rightsizing your digital presence
TRANSCRIPT
Rightsizingyour digital presence
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We need to reframe the conversation
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The cost of bulk
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The cost of bulk
• Difficult to find information…• … for your audience / internally• … for content you know is there / that is entirely hidden or buried• … for browse / search
• Difficult to cross-sell / reward being “close”• Inaccurate information• Difficult to make broad improvements• Incomplete information• Project low quality• Difficult internally to understand and optimize
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The benefit of bulk
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The benefit of bulk
• Please internal stakeholders• Easier to think in-the-moment/narrowly rather than long-
term/broadly• Ability to create target pages (for search engines) for narrow
topics• Avoid difficult conversations
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page section whole site
we are usually focused narrowly
but critical problems are
here8
Some sites are naturally (and optimally) going to be bigger than others
DHC
LibraryofCongress
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But each can do better.
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Why is rightsizing difficult?
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Why is rightsizing difficult?
• Most of the ”benefits” of bulk• Difficulty to imagine end state• Difficulty to define how to get there• Difficulty in how to get buy-in
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? 13
Drop Keep
or
1) Drop/keep →Dispositions
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integrate
change format
rewrite
brand new
drop
keep as-is
merge
archive
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Yes, delete is the most satisfying…
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… but sometimes fixing content is more useful…
especially merge17
… and other times leaving it there but isolating it makes sense (levels of “archive”).
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Exercise: look at representative pages to decide on dispositions
http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/sousa/sousa-timeline.html
https://www.loc.gov/collections/john-philip-sousa/
Alsoseeotherexamples:
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Regardless, we need to move away from focusing only on individual pages.
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2) Individual pages →
Underlying site structure
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Structure
• Templating model• Content model• Multi-site structure• Information architecture• Integration• Team alignment
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ü Templating modelü Content modelü Multi-site structureü Information
architectureü Integrationü Team alignment
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Consistent
hobb
s.dire
ct/coh
eren
ce
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Connected
hobb
s.dire
ct/coh
eren
ce
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Junksites,bysitecount Junksites,
bypagecount
3) Individual pages → Rules about pages
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We need to decide what to do with every page, but we don’t need to look at every
page to make that determination.
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These five press releases are bad. We should delete these.
Do we need press releases, at all? Let’s just cut them all.
No
Yes33
✘
✘✘
✘
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Case study: culling topic pages
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100
200
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500
600
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800
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#oftopics
BeforeRedesign
AfterRedesign
Aftercull
34http://hobbs.direct/exploding-topics
Assess Gather metrics
Agree on cull Retag Relaunch
Example process for culling topic pages
35http://hobbs.direct/exploding-topics
36http://hobbs.direct/exploding-topics
37http://hobbs.direct/exploding-topics
Remember: we still need to be able to generate the list of what needs to drop and other dispositions.
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Factors in deciding dispositions
• Business goals• General quality• Audience demand• Implementation realities
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Startwiththecontent
Startwiththestructure
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Factors in deciding dispositionBusinessGoals
• Extend /promote/enablebusinessgoals• Leadgeneration/affiliation/purchase/repeat
purchase• Project“whoyouare”
AudienceDemand
• Off-sitedemand• On-sitedemand
GeneralQuality
• Allow visitortogetinformationtheywantwithoutanotherclick(especiallybyprovidingcontext)
• Demonstratedcommitmenttoquality• ROT
ImplementationRealities
• Dispositionsandestimates• Availablepeople/money /resources• Underlying“productcatalog”• Existingworkprogram• Politics andworldview
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No
42Yes
Spider Extractinformation MergeGA Bucket Dispositions
Folders,Filegroup,subdomain
Automaticallycrawlsite
Metadataadded
Action Dedupe&Pullmetadatafrom
address
SEOtypedata(H1,Title,meta-desc…)
Mergedatafromanothersource:GoogleAnalytics
Pageviews Buckets Dispositions
Rulestoassignbuckets
Bucket→Disposition
43http://www.inventorycaptain.com
• Can you define any rules (what the logical bucket is and what the disposition is) for some of the content (perhaps just one bucket)?
• Exactly what content / what is the content count for the bucket(s)?
Downloadtheexercisespreadsheetathttp://hobbs.direct/confab2017-sheet2
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4) One-time cleanup → Constant vigilance
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https://web
sitep
rodu
ctmanagem
ent.com
/
hobbs.direct/report-microsite-checklist
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1) 2)
3)4)
Drop/keep → DispositionsIndividual pages → Underlying site structureIndividual pages → Rules about pagesOne time cleanup → Constant vigilance
Reframe!
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Reframing is a prerequisite. We also need to convince people.
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5) Tactical → Define vision
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55http://hobbs.direct/vision-examples
Inventories and estimating effort
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http://www.inventorycaptain.com
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Sources of data
• View• Origin• Usage• Intent
61http://hobbs.direct/rethink-sources
Sources of data
• View• Origin• Usage• Intent
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Applyingthe data
• Add• Merge• Scrape• Override
X
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Apply rules
metadata → bucket bucket → disposition
http://hobbs.direct/panning-gold
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Rules, low tech
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http://hobbs.direct/random
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http://hobbs.direct/gap
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http://hobbs.direct/gap
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http://hobbs.direct/estimate
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http://hobbs.direct/estimate
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http://hobbs.direct/estimate
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http://hobbs.direct/estimation-sheet
Global & large rollouts: bucket by type of site
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