» Information Architecture

HELP US!

Since the start of my career, I have had a never ending feud with Google about their double ad serving policy.  For starters, Google’s customer service team is setup in such a way that they help first time search rookies the same way they help Google certified companies.  There should be some benefit to being a Google Adwords certified company other than just being able to showoff their logo.  I personally believe that these folks should be escalated up the ladder a bit; why else did we spend the time to take your certification.  It’s annoying that every time, I ask a question, I start at the bottom with the same canned answers.  Not to mention, that we spend in excess of a million dollars a year with Google. (more…)

Embracing the green space in today’s eco-friendly world has proven to be an overwhelming success for my client and friend, Shawn Burst of Jeriko House.  Every bit of this story is like a marketing fairy tale.  Hug a tree, test the waters and find yourself in a forest of greenies lining up at your door for what could be the next, most revolutionary home to hit the housing market.

It all begins in the wake of hurricane Katrina when Shawn had just lost his family’s dream home.  Determined to build a new home and not willing to wait years, he set out on a mission to find a new high-end housing alternative overseas.  After visiting engineering firms in Germany and exotic finishing manufacturers in Bali, Shawn came home with the most incredible vision which he named Jeriko House.  He called BOALT to design and develop a new alternative home brand literally from scratch.

After investing a significant budget in developing his website, he left faith and one press release to do the rest.  It was only a matter of days before the website started to received hundreds of visitors a day from blogs such as InHabitat, TreeHugger, JetsonGreen, Luxist and Architect Magazine to name a few.  Some reviews better than others but you know what they say, all press is good press.
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I have so many prospects that spend so much money on search marketing but haven’t taken the time to consider that good design and content will get them more actions.  We measure return on investment (ROI) based on conversions or how frequently a visitor reaches a goal on your website.  Generally that goal is to get the visitor to a thank you page for filling out a lead or an order form.

The first step to increasing your ROI is to define your goals.  It could be multiple goals.  For example, the BOALT website has two goals: a contact inquiry and request for proposal form.  If you don’t have goals on your website - that’s a problem. You might want to consider adding a form or two.

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There seems to be an ongoing debate within our agency on how much time should be spent on information architecture.  In retrospect, I think the main reason we previously focused so much time on information architecture was because we needed a client sign off and found it more efficient to make changes in this stage.  But what happens when we’re working on one of our own start ups?  How should we approach information architecture?

The below snippet is from a 30 page set of wireframes that we provided to Aspen Snowmass when we designed and developed their booking engine user interface.  Information architecture was a must for this project because making changes in the development phase would have been extremely inefficient.

37Signals in their Getting Real book, swears by building out the interface first.  “Too many apps start with a program-first mentality. That’s a bad idea. Programming is the heaviest component of building an app, meaning it’s the most expensive and hardest to change. Instead, start by designing first.” (more…)