rightsizing your digital presence

Rightsizingyour digital presence

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We need to reframe the conversation

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The cost of bulk

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The cost of bulk

• Difficult to find information…• … for your audience / internally• … for content you know is there / that is entirely hidden or buried• … for browse / search

• Difficult to cross-sell / reward being “close”• Inaccurate information• Difficult to make broad improvements• Incomplete information• Project low quality• Difficult internally to understand and optimize

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The benefit of bulk

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The benefit of bulk

• Please internal stakeholders• Easier to think in-the-moment/narrowly rather than long-

term/broadly• Ability to create target pages (for search engines) for narrow

topics• Avoid difficult conversations

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page section whole site

we are usually focused narrowly

but critical problems are

here8

Some sites are naturally (and optimally) going to be bigger than others

DHC

LibraryofCongress

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But each can do better.

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Why is rightsizing difficult?

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Why is rightsizing difficult?

• Most of the ”benefits” of bulk• Difficulty to imagine end state• Difficulty to define how to get there• Difficulty in how to get buy-in

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? 13

Drop Keep

or

1) Drop/keep →Dispositions

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integrate

change format

rewrite

brand new

drop

keep as-is

merge

archive

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Yes, delete is the most satisfying…

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… but sometimes fixing content is more useful…

especially merge17

… and other times leaving it there but isolating it makes sense (levels of “archive”).

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Exercise: look at representative pages to decide on dispositions

http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/sousa/sousa-timeline.html

https://www.loc.gov/collections/john-philip-sousa/

Alsoseeotherexamples:

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Regardless, we need to move away from focusing only on individual pages.

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2) Individual pages →

Underlying site structure

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Structure

• Templating model• Content model• Multi-site structure• Information architecture• Integration• Team alignment

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ü Templating modelü Content modelü Multi-site structureü Information

architectureü Integrationü Team alignment

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Consistent

hobb

s.dire

ct/coh

eren

ce

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Connected

hobb

s.dire

ct/coh

eren

ce

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Junksites,bysitecount Junksites,

bypagecount

3) Individual pages → Rules about pages

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We need to decide what to do with every page, but we don’t need to look at every

page to make that determination.

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These five press releases are bad. We should delete these.

Do we need press releases, at all? Let’s just cut them all.

No

Yes33

✘

✘✘

✘

✘

Case study: culling topic pages

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100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

#oftopics

BeforeRedesign

AfterRedesign

Aftercull

34http://hobbs.direct/exploding-topics

Assess Gather metrics

Agree on cull Retag Relaunch

Example process for culling topic pages


Remember: we still need to be able to generate the list of what needs to drop and other dispositions.

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Factors in deciding dispositions

• Business goals• General quality• Audience demand• Implementation realities

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Startwiththecontent

Startwiththestructure

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Factors in deciding dispositionBusinessGoals

• Extend /promote/enablebusinessgoals• Leadgeneration/affiliation/purchase/repeat

purchase• Project“whoyouare”

AudienceDemand

• Off-sitedemand• On-sitedemand

GeneralQuality

• Allow visitortogetinformationtheywantwithoutanotherclick(especiallybyprovidingcontext)

• Demonstratedcommitmenttoquality• ROT

ImplementationRealities

• Dispositionsandestimates• Availablepeople/money /resources• Underlying“productcatalog”• Existingworkprogram• Politics andworldview

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No

42Yes

Spider Extractinformation MergeGA Bucket Dispositions

Folders,Filegroup,subdomain

Automaticallycrawlsite

Metadataadded

Action Dedupe&Pullmetadatafrom

address

SEOtypedata(H1,Title,meta-desc…)

Mergedatafromanothersource:GoogleAnalytics

Pageviews Buckets Dispositions

Rulestoassignbuckets

Bucket→Disposition

43http://www.inventorycaptain.com

• Can you define any rules (what the logical bucket is and what the disposition is) for some of the content (perhaps just one bucket)?

• Exactly what content / what is the content count for the bucket(s)?

Downloadtheexercisespreadsheetathttp://hobbs.direct/confab2017-sheet2

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4) One-time cleanup → Constant vigilance

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https://web

sitep

rodu

ctmanagem

ent.com

/

hobbs.direct/report-microsite-checklist

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1) 2)

3)4)

Drop/keep → DispositionsIndividual pages → Underlying site structureIndividual pages → Rules about pagesOne time cleanup → Constant vigilance

Reframe!

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Reframing is a prerequisite. We also need to convince people.

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5) Tactical → Define vision

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55http://hobbs.direct/vision-examples

Inventories and estimating effort

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http://www.inventorycaptain.com

Sources of data

• View• Origin• Usage• Intent

61http://hobbs.direct/rethink-sources

Sources of data

• View• Origin• Usage• Intent

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Applyingthe data

• Add• Merge• Scrape• Override

X

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Apply rules

metadata → bucket bucket → disposition

http://hobbs.direct/panning-gold

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Rules, low tech

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http://hobbs.direct/random

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http://hobbs.direct/gap

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http://hobbs.direct/gap

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http://hobbs.direct/estimate

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http://hobbs.direct/estimation-sheet

Global & large rollouts: bucket by type of site

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rightsizing your digital presence

Marketing