The Five A's Of Quality Online Content
2001-11-07 admin
Manual Personalization – each user controls which information is displayed
on their home page, a capability common to portal sites such as “My Yahoo.”
Relevance Personalization
– based on evidence of the user’s interests, the Web site automatically delivers content. For example, if the user has purchased shoes, a Web site could suggest socks.
Precision Personalization – based on the user’s characteristics, the Web site delivers only content that’s relevant and omits all irrelevant content. At its most extreme, this means that content could vary all the way down to a word in a sentence or a cell in a table. Because XML supports very fine granularity of information, it’s uniquely well suited to supporting the “Precision Personalization” described above.
In every case, the primary value of personalization is that it gives the user more control, either explicitly or implicitly, over the content that he or she sees.
Accessible more easily searched – customized content helps users more easily find relevant information. The key difference is context: where typical Web searches look across everything, a contextual search limits the search to content that meets a profile. For example, if the user seeks repair information, a contextual search would allow the user to search for information only within those documents specifically related to repair. XML’s support for creating information hierarchies provides the key for improved information searching.
Adaptable to the medium: Web, print, CD-ROM, wireless – in nearly every organization, authors create content for a specific medium and a separate group massages that content for each additional medium. In most cases, authors use word processing or desktop publishing tools to create content for print and a separate group converts that print content for the Web. In the process of conversion, the Web group breaks up large documents into Websized chunks or for personalized assembly, adds navigation aids, adjusts formatting, generates additional links, and coordinates the deployment of related content additions and updates. In the process, the Web team creates a separate content repository with no automated connection to the original.
Actionable – interactive – any content that invites an action should let the user initiate that action. The most common example of actionable content is an online catalog where you can click on a product to order it. Additional examples of actionable content include:
While stepping through a diagnostic procedure, the user can not only read each step but also enter the result of each step to guide the next step.
When the user determines the need for a replacement part, the user can click on the part to learn price and availability.
Aggregated from multiple sources – one of the key benefits of customized content is its currency: by pulling together content from various sources at the moment the user requests it, the user receives the most current and accurate information. A typical instance of aggregated content is a document that contains information from database fields. For example, a product description can include current price and availability drawn from a database as well as lists of features, benefits and specifications.
PG Bartlett is VP Marketing
www.arbortext.com
Matching content to quality takes five ‘A's, says PG Bartlett, $$$
7 November 2001
Five key ingredients deliver high-quality unstructured information that truly meets the needs of each individual information consumer.
Information must be:
Aware of the needs of each user (personalization) – the best Web sites alter the content each user sees to meet the needs of that user. There are three primary types of personalization available, listed in order of prevalence:
on their home page, a capability common to portal sites such as “My Yahoo.”
– based on evidence of the user’s interests, the Web site automatically delivers content. For example, if the user has purchased shoes, a Web site could suggest socks.
In every case, the primary value of personalization is that it gives the user more control, either explicitly or implicitly, over the content that he or she sees.
Accessible more easily searched – customized content helps users more easily find relevant information. The key difference is context: where typical Web searches look across everything, a contextual search limits the search to content that meets a profile. For example, if the user seeks repair information, a contextual search would allow the user to search for information only within those documents specifically related to repair. XML’s support for creating information hierarchies provides the key for improved information searching.
Adaptable to the medium: Web, print, CD-ROM, wireless – in nearly every organization, authors create content for a specific medium and a separate group massages that content for each additional medium. In most cases, authors use word processing or desktop publishing tools to create content for print and a separate group converts that print content for the Web. In the process of conversion, the Web group breaks up large documents into Websized chunks or for personalized assembly, adds navigation aids, adjusts formatting, generates additional links, and coordinates the deployment of related content additions and updates. In the process, the Web team creates a separate content repository with no automated connection to the original.
Actionable – interactive – any content that invites an action should let the user initiate that action. The most common example of actionable content is an online catalog where you can click on a product to order it. Additional examples of actionable content include:
Aggregated from multiple sources – one of the key benefits of customized content is its currency: by pulling together content from various sources at the moment the user requests it, the user receives the most current and accurate information. A typical instance of aggregated content is a document that contains information from database fields. For example, a product description can include current price and availability drawn from a database as well as lists of features, benefits and specifications.
PG Bartlett is VP Marketing
www.arbortext.com
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