Managing the Politics of Your Web Site’s Information Architecture

Learn how to relieve the political pressure on your Web site’s information architecture while enhancing your site’s overall value to the entire organization.

By C. David Gammel

Some days it may seem that the biggest problem with your Web site is not the technology that powers it but the power struggles that threaten to undermine it. Whether in a large, decentralized organization or in a small, local nonprofit, a Web site can turn into a battleground on which everyone fights for prime spots on the home page to highlight their programs. Too often, the winners are the ones who are best at internal politics. The losers are the weaker negotiators—and the visitors who give up in frustration without finding what they want.

It doesn’t have to be this way. By thinking about what’s behind the struggle, you as a Web site manager can de-emphasize internal politics while helping organizational stakeholders achieve their goals through—not in spite of—your Web site’s information architecture.

IA and Navigation

What exactly is information architecture? Web pioneers Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville define it as “the combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system�? (Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, 2nd Edition, O’Reilly & Associates, 2002). Also called IA, information architecture drives many aspects of Web site design. It influences how a site’s content and services are organized, presented in navigation, and coded with metadata. In essence, it defines your organizational philosophy for presenting your content.

IA’s most visible manifestation is your site’s navigation system, as conveyed by the menus, footer links, and other buttons and functions your visitors see first. These imply a hierarchy in how important your content is. Items at the top level of a menu are, by implication, more important than items listed in submenus. Items not listed seem to be, by omission, not important at all.

A navigation system’s hierarchical nature—combined with the high visibility of major links, menus, and buttons—is what encourages content authors and other stakeholders to focus on IA as the primary way to market their programs and services.

Ideally, your content organization and navigation systems evolve over time, changing gradually as your organization changes or to correct mistaken assumptions you may have made when drafting the IA. However, this requires taking an iterative design approach to your Web site, meaning that you make many small, gradual changes over time. Most groups fail to do this. Too often, the site structure is only updated every few years, during a massive redesign. These kinds of redesigns require many resources and can be very disruptive to your Web site visitors.

And thus the political problems. Your stakeholders see navigation as the only way to draw attention to their materials—and your navigation frustrates them by changing slowly or not at all. The result is pent-up demand for attention and heavy internal jockeying for prime placement, especially on the home page navigational elements. Feeling pressured, your Web site managers focus on how to deflect the political heat instead of on how to meet the stakeholder needs that created the pressure in the first place. This is ultimately counterproductive for everyone.

The Real Driver of IA Battles: Outcomes

To relieve the problem, you need to realize what’s behind your stakeholders’ struggles: They want to market the programs that will help them meet their performance goals, and they fear they’ll miss opportunities if low placement in the navigational scheme render them invisible.

The solution is to take two steps to help them meet their objectives:

Create multiple methods for guiding the flow of traffic on your site.
Identify the best ways to use these methods to achieve your stakeholders’ desired results.

By having several methods other than navigational menus to drive traffic on your site, you won’t just relieve the political pressures. You’ll also enhance the Web site’s overall value to your entire organization by encouraging a focus on contributing to tangible outcomes.

You also need to help them clarify what they are trying to achieve. Someone may come to you with a request to add a large graphic to the home page to promote a product without mentioning that they want the graphic because your search engine does not return their product high enough in the results for relevant search terms. You have to ask probing questions about what they are trying to achieve in order to get past the solution that they think they need.

You can then apply your diverse array of traffic guiding tools once you have identified their actual desired outcomes.

Create a Web Management Toolbox

As a Web site manager, you need a diverse set of tools that you can use individually or in combination to help stakeholders succeed. To get off to a good start, consider the following tools and methods

1. Editorial calendars

An editorial calendar is a simple planning tool for identifying (1) what you will highlight on the site and (2) when you will do so. If you don’t already have editorial sections on your home page and at other major entry points, create them. Then plan what to highlight in each section for every week of the year. You can manage the calendar with a simple spreadsheet that maps the 52 weeks of the year to the major editorial positions on your site.

It helps that most organizations have regular business cycles that are easy to map to an editorial calendar. Since product launches, specials, events and other foreseeable items are scheduled well in advance, you should have plenty of lead time for working with stakeholders to develop copy that will guide visitors to relevant content when they most need to view it. This way you meet stakeholder needs without having to tweak the navigation of your site for a short-term goal.

Of course, not everything can be scheduled. Having editorial positions also lets you respond to a rapidly changing environment by providing space to highlight critical issues and update as needed. This, too, relieves the pressure to change your overall IA to satisfy a very short-term, if important, need.

Over time, an effective editorial calendar will dramatically increase the value your site creates for stakeholders throughout your organization. This, alone, is a worthy goal for managing your Web site.

2. In-house Advertising

Don’t overlook the value of using excess banner-advertising inventory for in-house promotions. It also makes sense to implement a banner-ad management system exclusively for your own advertisements even if you do not otherwise sell advertising and sponsorships. Such a system allows you to create visual promotions for your stakeholders’ programs and services, again without having to disrupt your navigation and IA.

Web site visitors are already interested in your organization or they wouldn’t be browsing your site. As a result, your house ads should provide higher click-through and conversion rates than your other paid advertising.

3. Context-based Marketing

Be on the lookout for opportunities throughout your Web content to match topics to marketing needs. But don’t stop there. Watch for context-based promotional opportunities in all your electronic media. If you have an e-newsletter on topic X, be sure to promote your products and services related to product X. This is essentially what Google does so effectively with its AdWords keyword advertising program.

4. Search Engine Tuning

Search is always going to be one of the most popular tools that people use to find content and services on your Web site. Explore how you can adjust the settings of your search engine so that it delivers more effective results that contribute to the goals of your Web site stakeholders.

You can also define ‘best bets’ for particular searches in order to float results to the top of the results pages. This provides a great tool for helping your Web site stakeholders to drive traffic to their programs that is easy to implement and does not require changes to your navigation.

A Final Note on the Point of It All

You may “own�? your organization’s Web site, but that’s not your true purpose. Your purpose is to help others in your organization meet their goals. By encouraging stakeholders to let you know of their Web-related needs early in their planning processes, and then by bringing a diverse set of tools to the task, you’ll spend your days helping to achieve outcomes rather than mediating turf battles. Both your information architecture, and your organization, will be better for it.

High Context Consulting, LLC