Do your links stink? Techniques for good Web information scent

Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, Jun/Jul 2002 by Withrow, Jason

Additional indicators of poor information scent are feelings of frustration and confusion during browsing. Frustration may manifest in random clicking and frequent use of the browser's "Back" button, until finally the user leaves the website. Confusion arises from labels that convey an unknown scent, generating minimal activation.in the semantic networks because related concepts cannot be found. Labels using unfamiliar terminology often give rise to this confusion and the user may remark, "What does that even mean?" Clear labeling is a crucial part of good information scent.

Developing Good Scent

Before discussing approaches and recommendations for developing good information scent, it should be noted that scent is not going to be perfect for every user of your website. Scent cannot be ideal for all users because of the unique composition of their semantic networks. The goal is to choose labels and other cues that convey meaning clearly enough that most users (especially users from target audiences) experience little difficulty browsing or searching.

One practice supportive of good scent is the construction of broader hierarchies when organizing website content. A navigation bar containing 10 top-level links can assign more specific, descriptive labels to those links, compared to the same content being represented with five top-level labels. Those five labels are almost certainly going to use vague terminology, because they need to represent all the content underneath them; the 10 links can use more focused terminology. Generally speaking, labeling ambiguity corresponds to scent ambiguity, so narrowly structured sites may encounter difficulties in this area. A final benefit of greater breadth is that it tends to make the overall structure shallower, creating shorter paths through the website.

Another beneficial practice is to perform an exploratory card sort once the content for the website is determined. In this activity you have users group content pieces into whatever groupings make sense to them and then assign a label to each grouping. These labels are probably not going to be the final ones chosen, but they can be quite revealing about what characteristics the content pieces share. If possible, further subdivision occurs within each grouping, with additional labels assigned to the smaller sub-piles. When performed with multiple users (each user is tested separately), common groupings (and possibly common labels) can emerge, allowing you to derive groupings of content and labels that will accommodate most semantic networks fairly well.

Assessing Scent Quality

Two techniques are helpful in determining the quality of scent at an existing website. The first technique is confirmatory card sorting. The difference between confirmatory and exploratory card sorts are that the exploratory are asking the user to generate groupings and labels, while the confirmatory asks the user to sort the content pieces based on the existing hierarchy and labels. The first step in confirmatory card sorting is to provide the user with the top-level labels and all the content pieces and have him or her sort the content under those labels. Once that is completed, second-level labels are revealed and content is sorted again. Content that does not 'fit' anywhere on the website is indicative of scent issues with the current labels, as well as content that is sorted in a manner different from how the website is presently structured.