- ClientAmazon
- DeliverableContent Site Map
Context
With less than a month until design delivery, we were in desperate need for specific content from our Amazon client in order to continue with the project. Although we had tested the information architecture and landed on a navigation schema, the content areas on the pages lacked any specificity. Based on testing, a bulleted list of information that users were seeking emerged, and the client team set off to create videos to meet each of those needs to serve as “content”.
When looking for answers in a project, I always ask, “Is it like this?” rather than simply, “What is it?”.
By bringing an artifact to the conversation we can help clients better imagine and visualize what “right” looks like.
During this project, my talented colleague Heidi Adkisson had just published an article on “Object Modeling for Designers” and the framework had been helpful to quickly (and fully) flesh out information architecture for the site.
Action
My goal at this point was to help the client understand what the specific content looked like on each page and provide some examples or an outline. My artifact of choice expanded our IA diagram into a full content site map of the prospective site.
Based on our punch list of user content needs, I began to detail each page with content groups, sections down to individual content blocks with CTAs. I used this opportunity to remind the client which items were in and out of scope as well as the location of each of the signature experiences we landed on would appear on the site.
Result
Upon presentation this diagram became our primary means of measuring the project:
1. As a means to clearly indicate which pages and content were out of scope.
2. As a workback plan for the client to deliver on required content.
3. As a springboard for our visual designer to start to pull examples and begin visual sketching content areas.
4. As a checklist to ensure we included the user content needs from the research, content from each of the 19+ Amazon sites to be consolidated and the agreed-upon signature experiences.
In our last few weeks of the project, we quickly moved through the checklist hand-in-hand with the client to deliver a high-quality information-rich site, making Amazon the source of truth for, “How to Sell on Amazon”. Blink has continued to use this framework on other content strategy projects.
You can check out the full content site map on my Sell on Amazon case study.
