Creating an Exceptional Web Experience: Designing for Findability

by  Peter Wilkerson , Search & Discovery Practice Area Manager

If a user can't locate what they need on a website, then the site is not providing an Exceptional Web Experience.

Findability is a key attribute of an Exceptional Web Experience.  Findability doesn't just happen because a website has a navigational hierarchy or even search.  A website has it because findability was considered at the earliest stages of design. Many sites can be designed in a way that groups content into logical and meaningful clusters which are accessed via the site's hierarchical navigation tree. If all supported users look for information along the lines of site navigation, then that is a good step toward excellent findability. 

Sometimes a hierarchical navigation tree doesn't meet the needs of users. Two scenarios where static navigational structure may not be enough are:

1. When the navigational path is too deep or more complex than users want to take the time to navigate. I label this aspect a site's Findability Velocity.
2. When users need to locate information that is spread across multiple navigation paths and cannot be easily co-located together.  I refer to this aspect as a site's Cross-Domain Seeking Requirements.

One common way of addressing issues with a site's low Findability Velocity or high Cross-Domain Seeking Requirements is to use site search.  Like hierarchical navigation, site search can also be a very effective tool to provide Exceptional Findability.  Often, when taken together, navigation and search are more than sufficient for end users.

However, there are occasions when the amount of information is so vast that navigation and search together do not provide the experience needed for the users.  This can occur when a user enters in one or two search terms and gets hundreds, if not thousands, of results - a case of too much of a good thing.  A well-designed search interface can help a user refine their search but often the user still feels like they've entered the "wild west" as far as locating information specific to their needs.

In cases where a site's Findability Velocity is slow, Cross-Domain Seeking is high and when searching for information leaves users feeling like their are in the untamed wild west. There is a third tool available. I call this third mechanism "Dynamic Navigation."  (Some people refer to it as guided navigation). 

To understand Dynamic Navigation, think about a website's hierarchical navigation.  Often each level of a navigational structure reflects some common characteristic and presents users with several, limited choices.   As the person goes deeper, he or she is presented with different types of descriptive characteristics and choices.  An important characteristic of hierarchical navigation is that the order of the characteristics presented to the user is static, and unchanging.   Somebody, besides the user, has decided which characteristics are most important and, more importantly, has predetermined the path people must follow.   Dynamic Navigation differs from Hierarchical Navigation in that the user's first choice is to decide which characteristic is most important to their need.

Another key aspect of Dynamic Navigation, at least in how I implement it, is that users start seeing a list of relevant documents as soon as they start making choices.  They don't have to wait until they navigate through to the end of a Hierarchical Navigation path to see if they are going down a route that will lead to relevant documents. This approach can be very similar to a site search implementation.  The difference is that with Dynamic Navigation, the site does not necessarily present every option available to an end user, but a manageable set of choices which give users multiple paths into the content of the site.

Designing for Findability means that you evaluate a website's Findability Velocity and Cross-Domain Seeking Requirements ahead of time to validate that the solution you architect includes the hardware, software and other pieces needed to meet your users Findability requirements.

Creating an Exceptional Web Experience Using XPages

Did you ever notice that it is a lot easier and more enjoyable to cook a gourmet meal when you have nice appliances, cookware and specialty tools to work with?  I mean, a good chef will produce a pretty good meal regardless, but in order for the customer and the chef to have an exceptional experience, you really need the right tools.

The same is true for creating web sites and web applications.  Give a good web developer a text editor and some pretty good results can be created.  Give a good web developer the right appliances and tools and exceptional results will be delivered.

Seven Hills Dance Studio in Lynchburg, Virginia, has been providing dance education to young people for over 70 years.  My daughters have been students there for the last 14 years.  Recently, the studio management asked me if I would be interested in developing their new website.  The initial idea was to create a simple website using the tools provided by their hosting company.  Being a professional developer of sites that improve productivity, I couldn't force myself to simply create a static website.  I found myself asking questions like, "Wouldn't parents like to login and find the phone numbers of other students in their child's class? Wouldn't it be nice for management to edit any page of their website, in-line, and not have to call me to make changes?" And, "I am sure the ability to create news and alerts that automatically show up on the home page for the dates that you specify would be a powerful website function, right?" 

Of course they said yes, and I quickly abandoned the hosting company and decided to create the site using IBM Lotus XPages.

XPages was the logical choice of development tools for several reasons:

1. I am a Lotus developer and know this tool
2. I only had 40 hours to complete the entire project
3. I needed an authentication mechanism
4. I needed document level security
5. In order for the results to be exceptional in such a short time, I needed really good tools with modern web 2.0 capabilities.

The following are some lessons learned from this project:

Keep it simple.

You can make an XPages project as simple or as complex as you like.  It is tempting to create a fancy application that is completely dynamic and uses very few XPages components.  If you are new to XPages, this approach will cause you to waste hours of time and curse your choice of using XPages.  Create one XPage for each page in your website and use custom controls for the components that will be on each page (e.g. menu, footer, etc).

Use the XPages References

The amount of good examples and reference material for XPages has grown enormously in the last year.  Don't waste too much time figuring out how to do something, look it up!

Be careful with Scoped Variables

Scoped Variables are a great way of storing information about the user as they click through the website.  You may want to store the value of the last page opened in a variable so that the user is returned to the correct tab after opening a dialog box, for example.  If you store the variable in the wrong scope (e.g. viewScope instead of requestScope) you may find that the value is used by many user sessions on different PCs.  You should test for this.

Get your custom controls finished before you create too many XPages

You will save a great deal of time and make site maintenance far easier if you create your custom controls wisely.  A good rule of thumb is that the XPage is simply a container for custom controls.  There should be little or no content directly on the XPage.  It may take a couple of iterations to get the custom controls designed the way you want. You don't want to create your custom controls, put them on ten different Xpages and then make a fundamental change to your custom control design.  You will then have to delete all of your XPages and create them with your new custom controls.  For example, I used the following custom controls in my design of the home page:

•  ccBanner (used for banner at top of page)
•  ccLoginControl (used to allow user to login/logout)
•  ccMenu (used for top navigation menu)
•  ccStaticContent (used for displaying static content that can be edited by an admin)
•  ccNews (used for displaying a news/alerts feed) 

I am very happy with the speed that I was able to create the project, and the Dance Studio is thrilled with the look and control features available on their site.  The website will be live by the end of April at http://www.sevenhillsdance.com. 

Davalen offers custom XPage development classes that teach users how to create the most powerful websites on for their business needs.  Send us an email if you would like more information.

by  Dave Jacob, Managing Partner, WebSphere Practice

If the purpose of a business is to maximize profit, then there are only two ways to accomplish this -

1. Increase profit
2. Decrease expense

So how do we go about this and what does that have to do with an Exceptional Web Experience?

The insurance industry is a good example. Insurance is sold through agents who maintain the client relationship. Historically, the agent has had to deal with multiple parts of the insurance company to service their client, one group for underwriting, another for billing, another for investments and so on. And over time the insured will have many questions about their policy and coverage, such as "do I have enough insurance and how has my investment performed?"

The agent typically answers these questions after calling the appropriate insurance personnel.

Enter the Exceptional Web Experience.

What if the agent could access the information directly from the web without requiring direct insurance company contact? More importantly, could the agent view all client activity in one web application, navigating seamlessly from one part of the insurance company to another. Phone calls and insurance staff interaction are reduced under this model thereby saving money so the agent can have a direct and meaningful dialog with the client about their entire portfolio while they are on the phone. This customer centric approach enhances client satisfaction, or experience, as many questions are answered quickly, and the agent has a chance to review their current portfolio and offer other products and services that they may now need. At the same time the insurance agent is uncovering direct up-sell opportunities, and customer retention programs, should the need arise. 

For this approach to be a reality, the agent has to be able to easily and quickly find the required information.

IBM WebSphere Portal provides the platform for just such a solution.

This Exceptional Web Experience will be discussed in Orlando at IBM's Exceptional Web Experience Conference under session heading:  BUS-S07 "Experiences and Best Practices from Integrating and Implementing a Intranet Portal at Unitrin/Kemper Insurance."

Please come prepared to ask questions to our client about their experience with Davalen and IBM solutions as a means to better customer satisfaction through powerful web portals.