Content Strategy: 5 Ways to Sell Governance Within Your Organization

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I was privileged to deliver a lighting talk this year at ConFab2012 with four other amazingly talented, smart women.  My topic was "It's a Lifestyle Choice, Not a Diet: 5 Ways to Sell Governance Within your Organization."

See the Storify version of the lightning talks at ConFab2012.

And see the slides of the talk on content governance and strategies for implementing effective governance within your organization.

Enjoy and let me know if you have any questions: about lifestyle choices or ConFab.

Content Maintenance: Keeping up appearances

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by Melissa Rach

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Unlike its functionality and design, the content of a website can be changed quickly and easily. Anyone with a CMS login and an idea has the keys to the castle. When web content is developed and maintained effectively, it’s a huge asset to the user experience, but poor content maintenance is the quickest way to wreck the whole thing.

We’ve all been there. You launch something big—a website or a ground-breaking app. The business is happy. The users are happy. You sit back and look at your work; it’s pristine, perfect. Or, at least it’s the best it could be considering the ridiculous timeline, budget, and requirements.

Fast-forward six months, and things have changed. A bunch of new content has been added in awkward places. Other things are exactly how you left them, but they were supposed to be updated regularly. You ask yourself, “Why did they add an entirely new category of information just six months after launch? Why is the ‘help’ text different? What’s the deal with the strange graphic on the home page?"

Establishing content maintenance processes and practices can help you ensure the user experience is great at launch and remains happy ever after. Even if you don’t consider content to be part of your job, there are few content-related things that can help your projects succeed long term.

Launch with Good Content

As the adage says, “Start as you mean to go on." When a site is launched with a good baseline of content, it’s easier to avoid unpleasant content messes later. Sounds like common sense, right? Unfortunately, content work takes longer than most people expect. As a result, there’s often a big rush to create content right before launch, which leads to irritated stakeholders, sub-par content, and a promise to “fix it all later." (Hint: It almost never gets fixed.) Avoid falling into this trap.

Think about content early and strategically

Content needs to be considered during the strategy phase of the project. Someone needs to think about:

• Substance (what content topics and messages will be covered)
• Structure (how content will be formatted, organized, and accessed)
• Workflow (who will create and maintain content, what processes will be followed)
• Governance (how content will be managed over time)

This work can be done by a content strategist, another member of the team, or collectively as a group. It just needs to get done.

Be realistic about content development time

Even when you don’t count content strategy and planning, content creation is a mammoth effort. For a traditional website, creating one page of content takes an average of 6-8 hours (with approvals and revisions). Some pages take less time and some take much, much longer. So, for example, if you have 75 pages to create, you can estimate around 525 hours of work.

Launch small

Short on time? In many cases, it’s better to launch with less quantity and more quality. Prioritize the content that is most important, and see how it goes. That will help everyone understand the complexity of the content process and develop realistic timelines for the rest of the content.

Educate the Internal Content Team

The majority of people who make web content are neither web nor content professionals. They may not understand what kind of content is appropriate for the Web. So you can’t expect them to know exactly what to do; you need to give them some guidance.

Provide training

First, they likely need to get some information about the web property itself: its business goals, user research, and the concepts behind the overall UX design. They also need to know what their role on the content team is and how to perform it. For example, if they have to create content, they may need a workshop on web writing. Or if they will be reviewing content before it is published, give them guidelines about what they should be looking for. It helps to do some practice exercises, too.

Create some how-to tools

Take the time to provide the team with guidelines and tools that make content tasks easier. Develop a content style guide that includes things such as preferred word choices, grammar choices, or copyright requirements. It can also help to create content examples that demonstrate tone, voice, and content best practices.

With the right training and tools, the internal content team will have a much better chance of creating user-targeted and user-friendly content.

Prepare for Change

Things move quickly online, and content needs to change frequently to stay relevant. If there is no plan in place for maintenance, content updates become a free-for-all or they don’t happen at all. Pre-defined change management processes protect the integrity of the content and the sanity of the content team.

Plan for routine maintenance and updates

Many websites or applications are designed to have content that changes constantly. Other web properties simply need annual maintenance checks. Either way, an editorial calendar can keep the content update process running smoothly.

An editorial calendar is simply a schedule (usually a spreadsheet) that details what content needs to change, when it needs to change, and who needs to change it. In addition to regular content updates, editorial calendars can include known events that might influence content (e.g., the results of ongoing usability tests or pending government legislation), ensuring the content team ready is for action.

Plan for the unpredictable

There are times when something happens that nobody expected—natural disasters, a social media uproar, or a new mind-blowing product from a competitor. In these cases, the organization needs to react quickly. Although it’s not useful to plan for every contingency, it is important to have an emergency action plan that details what to do when major content changes need to happen fast. Someone needs to define:

• What constitutes an emergency?
• What steps can be skipped in the normal content workflow?
• Who creates and approves emergency content?

Sloppy, inaccurate content can make a bad situation even worse. An emergency action plan ensures the content quality doesn’t suffer, even during unforeseen circumstances.

Get User Opinions about Content Specifically

Of course, the user has an important role in defining what good content actually is. And they have the right to change their minds as the web property matures. So someone needs to ask the users what they think about the content before launch, immediately after launch, and regularly over time.

Without user input, it’s hard for stakeholders to choose and prioritize what content updates need to be made. (That’s how the CEO’s awkward blog post gets prioritized over something the user actually wants to see.) To get user feedback about content, start by designing research and tests around three areas of focus:

1. Interest: What kind of content do users want and why?

• What content do users say they want? What content do they actually use? If there is a difference, why is that?
• If users can select which content they view, what topics or pieces of content do they gravitate toward?
• When presented with a piece of content, does it capture users’ attention or keep them engaged?
• Do factors such as voice, tone, author, or context increase or decrease interest?

2. Comprehension: Can users understand and use a piece of content?

• How much can target users be expected to understand? What is their reading level or native language? Do they have prior knowledge of the topic?
• Do the users understand the content? Can they repeat or paraphrase key facts or messages?
• After reviewing a piece of content, do they know what to do (or where to go) next?

3. Influence: Is the content helping achieve the business goals?

• Does the content help users make decisions or take action? If so, are the decisions or actions ones the organization wants to encourage?
• Does the content change users’ opinions about an organization, its products, or its competitors? Are the changes in opinion positive or negative?
• Would users share the information with their friends or colleagues? Why or why not?

For more information, start with a podcast (mp3) by Colleen Jones and Kevin O’Connor available on Boxes and Arrows called Testing Content: Early, Often and Well, as well as Angela Colter’s article on A List Apartcalled “Testing Content."

Keep Up on Content and Keep Things Consistently Great

It’s a fact of life: things change, and web content is no exception. But proactively planning your content maintenance initiatives will help your user experience—and your content team—survive whatever comes next. And keep your users coming back for more.

Why Your Online Checkout System Hurts Your Sales

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May 23, 2012 by Graham Cooke7

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Graham Cooke is the CEO of QuBit, a technology company specializing in advanced website data collection, analysis, and optimization products. He was previously a senior product manager at Google. Follow him @thegrahamcooke.

The checkout is, arguably, the most important part of any retail experience, online or offline. You can do what you like to get customers through the door and you can merchandise and market at them to your heart’s content, but if your checkout doesn’t let them pay for their goods or services, all of your effort is wasted.

This is why it’s surprising that so little has changed in the world of checkouts since retailing began. In fact, the main development in recent history has been the dehumanization of the process. Fixed prices, tills, electronic point of sale (EPOS), and now the online checkout have all been about removing human interaction from the process, thus saving costs.

That approach is fine in a brick-and-mortar setting where, by and large, people who fill their cart with items tend to go on and purchase them. However, online 60% to 70% of people abandon their carts before completing a transaction. Something is clearly very wrong. Here’s what it is and how to fix it.

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The Problem With Checkouts

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If we can agree that something is wrong with the online checkout model, what specifically is happening that’s causing these problems? Here are the three main issues.

• Checkout Process: People abandon a shopping cart because of functional issues with the site. Problems with payment methods, issues with localization, and complex registration processes can all make a shopper switch off instantly. In fact, a Forrester Research study found that 23% of users will exit a checkout if they’re forced to register. It’s a simple thing, but it drives people away.
• Operational Issues: There are a range of issues that are not directly caused by checkout functionality, but which still cause people to abandon their purchases. A major offender here is shipping costs, which cause up to 74% of cart abandonment, according to Toluna. Sites that don’t clearly state shipping costs when a shopper chooses a product run the risk of losing a sale when the full price of their purchase becomes apparent at the checkout stage.
• Site-Wide Issues: Some of the issues that cause checkout abandonment don’t stem from the checkout itself, but from broader problems with the site. A major culprit here is site speed. Research by Akamai showed that for 46% of people, a quick checkout was the most influential factor in deciding whether a shopper would visit the site again.

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How to Solve the Checkout Problem

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There are at least five things that online retailers can do to reduce abandonment and directly increase their sales.

• Details: Eighty percent of top retailers have now ‘quarantined’ their checkouts by moving shoppers away from the main retail functionality of the site in order to reduce distractions. Similarly, 40% have introduced the ability to save card details for future transactions. Together these two features can create a small but significant improvement in checkout conversions. On the payment side, the introduction of PayPalpayments can increase conversions by as much as 14% and the use of mobile phones to facilitate simple payments also promises to drive down abandonment rates.
• Simplify: At the moment, the average online checkout is a 5 to 6 step process involving multiple data entry and decision points. This should be simplified for visitors. Amazon’s One-Click setup is the best example of a simplified checkout process, and is one that any retailer would do well to observe.
• Centralize: The online retail market is crying out for a centralized system where users can use a single login to enter all the relevant details to check out. While something like PayPal removes some of the stages around payment information, such a centralized system could also take into account things like shipping preferences.
• Collaborate: One of the key issues in checkouts at the moment is that every site’s checkout is, in some way, different. Collaboration and sharing of best practices between retailers could result in a much more unified checkout experience for consumers and stronger revenue streams for companies.
• Integrate: Any effective set of checkout or payment processes should be the same across all company platforms. By presenting shoppers with a single payment and checkout solution for all of their retail needs you’re once again reducing complexity and increasing the potential for conversion.

Facebook failing to drive booking conversions

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29 May 2012
By Patrick Mayock
News Editor-International
patrick@hotelnewsnow.com

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Story Highlights

• Facebook has yielded negligible booking conversions for brands and individual properties.
• The channel still has the potential to drive bookings, said Atmosphere’s Henry Harteveldt.
• Facebook also is a useful tool for fostering engagement, developing relationships and measuring consumer sentiment.

REPORT FROM THE U.S.—Back in March 2011, Michael Hraba, like many hoteliers, was excited by the commercial potential of Facebook. There was revenue to be had, and hoteliers and brand companies were rushing to put booking widgets on their profile pages to encourage easy, seamless transactions.


My, what a difference a year can make.


Hraba, who is project manager and communications for Waterford Hotels & Inns and owner of San Francisco-based Hraba Hospitality Consulting, has jumped off the Facebook bandwagon, citing low transactional booking volume for his clients and the broader industry alike.

Michael Hraba, owner of San Francisco-based Hraba Hospitality Consulting

“Until they somehow monetize their users into consumers, when somebody enters Facebook under the premise that I might buy something, I don’t think Facebook will ever be a relevant revenue-generating tool,” he said.

Hraba is not alone in his sentiment. Industry pundits are beginning to question the use of Facebook as a booking channel in the absence of any meaningful data. And the major hotel chains—six of which declined to share data for this article—have been reticent to disclose conversion rates.


“Generally when companies are reticent about disclosing conversion rates, it’s because it’s going to be pretty negligible. That would be my expectation,” said Douglas Quinby, senior director of research at PhoCusWright.


“In general, we have never advocated that anyone should look at Facebook as a booking platform,” he said. “We see this continually in our consumer research, especially in the U.S. and Europe—consumers don’t think of Facebook and their social networks as a place to go shopping and buying travel.”


Henry Harteveldt, chief research officer and co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group, said Facebook booking conversions are somewhere in the single digits.


“Booking levels are very, very small from the Facebook widgets,” he said.


Always on

Does that mean hoteliers should remove booking widgets from their Facebook pages? Not at all, said the sources interviewed for this article.


“That doesn’t mean that hotels should give up on having a Facebook page. Not at all,” Quinby said. “We’re just saying that the type of engagement you want to think around social networking … has got to be nuanced. If you are hyper fixated on referral and conversion, then you’re going to limit the opportunity for boarder engagement.”


“Facebook is a marketing tool. … It’s not easy to turn it into a commercial tool,” Harteveldt said.


The social network is great for customer engagement, establishing relationships and understanding consumer sentiment, he added.


It’s also a great way to keep your brand top of mind for consumers when they do go to shop, Quinby said, citing evidence of a “billboard effect” on the platform.


“You got to be where people are. You’ve got to be there and hang out and wait,” Hraba said.


Indeed, new research suggests travelers are always shopping for travel, even when they’re not planning a specific trip.



“In an online world in which travelers are constantly connected to the Internet and often receptive to information about travel, the linear travel-buying pattern many distributors have clung to is being overtaken by an ‘always-on’ model of travel distribution. This model places the traveler at the center of a constant hive of information exchange across the entire travel ecosystem,” according to “Travel 2020: The distribution dilemma” from the IBM Institute for Business Value, which surveyed 1,020 business and 1,030 leisure travelers from both developed and emerging economies.

Henry Harteveldt, chief research officer and co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group

Consumers are cognizant of ads and promotions delivered via social media, according to Harteveldt.Atmosphere conducted a survey of more than 5,000 travelers, 31% of whom said they noticed such commercial engagement.

But while hoteliers who already have booking widgets on their Facebook pages should leave them there, smaller players who haven’t yet done so shouldn’t fret, Hraba said.


“If that’s a daunting concept to anybody reading this, I wouldn’t worry about a booking engine in there,” he said. “… Are you going to lose a reservation because your booking engine isn’t in Facebook? I doubt it.”


Market potential

Just because Facebook booking widgets have yet to yield strong transaction volume doesn’t mean hoteliers should give up on the channel altogether, Harteveldt said.


“Part of the reason is that no travel company is giving consumers necessarily an incentive to use the widget,” he said. “… To make Facebook commerce work, you need to really understand what it’s about.”
If Facebook developed a type of “currency” that could only be used on the channel, that might drive more commercial value, Harteveldt suggested. Or, companies could offer incentives and special offers to book through Facebook.


Quinby said hoteliers might find success by approaching Facebook as a “loyalty light” channel. Companies such as Joie de Vivre do an excellent job in this regard by offering incentives to its Twitter followers during “Twitter Tuesday” promotions.

Douglas Quinby, senior director of research at PhoCusWright

“Use social channels to offer certain types of incentives to your fan base,” he advised. “It is a loyalty program in effect.”

While travelers might not approach Facebook or other social networks with a commercial mindset now, that doesn’t mean they’re not open to the idea, Harteveldt said. In that same Atmosphere survey of 5,000 travelers, he found that one-third of respondents said they would try to purchase travel through a social network within the next 12 months.


“There certainly is a critical mass open to using a social networking site like Facebook as a booking tool, but what the Facebook engine has to offer has to be more than what they can get from the brand website. There has to be something more compelling,” he said.


That shift in thinking might be more pronounced in emerging markets such as Brazil and China, according to PhoCusWright research.


“Travelers (in those regions) will go in and specifically engage with their network around recommendations when they are shopping for travel online. Facebook and their social network become a much more central part of that,” Quinby said.


Still, Harteveldt doesn’t expect Facebook to be “transactional” for at least a few years.


“This isn’t Field of Dreams. You can’t just build it, and they will come,” he said. “You’re going to have to work at it. And I’ll be honest, it won’t be easy.”

Content Strategy Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard

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In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, Chip and Dan Heath (authors of Made to Stick) describe different organizations and how they applied change management techniques successfully.

The stories in the book were very helpful to me as a content strategist, as I am often implementing organizational change. In fact, at the very heart of content strategy is our ability to understand what needs to be changed and when.

Content strategy is difficult for organizations to adopt because of classic change management challenges. Content strategy is really about choreographing multiple talents, roles and personalities to stand in one line and kick at the same time. And usually, these people are not trained Rockettes.

My experience is that every organization has the tools to implement a content strategy. Sometimes what’s lacking is passion. I cannot help you there. If what is lacking is inexperience in change management, I have some proposed solutions below to different challenges that may help.

Change Management Challenges
There are three major areas where you will face change content strategy implementation challenges:

1.       Lack of organizational oversight

2.       Talent mismatch

3.       Political infighting

While every organization is different, I think the following solutions can work almost everywhere, provided they are approached with patience, resolve and clearly stated objectives.

See if you can recognize your organization in some of these challenges and let me know if you found any of these solutions helpful.  The best part of my day is when someone tells me that this blog helped them do their job more effectively.

Challenge	Solution
Lack of Organizational Oversight
People only want to please the boss directly above them	In large bureaucracies, most professionals have their eye on pleasing one or two levels above them. However, implementing a successful content strategy means involving the entire organization. The best way to do this, in my opinion, is to convince the corner office. This means that the top of the marketing, digital, IT or Web departments need to buy into the idea of content strategy. Ways to do this include case studies, articles about content strategy, presentations and the proposal of a pilot project.  Most executives care about some sort of ROI—if you promise them that efficiency in the workplace will increase, they are usually intrigued.  Don’t talk about numbers or bottom line profits—address concerns about constantly reinventing the wheel or using talent to your best advantage. These are more convincing arguments than, “Maybe we’ll double our traffic and conversions.”
The culture rewards disorganization	Many corporate cultures seem to reward disorganization. Sometimes, people are communicating about the wrong things, or they are not communicating enough. Whatever the reason, in a disorganized culture, it’s going to be hard to implement a content strategy. One solution would be to organize working groups around the different phases. Different professionals would overlap, giving them access to each other and ideas. Thisusually fosters a more collaborative environment and the desire to organize comes from within. Again, make sure you do reward those efforts at more efficient work, so that the culture of embracing disorganization slowly weans away. Make successes public, at weekly or monthly meetings, and give out bonuses if you can.
Siloed approach to working	In many corporations I work with, the IT, marketing, customer services and communication departments are still spread out across the organization, with different responsibilities. It makes running a multidisciplinary change like content strategy extremely difficult. Obviously, as the digital age speeds along, corporations are going to open their eyes to the fundamental flaws in siloed operations. Until then, you need to find solutions that work for you. Consider an off-site working group with some of your counterparts in these departments. Come at it from a “Every problem has a solution” attitude.  You will probably find your counterparts have similar frustrations. See if you can open the lines of communication. Start small with a pilot project with low visibility.  When you prove that working in a cross cutting fashion is more efficient and yields better results, you’ll be able to make a persuasive argument for some sort of reorganization.
Talent Mismatch
Skill mismatch	Often times, content profesionals encounter the wrong talent in the wrong roles. Sometimes the talent isn’t there at all. But, more often than not, the wrong people are doing the wrong jobs. This is an easy challenge to solve, but one that meets with tremendous resistance. People take their jobs and roles personally---how can they not? We have found the most effective solution to this problem is to set up one-on-one interviews with professionals to discuss their strengths and weaknesses.  Often in doing so, we reveal a workflow pattern that suits the entire team much better. We also find that shared responsibility works well. Pairing a weaker talent partner with a stronger talent can result in improving the weaker talent, and training the strong talent for a management role. Consider the individuals in your organization and how their individual talents would be put to better use in some other phase of content strategy.
Unreasonable expectations of tools	Sometimes individuals are passionate about embracing a content strategy and then are quickly disappointed when it doesn’t go smoothly from day one. This was a mistake made during expectation setting. Make sure professionals understand that it takes nine months to a year to establish and succeed with a content strategy. It may seem like a long time, but once through the bumpy ride part, organizations usually find they are sailing faster and more clearly into the sunset. That’s the promise to your employees—the same way it’s a piece of advice to marathon runners—don’t make any decisions about bugging out of a race when you’re on a hill. You cannot think clearly when you’re expending so much energy—you have to wait until you get to the calm part to make well-informed, smart decisions about what’s working.
Political Infighting
Empire building	How many executives or middle managers do you know who are collecting roles in the hope of empire building? We are not sure why they do this—who wants MORE responsibility at work? And yet, political infighting is the most challenging part of implementing a content strategy because it really does cut across organizations into so many departments and teams. The most effective solution we’ve found is executive level buy-in and a mandate to improve content planning and production. Political infighting stops when organizational mandates clearly state that people MUST work together for the sake of the organization’s goals.
There is a lack of belief in the organizations’ goals	If you’re experiencing this change management challenge it’s because the organization’s goals are either weakly defined or not well communicated to its staff. In either case, again, content strategy is about marrying content development efforts to business objectives.  Therefore, when managing a lack of belief in the organization’s goals, it’s important to state what they are repeatedly. By doing this, you remind the professionals you are working with about the achievement thresholds at play. Since reviews occur once a year and people's performances are tied to these thresholds, it will help them wrap their minds around content development as a serious and respected part of the corporate strategy.

Move over, Big Data. It’s time for Big Content.

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May 29, 2012 

It took me a while to figure out how to frame this topic. I’ve had it kicking around in my mind for a month or so. As the Big Design conference approaches, it occurred to me that the idea fits nicely with the notion of Big Design. This is about Big Content.

Just as Big Design is consideration of design beyond the site (or the product), Big Content is consideration of content beyond the copy, and even beyond the content. It’s a consideration of the infrastructure and related elements that support the production and management of content. Consider the following scenario.

The organization is a consumer business that has come to realize that its reputation relies heavily on social media. The organizations has woken up to the value of capturing our warm-and-fuzzy feelings. The organization started a Facebook page, and encourages patrons to engage through the application of their choice:

“Like us on Facebook.”
“Check in to FourSquare for special offers.”
“How was your meetup? Rate it now.”
“How was your experience? Write a review on Yelp.”

Funny thing about user-generated content, though. A content strategist may be tasked with curating the content that comes in, and possibly with increasing positive feedback while amicably dealing with negative feedback. But what happens if the supporting infrastructure isn’t set up to help with those efforts?

Let’s look at human behaviour when it comes to user feedback. Positive feedback is very temporaneous: when users feel good about an experience now, they will give feedback now. Conversely, when users have a bad experience, they are more likely to hold onto that feeling of indignation until they feel heard. This often takes the form of negative feedback, and may get reported a day or two later, or more, particularly if the poor customer experience was unacknowledged or unresolved.

For organizations that increasingly depend on user-generated content as part of their marketing strategy, it’s important for them to (a) get users to generate content and (b) get users to generate content that reflects well on their customer experience. In other words, building an environment that encourages users to give immediate feedback should increase the number of instances of positive feedback.

So how can organizations make sure they’re not unwittingly weighting their content toward the negative, and instead, encouraging the positive comments? Compare these two recent situations:

While in Hawaii, I had my data plan turned off to avoid the exorbitant roaming charges for which Canada is known. Every time I would find myself wanting to share my location or my delight with a find, I would ask, “Do you have wifi”? If the answer was yes, I would log in and share. If the answer was no, I would make a mental note to do it later – but as you might imagine, by the time I got back to the hotel, I had abandoned my resolve. In fact, an entire day at an attraction went without note, though it was a thoroughly engaging experience, because of lack of easy access to the internet. Another, less interesting event got lots of coverage, including a video upload to YouTube, because the coffee shop where we happened to be hanging out had wifi.

Conversely, when a bad experience in a restaurant fell on deaf ears, I offloaded my frustration on a social media site. Of the four people at the table, the other three got their lunches delivered; mine had not arrived by the time the others had almost finished their meals. I cancelled my order and left before my dining mates. Later, I pulled up a site known for its restaurant reviews, found the listing, and started my review with: Worst service ever.

So beyond the call for content is the call for an infrastructure that supports the creation and submission, shaping and management, and publication and curation of that content. The content remains the center of attention – it’s what users will react to and consume, for sure. For this reason, content should not be constrained or limited by factors such as hardware limitations, software shortcomings, or bad data inputs (and therefore bad data outputs).

Some may say that goes beyond content strategy and call it digital strategy. I simply call it smart business.

There Is No Such Thing as UX Strategy

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By Paul Bryan

Published: May 21, 2012

Spoon boy: Do not try and bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.

Neo: What truth?

Spoon boy: There is no spoon.

Neo: There is no spoon?

Spoon boy: Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends; it is only yourself.

“Just because there is a UX Strategy group on LinkedIn…, that doesn’t make UX strategy real in the same way that other disciplines and roles—for example, information architecture—are real.”

The Twitter feedback on my last column, “What Does a UX Strategist Do?” was overwhelmingly positive, but there were a few skeptics, too:

• “Boxes and Arrows attempts to explain what a UX Strategist is, leaves me more skeptical of the title than ever.” (@ryanvarick)
• “I thought we decided there was no such thing as UX Strategy…and that UX was strategy??” (@hollykennedy13)
• “This UX Strategist role [“What Does a UX Strategist Do?”] should be a skill of a PO [Product Owner] or agile PM.” (@alexhorre)

I thought about what they said and came to the conclusion that they were right. In fact, there is no such thing as UX strategy. Just because there is a UX Strategy group on LinkedIn with over 2500 members and a UX strategy conference in the planning stages, that doesn’t make UX strategy real in the same way that other disciplines and roles—for example, information architecture—are real.

Making UX Strategy Real

“UX strategy … is still very much a practice and a role whose impact we can recognize more in its absence than in its presence….”

But I remember when information architecture wasn’t real either—outside a few early visionary agencies like Clement Mok’s Studio Archetype. It took thousands of projects and millions of project dollars before client partners began to say, “It’s critical that we staff an expert information architect on this project.” UX strategy is in a similar phase now: a few visionaries, a few experts, some digital buzz. It is still very much a practice and a role whose impact we can recognize more in its absence than in its presence—much like information architecture in the 1990’s, when the lack of an information architect could cause the design of a complex site or application to become convoluted, interactive spaghetti.

It is the absence of UX strategy that is, in fact, making it real. The absence of UX strategy in a range of situations is driving UX professionals to bring it into reality by embracing it as our professional focus, producing new work products, and establishing new consulting practices. Agencies like Foolproof in the UK and Retail UX in the USA are pushing hard to make it real, but it’s still relatively rare for organizations to give UX strategy an established place in their budget, resourcing, and project plans.

Sound like nonsense? Consider the following scenarios, which represent real situations interactive agencies and design teams all over the world have encountered.

User Experience Design by Committee

“Organizations feel the absence of UX strategy when one of the committee members … presents best-in-class design work from competitors alongside what the committee has produced….”

Large organizations are seemingly held together by meetings. Meetings in the morning, at midday, in the afternoon, and in the evening. Meetings during meal times. Meetings within meetings. So, it’s not strange that such organizations would want to meet to determine the design direction for a site, application, or product. The result is design by committee.

In such scenarios, organizations feel the absence of UX strategy when one of the committee members gets up his courage and presents best-in-class design work from competitors alongside what the committee has produced to deliver the same feature set. How could the competition have advanced so far while we’ve stayed within our safe boundaries—where we’ve been for years? Hasn’t anyone been keeping track of where the competition was heading?

User Experience Design by Executive Fiat

“The result is … a single, absolute gating of all design ideas.”

Similar to design by committee is the situation in which a design team’s work gets approved or rejected by a single executive. Consider a hypothetical situation with an executive that I’ll call Brooke. Team members ask, “Has Brooke seen this yet?” “Does Brooke know?” “What did Brooke say?” Brooke represents just one of a thousand faces, but the result is the same. A single, absolute gating of all design ideas. The benefit of such an arrangement is that there is no ambiguity about how decisions will get made or who will make them. The downside is that design can never go beyond Brooke’s vision. Seem far-fetched? Not to those of us who have lived it.

Team members in such a scenario feel the absence of UX strategy when they question how all decisions can possibly rest with one person. Doesn’t someone in leadership realize Brooke’s limitations? Can’t someone prove to them that the work we are producing is less than it could be? Can’t someone demonstrate that we could be accomplishing a lot more than we are?

User Experience Design as Incremental Improvement

“A/B testing is both a boon and a curse. … It is a curse because the new designs that get tested must necessarily be very similar to the design for the current site.”

A/B testing is both a boon and a curse. It’s a boon because it gives a very clear indication of which of two designs has, for example, a higher conversion rate on a live Web site. It is a curse because the new designs that get tested must necessarily be very similar to the design for the current site. If it isn’t, the team won’t be able to discern which of the differences caused an effect. This is, of course, where multivariate testing comes in. But even in multivariate testing, there has to be a clearly defined, limited set of design differences in order to draw definitive conclusions about what is causing the results.

A business strategist in such a scenario is feeling the absence of UX strategy when he asks about the potential market value of solutions that are vastly different from what is currently in place. (This actually happened on a project in which I was involved.) “Maybe it’s not a question of improving what we have,” she said,“ but of thinking of something new that meets needs our customers aren’t yet aware a UX design could meet.” Foundational UX research that explores new behaviors or new technologies is a completely different—and much more unpredictable—sort of investigation than testing fully formed design solutions.

User Experience Design as the Big D

“In a User Experience group with a big D designer at the helm, the elegance and originality of a product’s visual impact trumps all other considerations.”

True designers love great design. It sounds obvious, but you can see it in the glasses they wear, the pen case they carry, the desk lamp they use, the sketchbooks they write and draw in, and the pictures they have on their cube walls. They live, sleep, and breathe design. The big D.

In a User Experience group with a big D designer at the helm, the elegance and originality of a product’s visual impact trumps all other considerations. Such leaders understand the importance of usability and meeting user needs. But their thinking and decisions are not weighted toward factors that are outside the province of what they consider exceptional design.

UX strategy’s absence is felt in this scenario when the Manager of Web Analytics posts graphs and charts on the department walls showing the relative monetary value of every design component that has been released to customers for the past three years. At the all-hands meeting, she asks, “How are we evaluating the market value of our user experience designs when they are still in the concept phase?”

User Experience Design as Debate Team

“When someone stands up and asks, “What data do you have that supports what you’re saying?” UX strategy’s absence is felt.”

We’ve all been there. Passionate, endless debate about what a product, site, or application should be. The most convincing orator gets support from others on the team and carries the day. The most passionate person may, in fact, be right about his or her position. But somehow, that person’s opinion always wins the day. As with Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, it’s very difficult to get a bead on how right or how wrong he is. Nevertheless, this person’s assertions are compelling, and he delivers them with such passion that he must be right. Right?

In this scenario, when someone stands up and asks, “What data do you have that supports what you’re saying?” UX strategy’s absence is felt. Standing up to someone’s passion like this has impact only if someonedoes have evidence that indicates one design direction would have more success than another. Such evidence is one of the basic ingredients of UX strategy.

User Experience Design as Lean Agile Production Line

“There is an inherent vested interest in pushing forward user experience designs that are predictable, quick to produce, and easy to develop.”

For the record, I am fully on board with agile UX. The credibility of the leaders of the agile UX movement is well established. Nearly every company that my team and I consult for is at some stage of adopting agile methodology. But whether it’s agile, RUP (Rational Unified Process), or whatever is next in terms of developer-led, design-production approaches, there is an inherent vested interest in pushing forward UX designs that are predictable, quick to produce, and easy to develop. This can lead to sprints that are front-loaded with quick-and-easy features, while interactions that are more complex—or require data, experimentation, or expertise that developers don’t have—may get relegated to the backlog. Once in the backlog bin, visionary user experiences often, unfortunately, get the same treatment as Social Security statements from the government: they’re important somehow, but not immediately relevant.

When the product group gets a new VP who asks a business analyst to calculate the relative market value of what we’re producing versus what’s in the backlog, he’s feeling UX strategy’s absence.

A few months ago, my team and I started providing an agile-friendly usability testing service, offering studies that we time and execute to fit into sprints. So I’m fully on board with agile, but I see a gap that UX strategy can fill to provide long-term value and sustainable competitive advantage.

The Representation of UX Strategy Doesn’t Make It Real

“How will the universally felt absence of UX strategy in design scenarios finally make it real?”

Having a LinkedIn group and a conference called UX Strategydoesn’t make UX strategy real. Having a column on UXmatterscalled UX Strategy doesn’t make it real. In fact, these are just representations—much like Magritte’s painting of a pipe that proclaimed in French, “This is not a pipe,” shown in Figure 1. How will the universally felt absence of UX strategy in design scenarios finally make it real?

Figure 1—Ceci n’est pas une pipe, a painting by Magritte

The following are some examples of conditions that will indicate that UX strategy is, indeed, a real thing rather than just a representation:

• projects that staff UX strategists as a formal, required role that consistently produces well-defined deliverables
• visionary agencies and clients who routinely include UX strategy in their project’s Gantt charts
• staffing specialists who say, “Where are we going to find a UX strategist for this key project?”
• SOWs (Statements of Work) that mention UX strategy and a consistent set of deliverables
• a track in interaction design finishing schools called UX Strategy
• requirements in UX strategist job listings that include relatively similar bullet points across similar ads
• parents and family members overheard at parties saying, “She’s a UX strategist. It’s a pretty cool job.” (Well, in San Francisco, maybe.)

What Does All of This Mean?

“We’re assigning much meaning to the word UX strategy.”

“Would you tell me please,” said Alice, “what that means?”

“Now you talk like a reasonable child,” said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. “I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.”

“That’s a great deal to make one word mean,” Alice said in a thoughtful tone.

“When I make a word do a lot of work like that,” said Humpty Dumpty, “I always pay it extra.”

From Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll

Similar to Humpty Dumpty, shown with Alice in Figure 2, we’re assigning much meaning to the word UX strategy.

Figure 2—Alice and Humpty Dumpty

So, what does the term UX strategy mean? At the moment, it seems to mean whatever the person talking about it says it means. I plan to use my column UX Strategy, the UX Strategy and Planning group on LinkedIn, and the UX Strategy Conference in 2013 to help shape a more consistent vision of UX strategy. But these are only representations.

I also plan to bend my professional practice and engagements in the direction of UX strategy, whenever possible including the activities and deliverables that I described in “7 Ingredients of a Successful UX Strategy.” The timeframe in which UX strategy will become a real practice and a well-defined role is up to the people who are formulating project plans, writing SOWs, publishing job descriptions, and staffing projects.

Conclusion

“The felt absence of UX strategy indicates that it urgently needs to become a reality.”

In the minds of many UX professionals—at the levels of both members of UX teams and UX executives—there is no such thing as UX strategy. But based on the scenarios that I’ve described in this column—all of which I’ve taken from real-life situations—the felt absence of UX strategy indicates that it urgently needs to become a reality.