So you’ve paid close attention to the SES Chicago 2009 coverage of PPC sessions, you’ve cleaned up your SEO and monitored analytics. OK, but how about the session dealing with the piece at the core of your website’s performance? We’re talking about information architecture here, and without it potential customers visiting your site will be quickly lost.

Information architecture gurus Shari Thurow, Founder & SEO Director of Omni Marketing Interactive & Kimberly Krause Berg, Owner of UsabilityEffect.com gave some excellent advice in the session titled Successful Information Architecture, moderated by Adam Audette, President of AudetteMedia, Inc.

First to speak was Kimberly.

What is Information Architecture?
There’s a lot of differe

nt definitions but for the purpose of this session and time she will focus on content, organization and site structure. Building a website is similar to building a house. Before you build a house you need a plan. Similarly, when building a site you need to have a plan set in place accompanied by research.

In the old days (1990’s), the homepage was somewhat of an aggregation of links to damn near every page on the site. It contained all the information you could possibly need, links pointed to the deepest parts of the site, with some sort of convoluted navigation and a footer at the bottom just in case you got lost. This type of information architecture (IA) is obsolete. IA and SEO is focused on today’s web. Now there is a need to focus on context organization, findability. Why? Because 95% of all search engine referrals come from page one of the search result. In addition users understand quality in both websites and in SERPs; what appears at the top of the page, above the fold is the most important.

Important Pieces of Information Architecture to Remember
Context – Telling the search engines and your users what the site is about.
Categorize and Analyze Content – Sorting information into a manageable and intuitive hierarchy for users and SE’s. Content should also be organized by keeping in mind how individuals search for your content. Be aggressive about doing keyword research and understanding the demographic you’re targeting. Kim comes back to this point several times throughout her presentation.
Create a sitemap – Use xml sitemaps; www.sitemaps.org – Kim highly recommends a text only sitemap not only for engines but for users – simplicity is great for the user.
Links – interlinking, deciding a URL structure. A simple folder structure is much more intuitive than dynamic URL’s and easier for SE’s to follow.
Findability – Make pages easy to search – after 15 years this is really the first time site arch has been implemented into a search engine marketing conference curriculum. It most certainly has become a fundamental part of search.

Nature is an Information Architect
Kim likens information architect to the anatomy of a tree. As a whole the tree may want to communicate beauty. The leaves of the trees are your pages, the branches your navigation and the trunk your structure. Underneath however, at the roots is where all the action takes place. This is your planning, 401s, 301s, robot.txt; all the granular pieces that come together so that your message is conveyed appropriately and your user receives a seamless experience.

After Kimberly finishes speaking, Adam welcomes Shari Thurow to the podium.

Why should web owners care about information architecture?
From a business standpoint the ease with which individuals can find what they’re looking for will determine whether or not you gain or lose customers. Say somebody is searching for a particular phrase you’re optimized for and you pop up as the first result. They click on your link but are funneled to the wrong spot on your site. Potential customers will not be able to find info on your site if you don’t address site architecture appropriately and you will lose them.

Shari likes to ask people what their definition of information architecture is because everybody has different answers. SEO’s tend to have a definition that inevitably results in page rank sculpting. Shari follows Peter Morville’s definition of information architecture:

1. The structural design of shared info environments.
2. The combination of organization, labeling, search (retrieval), and navigation systems within a website.
3. The art and science of shaping information products and experience.

Shari notes that architecture, construction and design are commonly confused. Folks need to remember that information architecture precedes both design and construction.

Photo Credit Flickr/PhotoJonny

As snow flew sideways on the chilly frontier, SES Chicago 2008 participants waited to be regaled yet again with insight and information. Eisenberg did not disappoint.

This session focused on shifting the mindset from “Pay Per Click” to “Pay Per Conversation.”  Clearly it is imperative to remain cognizant of the current state of the economy, where every click and hence every dollar matters.

Every click is a potential customer trying to engage you and their choices are limited.  Will the customer continue the dialogue through to a purchase funnel or will they bounce immediately off your landing page?  In order to continue the conversation, the value of the product and service needs to be demonstrated.

This session helped  identify missed conversations and then how to woo them back.  The introduction was given by Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner & Founder, Beyond Ink.  Presenting valuable insight was Bryan Eisenberg, Co-founder, Future Now Inc.

Behind everything is a person. Marketers must go beyond just getting people’s attention to getting their conversation.  Solid opportunities lie with the 97% of the visitors who, on average, are not converting.

Eisenberg analogized web users to blood hounds by their ability to track a “scent.” He theorized that people navigate the web much like these nosey hounds. Much like our canine companions, once the scent is lost…it is back to the home base to start over.  Before this point, there is a small window of opportunity to engage users onto the next logical scent.

Statistics indicate that we lose 10% of people on first click and 55% on second click so one must ask themselves…is my conversion on 2nd click? Remember that keywords don’t fail to convert…we do! Simply put, we didn’t give user the experience they expect.

Improving the experience on your website for others requires some level of altruism and thinking outside your own experience. Becoming relevant to a broad base of users may require you to debunk Golden Rules.

Instead, base your design on the different personality types of your users. Eye tracking data indicates that, depending on personality type (competitive – methodical – spontaneous – humanistic), people look at different places on the page simply because different things matter.

What can you do? Simple…give the searcher what he or she wants. Persuasion and Conversion are not simply an event.  They are processes just as purchases don’t happen instantaneously and are also events.  Different people have different journeys to conversion.  Keep this in mind as you ask yourself:

1. Who are we trying to persuade?
2. What action do we want them to take?
3. What action do they take
4. What do they need?

Unless you have unlimited resources, don’t do “slice and dice optimization.” Instead, look at how pages look from the perspective of the four personality types. Also, while it may seem obvious, remember the rule of proximity – that when you put things close to each other on a page, people think they are related. Strive for continuous improvement over the years by focusing in on experience.

Fine tune by aligning customers & business objectives and realize that even a couple of words matter. You will also need to gain design, creative, and technical resources. In addition, gather tools such as Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, plus 33 Free Tools to help you improve your website.

Sounds easy but where do you start?  What should you change first?  Start with web analytics to find: Pages with high bounce rates, high exit rates, and low time spent.

Continually Look for:

• Signs you may have a planning/relevance issue  by checking keyword choice & intent, internal search, queries, proper content and call to action segments.  Additionally, check landing page reports, funnel reports and site overlay.

• Early stage vs late stage bouncers. Early is probably a content issue.

• Signs you may have structural issue by checking your site on all browsers, iphones, and back connections.  Use Xenu’s Link Sleuth to check for broken links .  Check error logs to see if your design and navigation is consistent to what your customer feedback tells you.  Do usability testing & eye tracking.

• Signs of momentum issues by checking your website download speed.

• Signs of a broken scent by checking your internal and external anchor text, Google quality scores, and check out abandonment navigation.  These may indicate trust and confidence issues.

• Signs of communication issues by checking copy readability and with a calculator to determine if your copy and images are better than your competitors.

• Signs of value issue by looking at what the costumer review says.  How does it add to their pain, problem, or want?

Take one bite at a time.  Ask better questions.  The key to staying on the “scent” trail is to identify where the problems are and how to fix them and learn how to build around personas.

Photo Credit Flickr/today is a good day