Enterprise Web Taxonomy Design Best Practices

1. Enterprise Web Taxonomy Design Best Practices Joseph A Busch, Founder & Principal

2. Members: Taxonomy Strategies LLC: http://www.taxonomystrategies.com/html/aboutus.htm Founded: 2002 Location: San Francisco, CA • Business consultants who specialize in applying taxonomies, metadata, automatic classification, and other information retrieval technologies to the needs of business. • Spin-off from Metacode Technologies, developer of XML metadata repository, automated categorization methods stack and taxonomy editor acquired by Interwoven as MetaTagger product line. • More than 50 years experience among our members. • Metadata and taxonomy community leadership. • President, American Society for Information Science & Technology • Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Board Member • Chair, PRISM (Publishers Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata) working group • Co-editor, PRISM, XPointer, 3 IETF RFCs, and Dublin Core 1 & 2 reports.

3. Recent & current projects: http://www.taxonomystrategies.com/html/clients.htm Government Commercial Not-for-Profit

4. Agenda • Taxonomy business case and use scenarios. • Taxonomy project start-up tasks. • Taxonomy tasks and deliverables.

5. What is a Taxonomy? • A categorization framework agreed upon by business and content owners (with the help of subject matter experts) that will be used to tag content. • 6 broad, discrete divisions (called facets) • 2-3 levels deep. • Up to 15 terms at each level. • 1200 terms total. • With some logic—hierarchical, equivalent and associative relationships between terms.

6. Main Ingredients Meal Type Cuisines Cooking Methods • Chocolate • Dairy • Fruits • Grains • Meat & Seafood • Nuts • Olives • Pasta • Spices & Seasonings • Vegetables • Breakfast • Brunch • Lunch • Supper • Dinner • Snack • African • American • Asian • Caribbean • Continental • Eclectic/ Fusion/ International • Jewish • Latin American • Mediterranean • Middle Eastern • Vegetarian • Advanced • Bake • Broil • Fry • Grill • Marinade • Microwave • No Cooking • Poach • Quick • Roast • Sauté • Slow Cooking • Steam • Stir-fry Effectiveness of taxonomies • Categorize in multiple, independent, categories. • Allow combinations of categories to narrow the choice of items. • 4 independent categories of 10 nodes each have the same discriminatory power as one hierarchy of 10,000 nodes (104) • Easier to maintain. • Easier to reuse existing material. • Can be easier to navigate, if software supports it. 42 values to maintain (10+6+11+15) 9900 combinations (10x6x11x15)

7. What technology analysts have said • “Better structure equals better access: Taxonomy serves as a framework for organizing the ever-growing and changing information within a company. The many dimensions of taxonomy can greatly facilitate Web site design, content management, and search engineering. If well done, taxonomy will allow for structured Web content, leading to improved information access.” • “Adding metadata to unstructured content allows it to be managed like structured content. Applications that use structured content work better.” • “Enriching content with structured metadata is critical for supporting search and personalized content delivery.” • “Content that has been adequately tagged with metadata can be leveraged in usage tracking, personalization and improved searching.”

8. Potentially quantifiable taxonomy benefits • Reduce customer service call center/associate support requests. • Improve call center efficiency and effectiveness. • Increase telemarketing conversions. • Reduce cost per unique user (UU) • Improve search engine optimization (SEO) • Decrease searches with zero hits (on website enterprise search). • Increase number of links (internal cross-cutting links) • Reduce time/cost to build new web sites, implement web services and develop applications. • Increase number of web pages with metatags. • Comply with regulations.

9. What uses must a Taxonomy support? • Tagging • Content Management • Dynamic Publishing • Search • Navigation “ When we talk about a taxonomy, we are not only talking about a website navigation scheme. Websites change frequently, we are looking at a more durable way to deal with content so that different navigation schemes can be used over time.” – R. Daniel “Taxonomy FAQs”

10. Why build and apply a Taxonomy? Taxonomy enables usability and re-usability What’s going on behind the screen … Content managers Content users … as well as what’s going on in front of the screen.

11. Taxonomy benefits • In front of the screen: Web property publishing and use • Standard categorization enabling dynamic content delivery. • Content re-use in multiple distribution channels – internal web, external web and print. • Content re-use in customer facing FAQ s on specific topics and products. • Orienting Googlers—even when they land on a page fifteen layers deep. • Ensuring consistent values for analytics across channels (website analytics) • Reduce time to on-board new web properties. • Behind the screen: Content retrieval for authors and web managers • Finding a piece of content that exists. • Determining ownership of the content and if can it be re-utilized. • Enabling alerts – if new, by subscription, by interest, by individual, etc. • Keeping content fresh, accurate and in compliance with regulations.

12. Alignment with enterprise applications • Data analytics and web analytics count attributes. • You can’t count document-like content unless it is categorized. • You can’t compare document-like content categories to structured data values unless they use the same (or similar) frameworks.

13. Aligning with enterprise applications Taxonomies, Vocabularies, Ontologies • Dublin Core is a de-facto standard across many other systems and standards • RSS (1.0), OAI (Open Archives Initiative) • Inside organization – CMS (content management system) e.g., MOSS, portals, etc. • Mapping to DC elements from most existing schemes is simple • Metadata already exists in enterprise applications • SAP, EMC Documentum, MS Office, etc. Dublin Core Source: Todd Stephens, BellSouth Per-Source Data Types, Access Controls, etc.

14. Agenda • Taxonomy business case and use scenarios. • Taxonomy project start-up tasks. • Taxonomy tasks and deliverables.

15. Taxonomy start-up tasks • Identify target content to be focused on. • Provide a list of websites (and/or other target content file stores) • Prioritize this list for the purposes of the taxonomy project. • Gather any query logs, usage statistics and usability surveys. • Collect any existing documentation related to audience personas, content organization, metadata, keywords, and any other guidelines or standards.

16. Taxonomy start-up tasks (2) • Designate who will be the project manager / single-point of contact. • Develop a list of stakeholders and interview candidates • Minimum of 6 and usually less than 12 interview sessions. • One-on one interviews, or focus groups. • Schedule stakeholders briefing • Schedule interviews to start immediately after the briefing.

17. Agenda • Taxonomy business case and use scenarios. • Taxonomy project start-up tasks. • Taxonomy tasks and deliverables.

18. Define and quantify business benefits

19. Develop use cases and use scenarios: Intranet examples • Content related to business areas or facilities • By geographic location, by type, by specific facility, by access restrictions, by audience, etc. • Company-wide content • By business function, by topic, by access rights, etc. • Use Case:Create a safety policies and procedures website for facilities organized by State. • Use Scenario:Find all safety policies and procedures related to a facilities located in Oregon. • Use Case: Locate any content that has policies and procedures around a particular topic. • Use Scenario: A policy regarding smoking company-wide has changed and references to outdated policies should be removed. Find official policies, as well as newsletters related to the smoking policy company-wide.

20. Develop use cases and use scenarios: .com examples • Web content managers • By content type, by topic, by location, etc. • Public users seeking information • by topic, by location, etc. • Use Case: Find and recall all public-facing pages that describe a specific safety tip. • Use Scenario: Find and recall all public-facing pages that discuss child safety. • Use Case: Provide search for dividend schedules, earnings statements and stock splits; and the corresponding press releases for a specific time period. • Use Scenario: An investor who recently sold stock is preparing taxes and would like to do a concise .com search so that they can find historical information about their holdings.

21. Primary Secondary Create a typology of use cases

22. Draft the high-level taxonomy: Oracle.com example Person Organization Location Content Type Audience Products Product Line Technology Application Industry Solution “Is a” groups of Products

23. Illustrate with tagging examples: Travel approval form

24. Build detailed taxonomy: NASA Taxonomy websitehttp://nasataxonomy.jpl.nasa.gov/

25. Validate the taxonomy: Analysis example

26. Corporate Communications Taxonomy Editor Content Sponsors IT Implementers Other Staff Form the taxonomy governance team

27. Develop taxonomy integration roadmap

28. Develop communication model

29. Key components to a successful taxonomy project: Project best practices • Incremental, extensible process that identifies and enables users, and engages stakeholders. • Engage stakeholders from the start and throughout the process. • Talk with implementers as early as possible. • Keep your audience in mind. • Strive for subject-based categorization. • Be consistent. • Control depth and breadth. • Make a long-term investment. • Develop and carry out a communication plan. • A means to an end, and not the end in itself . • Not perfect, but it does the job it is supposed to do—such as improving search and navigation. • Improved over time, and maintained.

30. Questions? Joseph A. Busch, +1-415-377-7912, jbusch@taxonomystrategies.com www.taxonomystrategies.com

31. Enterprise Web Taxonomy Design Best Practices • The message has finally gotten through—to build an effective portal and web framework you need an enterprise taxonomy strategy. This enterprise interest and focus is one of the key differences we see in recent taxonomy projects. Developing the business case, getting stakeholders on board, engaging in a collaborative process, validation, education, training and developing an implementation roadmap are more important than ever before. Business managers now expect that information on an organization’s public websites and intranets be findable, and that web services such as RSS feeds and alerts, guided navigation and search result filtering, mashups and visualization, and others be available. This talk will discuss what an enterprise web taxonomy is and then describe the key tasks and outcomes in a typical enterprise-wide taxonomy project. Examples will be provided from many large public and commercial organizations will be used to illustrate best practices. • What are the most the typical and most compelling use cases and use scenarios for developing a taxonomy? • What are the critical start-up tasks in a taxonomy project? • What are the best criteria for identifying business stakeholders to participate in the project, how do you get them involved, and what should be their role in the taxonomy development process? • What do business managers need to know about taxonomy and why it’s important? • What are the best practices for taxonomy development tasks and deliverables such as the high-level taxonomy design? • How does an enterprise web taxonomy align with other enterprise information and data management applications?