteful. And that link, "The U-Haul Store," seems to be a place to purchase or lease products and services. Why is "The U-Haul Store" set aside here? Does U-Haul want to accentuate it for some reason? If that reason has little to do with users, perhaps it's got everything to do with internal politicsperhaps one U-Haul VP owns "Products & Services," another owns "The U-Haul Store," and until they battle out their turf issues and one is extinguished, never the twain shall meet. The results of this quick exercise can be summarized by these categories:
The labels aren't representative and don't differentiate -
Too many of U-Haul's labels don't represent the content they link to or precede. Other than clicking through, users have no way to learn what "Corporate Move" means, or what the difference is between "Products & Services" and "The U-Haul Store." Groupings of dissimilar items (e.g., "Truck Sales," "Public Relations," and "Missing or Abandoned Equipment") don't provide any context for what those items' labels really represent. There is too much potential for confusion to consider these labels effective.
The labels are jargony, not user-centric -
Labels like "College Connection" and "SuperGraphics" can expose an organization that, despite its best intentions, does not consider the importance of its customers' needs as important as its own goals, politics, and culture. This is often the case when web sites use organizational jargon for their labels. You've probably seen such sites; their labels are crystal clear, obvious, and enlightening, as long as you're one of the .01 percent of users who actually work for the sponsoring organization. A sure way to lose a sale is to label your site's product-ordering system as an "Order Processing and Fulfillment Facility."
The labels waste money -
There are too many chances for a user to step into one of the many confusing cognitive traps presented by U-Haul's labels. And any time an architecture intrudes on a user's experience and forces him to pause and say "huh?", there is a reasonable chance that he will give up on a site and go somewhere else, especially given the competitive nature of this medium. In other words, confusing labels can negate the investment made to design and build a useful site and to market that site to intended audiences.
The labels don't make a good impression -
The way you say or represent information in your site says a lot about you, your organization, and its brand. If you've ever read an airline magazine, you're familiar with those ads for some educational cassette series that develops your vocabulary. "The words you use can make or break your business deals" or something like that. The same is true with a web site's labelingpoor, unprofessional labeling can destroy a user's confidence in that organization. While it may have spent heavily on traditional branding, U-Haul doesn't seem to have given much thought to the labels on the most important piece of its virtual real estateits main page. Customers might wonder if U-Haul will be similarly haphazard and thoughtless in the way it services its fleet of vehicles or handles the customer hotline. Like writing or any other form of professional communication, labels do matter. It's fair to say that they're as integral to an effective web presence as any other aspect of your web site, be it brand, visual design, functionality, content, or navigability. |
