Your web site or intranet has major problems, and everyone knows it. Worse, it's been that way for a very, very long time.
Occasionally someone tries to do something about it. Senior leaders typically start with the insanely ambitious goal to "fix it once and for all". The result? They throw a few pieces of expensive technology at the problem, or they launch a huge redesign initiative that distracts everyone for a year or two and often results in minimal, cosmetic improvements.
You, however, will continue to be stuck dealing with the mess, condemned to repeat this painful cycle every few years. Unless you attend my workshop. I've been at this for over 15 years; I've seen (and will show you) more realistic and effective techniques for improving your site's performance that will cost far less than redesigns.
You can't make your site perfect, but you can make it much better: let me show you how to tune your information architecture.
The day will include:
- A very quick overview of information architecture—so we're all on the same page
- Practical ways to prioritize your information architecture's challenges and keep it tuned
- A rich combination of lecture, discussion, and hands-on exercises
- A handout, including all the slides and a checklist of things you can do to tune your site's performance
- A copy of my new book, Site Search Analytics
- And huge savings from foregoing your next information architecture redesign in favor of a adaptable approach
Get a taste of what we'll cover: view the full presentation (via SlideShare).
What you'll learn:
- How to prioritize the IA challenges your organization should be addressing, rather than wasting money on ambitious attempts to "boil the ocean"
- Practical steps you can take to tune and improve your site's:
- Top-down navigation (e.g., main page, site index)
- Contextual navigation (e.g., moving horizontally through the guts of your content)
- Search performance (e.g., search results design, best bets
- Ways to reframe and reposition "one-off" projects, such as content inventory, as ongoing processes
- How to analyze search data and develop content models—two areas of opportunity for improvement that many organizations overlook
- Talking points and approaches that can help change your leaders' minds about redesigns
Information architects, content strategists, user researchers, designers, UX team managers, and anyone who is responsible for managing and improving a large web site or intranet.
Lou Rosenfeld is an information architecture consultant and founder of Rosenfeld Media, a publisher of short, practical user experience books. He has helped numerous Fortune 500s and other large, messy, political enterprises make their information easier to find. Lou is co-author of the best-selling Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (O'Reilly & Associates; 3rd edition, 2006) regarded as the bible of information architecture, and Search Analytics for Your Site: Conversations with Your customers (Rosenfeld Media, 2011). He is co-founder of the Information Architecture Institute and user experience book publisher Rosenfeld Media. More about Lou.
These good folks are generously sponsoring our Fall 2011 workshops:
