Categories, Catastrophes, and other Calamities
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Humans are categorizing machines. Every moment of the day, everywhere we go, everything we do, we are constantly categorizing. We have to, or we’ll go nuts in this modern world of hurly-burly and jump-and-run. Little kids, when presented with an unusual (to them) food item, will wrinkle their noses and say “I don’t like it” when they’ve never had it. Why? Because the unknown food item doesn’t fit into their “good eats” category. We make judgments about people based on the way they dress. Why? Because we just know that someone who dresses nattily is somehow a better person than the slob standing next to him. Whether we’re right or not, the categorization still happens.
There’s another kind of categorization, a more formal type, and it was born in the 18th century when Swedish botanist Linnaeus started working out a standard nomenclature for living things. If you’ve ever sat through high school or college biology, you’re still using his system today. He created a taxonomy–a hierarchy of categories based on shared characteristics. A dog and a cat are both mammals, but one is a canine and the other feline based on characteristics.
Fast forward 200 years, and you see taxonomies everywhere. The Dewey Decimal System is the other well-known taxonomy out there, but believe me, with the rise of the Internet, categorization schemes appear everywhere.
But what’s the point of using a taxonomy? We’re asked that question a lot, believe me. There’s really only one good reason to deploy a taxonomy on your internet, intranet, or extranet site: to give people easy ways to search for and retrieve the information they’re looking for.
For example, your corporate site may have hundreds or thousands of content items on it: white papers, articles, technical support pieces, product descriptions, case studies, press releases, and so on. More than likely, you’re probably already using some grouping methodology to make sense of all this content, but it’s likely an organic, haphazard approach.
For example, you may have grouped all your white papers together, or provided content categories that are related to the way your company is organized. But as a visitor to your site, I need to know more about your solutions for my industry. I have no idea if that information resides in your XYZ group or your ABC division.
Instead, imagine if I were to go to your web site and I see a way to browse information by products or by industry. I’m in the medical industry, and I see that you have information about that very industry. When I visit the medical industry page, I can see that there are various product links there. I can follow any one of those links and arrive at a products page that contains further links to all the usual suspects: brochures, white papers, and case studies. But there’s an added bonus: I also see tech support items related to this product, partners and consultants I can work with to help install or modify the product, and over there are related products I can use along with this product! All of this functionality can be powered through a taxonomy.
In other words, an effective taxonomy can teach us about a subject–empower us, in other words. If I don’t know much about your product space, visiting your taxonomy-powered product page will introduce me to all the content items that will eradicate my ignorance on the topic. At the same time, the taxonomy can teach me about how this widget relates to other widgets and to your company as a whole. After I’m done, I’ll be a more educated, enlightened customer–and perhaps I’ll be ready to take the next step in the sales process.
