People trust a site that appears clearly organized.

Recently a potential client in discussing a web site redesign expressed how their content management vendor’s implementation of navigation with multiple levels of fly-out menus caused problems for older alumni (who can’t drive a mouse as well as they used too — this issue it not limited to older individuals, by the way). The vendor is probably no doubt proud of the technical aspects of its menus — it uses them frequently in its online portfolio examples — but this is an example where the technical solution is not the best human solution, and it leaves a bad impression with certain users.

James Kalbach writes in Designing Web Navigation that while the “cost of finding information is high, the cost of not finding information is perhaps higher.”** A site’s navigation plays a role in expressing a brand, it:

Communicates … priorities and values through categories, the order of options, and the tone of the labels. Well-structured navigation also contributes to the overall credibility…. People seem to trust a site that appears clearly organized with an easy-to-use navigational structure.

How you help or hinder your site visitor’s completion of his or her goals and whether you respect or waste a user’s time, feeds the stream of impressions about your institution. In the example above, the message is: We don’t care so much about our older alumni. If your navigation is “cool,” but unusable by persons with disabilities, you are sending a pretty definite message about your institution, and its brand, into the world.

We’re all aware that our brand extends beyond the visual aspects of it. We’re frequently much better at implementing the visual parts — the logo, the stationery package, the publications, the appearance of the website — than we are the physical and experience aspects. But our brand’s story is also informed by physical interactions and by experiences, whether we actively try to mange those aspects or not. An unhelpful employee can damage the impression of your brand for a campus visitor. A campus tour and the appearance of your physical plant can affirm or change your brand impression in the mind of a prospect or a parent. And nothing can telegraph an organization’s thinking about its consumers or audiences quicker than its web site.

In web projects there’s often pressure to get to something visual very quickly, but web design is as much, if not more, about enabling an experience as it is about including the logo and new pictures of the quad. Your site’s navigation, and the information architecture and the back-end technical systems supporting it, are the foundation of the online experience. Design decisions should always consider accessibility, responsiveness, and polite degradability (for assistive technology devices and older browsers) with the goal to leave site visitors with a delightful, as opposed to frustrating, experience. Navigation design should not be left to the IT intern or the default settings of your content management system.

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* Dayal, S., Landesberg, H. and Zeisser, M., “Building Digital Brands,” The McKinsey Quarterly, May 2000: 42-51.

** Kalbach, James, Designing Web Navigation (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2007) 22.

In his first post, Merholz writes: “…this isn’t about money — in my work, the biggest impact I’ve seen a customer experience mindset have is to help companies understand how they can better orchestrate existing elements to realize new value….This is about choreographing what you already have (technologies, people, offerings) to better respond to your customers’ needs and wants.”

Adapative Path’s clients are much more likely to be companies and corporations, but it occurred to me that you could substitute “students” for “customers” in the above. And in these economic times, who wouldn’t be on board with taking what you already have and better aligning it with your students’ goals and needs?

In his most recent post, Merholz examines how businesses see their customers and, unfortunately, how little they often understand them.

About working on a project with a large bank, Merholtz writes: “Buying financial products is challenging, because unlike physical goods, it’s hard to define what you want ahead of time….

“We realized that customers must satisfy three sets of requirements — functional (does the product meet my basic needs); intellectual (through comparison, am I confident I’m getting the best deal); and, crucially, emotional (could I have a relationship with this bank?).”

Again, drawing a parallel with the challenge of college selection: Does the college meet my basic needs (functional)? Through comparison, am I confident I’m getting the best university for me (intellectual)? Could I have a relationship with this college (emotional)?

The bank wanted to drive all applications for new products online, according to Merholz, but researching and listening to the customers revealed that they still wanted to be able to have a human relationship, either in person or on the phone. Continuing to provide that contact opportunity was a better strategy.

The bottom line here is that it’s not just who your customers/students are, but how they behave. And have you aligned your institutional processes with actual behaviors, not with labels and preconceived notions about your customers/students? Is your admissions strategy meeting the functional, intellectual, and emotional concerns of potential students?

The researchers’ findings show, first, that brand opinions are not static or fixed.

“The message is that people don’t just form brand opinions and stick with them,” said [Sharon] Shavitt, a professor of business administration. “Instead, they’re constantly monitoring their sense of understanding. They may in fact be swinging between doubt and closure more often than we think.”

Second, by requiring effort, consumers have to actively manage their understanding of the brand, rather than simply processing it along normal (and, presumably, unconscious) lines.

“A sense of difficulty threatens consumers’ metacognitive comfort zone and can lead them to doubt their understanding of an established brand,” Shavitt said. “Consumers expect a strong sense of understanding for those brands, and when that’s threatened it can lead them to be more open to reevaluating a brand.”

Shavitt goes on to claim that distracting situations may in fact be beneficial for brands—provided that the conditions induce doubt about previous understandings of the brand. In other words, not all distractions are helpful.

Marketers also can plant a sense of struggle, [Shavitt] said, such as contests or online surveys with new information that runs counter to a brand’s traditional image. McDonald’s, one of the brands included in the study, could instill doubt by asking consumers how many salad varieties are on menus or the sodium content of its burgers and fries, she said.

On one level, the results aren’t surprising. Marketers have known for a long time that the best marketing will challenge audiences’ presuppositions. People crave a sense of discovery, especially when it relates to something they’re already familiar with.

On another level, though, if the findings are accurate, brand awareness is much more malleable and dynamic than commonly believed.

One complaint: The Science Daily article reporting the study makes no distinction between forms of effort: it lumps physical distractions (such as blurry print) and cognitive dissonance together. My sense is that forcing audiences to reconcile dissonant ideas about a brand has far more beneficial effects than taxing the attention of the already distracted consumer.

Here’s the Science Daily article.

The study, which polled 6,000 consumers worldwide, also found that consumers are increasingly driven to identify leading companies as those that are “innovative, financially secure, ethical and possess the biggest market share.” This means traditional notions of competitive advantage are shifting, and that means how you communicate your values must shift as well:

The findings underscore the need for marketers to shift their business focus from being “driven by a coherent set of core values” to one that emphasizes how those “values [can] be communicated effectively at every touch point or companies risk undermining both their relationships with their customers and their long-term success,” said Mark Hass, CEO of MS&L Worldwide, a brand communications and consultancy network headquartered in New York.

Schools too often take their values as a given. After all, information about those Spring Break service trips are posted in the news archive and that page with the mission statement has been on the Web site for years. But the fact is, the values that an institution projects are generally (to extend Donald Rumsfeld’s epistemological categories) “unknown knowns.” That is, they’re things we don’t know we know because we’re too close to them. When we spend the bulk of our time talking to people who are equally invested in and knowledgeable of the institution’s values, we take it for granted that those values are apparent to everyone. However, what you say your brand values are and the values you project can be radically different. (And, at any rate, as this study indicates, consumers aren’t interested in what you say your values are; they’re inferring your values based on what they see or experience.) Take the example of the campus tour: How many schools tout their individualized approach to education–to large groups of prospective students and their families? Think prospects who are looking at everything with a critical eye–and who are hyper-aware of propaganda–don’t spot the disconnect?

Other findings:

72% of U.S. respondents believe that companies can have values just like the public does.

75% of Americans said companies have both a “higher purpose” and want to be financially successful, with honesty being a core component of that success.

56% of Americans said it is crucial for them to know about the values of the companies they do business with, while 33% said this was somewhat important.

Respondents polled in the survey also rated a company’s competition in the marketplace (87%) to be as important as environmental responsibility (82%).

While price and quality may be the primary purchase influencers in tough times, in the long run, it’s values that matter the most. 77% of consumers in the U.S. said they either strongly agree or somewhat agreed with that statement.

[U]nlike viral, community requires a different set of objectives, strategy and tactics around measurement. Yet, intuitively, brands realize there is value to them. That’s because if we take our bright and shiny marketing hats off for a moment, we realize that it’s likely we are part of them. … People who use social networks also feel like they’re part of a larger community of people they relate to.

Regardless of whether you’re considering starting an online community, Armano provides a concise framework for any online presence—and for any brand initiative for that matter:

Content
When considering community initiatives, there are three questions to ask: Where will the content come from? Does it provide indisputable value? Can a regular flow of quality content be maintained?

Context
Context means understanding how to meet people where they are and serving them the right experience at the right time. Well-designed applications and functionality have great opportunities to deliver on context.

Connectivity
… It’s not about mass communications but more about the micro-interactions …. Designing experiences that support thousands of micro-interactions means you are making a commitment vs. trying to produce a one-hit wonder. …

Continuity
Communities … need to be flexible to evolve while still providing a valuable and consistent user experience which can be sustained.

Read the full article here.

I don’t agree with Mohammed’s criticisms of building a brand on a single core idea, but his argument and his paper are provocative and definitely worth reading for anyone thinking about how to take branding into new media.

On a similar note, check out this discussion of branding versus “edgework” (which seems to be getting at something akin to what Mohammed is talking about).