Dewey Library - QH438.4.S73 B53 2019

In his Beyond Engagement: the Content Performance Quotient presentation at An Event Apart in Chicago, Jeffrey Zeldman introduced a new metric for tracking how well Web sites are performing. Here's my notes from his talk:

• The number one stakeholder request for Web sites is engagement: we need people using our services more. But is it the right metric for all these situations?
• For some apps, engagement is clearly the right thing to measure. Think Instagram, long-form articles, or gaming sites. For others, more time spent might be a sign of customer frustration.
• Most of the Web sites we work on are like customer service desks where we want to give people what they need and get them on their way. For these experiences, speed of usefulness should matter more than engagement.
• Content Performance Quotient (Design CPQ) is a measure of how quickly we can get the right content to solve the customer's problem. The CPQ is a goal to iterate against and aim for the shortest distance between problem & solution. It tracks your value to the customer by measuring the speed of usefulness.
• Pretty garbage: when a Web site looks good but doesn't help anyone. Garbage in a delightfully responsive grid is still garbage. A lot of a Web designer's job is bridging the gap between what clients say they need and what their customers actually need.
• Marlboro's advertising company (in the 50s) rethought TV commercials by removing all the copy and focusing on conveying emotions. They went from commercials typically full of text to just ten words focused on their message.
• Mobile is a great forcing function to re-evaluate our content. Because you can't fit everything on a small screen, you need to make decisions about what matters most.
• Slash your architecture and shrink your content. Ask: "why do we need this?" Compare all your content to the goals you've established. Design should be intentional. Have purpose-driven design and purpose-driven content. If your design isn't going somewhere, it is going nowhere.
• We can't always have meetings where everybody wins. We need to argue for the customer and that means not everyone in our meetings will get what they want. Purpose needs to drive our collaborations not individual agendas, which usually leak into our Web site designs.
• It’s easy to give every stakeholder what they want. We've enabled this through Content Management Systems (CMS) that allow everyone to publish to the site. Don't take the easy way out. It’s harder to do the right thing. Harder for us, but better for the customer & bottom line.
• Understanding the customer journey allows us to put the right content in the right place. Start with the most important interaction and build out from there. Focus on key interactions and build out from there. Sometimes the right place for your content isn't your Website -for video it could be YouTube or Vimeo.
• Customers come to our sites with a purpose. Anything that gets in the way of that is a distraction. Constantly iterate on content to remove the cruft and surface what's needed. You can start with a content inventory to audit what is in your site, but most of this content is probably out of date and irrelevant. So being in a state of constant iteration works better.
• When you want people to go deeper and engage, to slow down... scannability, which is good for transactions, can be bad for thoughtful content. Instead slow people down with bigger type, better typographic hierarchy, more whitespace.
• Which sites should be slow? If the site is delivering content for the good of the general public, the presentation should enable slow, careful reading. If it’s designed to promote our business or help a customer get an answer to her question, it must be designed for speed of relevancy.

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London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2018

New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, [2019]

Maidenhead ; New York : Open University Press, 2005

Dordrecht : Springer, [2007]

Abingdon, Oxon : Radcliffe Publishing Ltd, [2011]

Upper Saddle River, NJ : Addison-Wesley, [2011]

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2016]

Fife : Stupor Mundi, 2017.

[U.K.] : 20th Century Fox, [2012]

Seyssel : Champ Vallon, [2013]

Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, [2018]