October 17, 2005
Organizing text-rich sites
How can a text-rich, verbose site be organized better? I've worked on a website in the past and it is coming due for a redesign. Where do you begin? I am challenged at convincing the company that they must consolidate all the text links and try to categorize them better to eliminate user overload when first landing on the site.
There are really two questions here. The first has to do with where to begin when you are redesigning a site, and the second has to do with one of the most common themes we see—convincing management that specific changes are needed.
Having reviewed the e-commerce site you sent to us, we think the home page in particular is text-heavy and does not efficiently direct users to the most frequent or important information on the site. We counted over 75 text links on the home page, not including left- or right-side navigational elements. This is clearly information overload for first-time users of your site, and they are likely wondering “What can I do here?” or just leaving the site. The current site also makes it difficult for returning users to quickly scan and select where they need to go.
The best way to discover inefficiencies and issues with the current site is to conduct a usability study. One recommendation is to work with representative users to consolidate some of the content into major categories, and then conduct a competitive study between the old site and your redesigned site. Capture metrics such as completion rate per task on each site, as well as time to complete tasks.
Gathering this information will help you with the second question: how to show your company the value of a redesign that consolidates content. If possible, have key management sit in on some of the usability sessions, and at the very least, use the data from the study to convince the company that changes will increase revenue, decrease support costs or otherwise positively affect the bottom line.
It might also help to refer to our content usability research. Rewriting text according to our guidelines can more than double a website’s usability, our research has found. In addition, we offer training on content usability, and we can develop customized content and design guidelines that will help you avoid issues like the one you described.
