Brand Identity and the URL
Bud Gibson had a great comment on my last post, asking how do you establish identity with out a URL? The simple answer is: you don’t. Here’s why…
The corporate or brand URL / website as a keystone for both information architecture (I/A) and content strategy has already passed its zenith.
First of all, the majority of site visits no longer begin on the homepage i.e. www.brand.com or www.brand.com/product. When was the last time you typed in www.amazon.com? What about the last time you visited Amazon, how did you get there? More often people click on a link and recognize the ‘storefront’ but not because of the URL. Similarly, search engines have been serving up deep links for years, bypassing the master brand URL entirely in some instances.
As human behavior has adapted to the navigation of the world wide web, we have gradually dropped inclusion of ‘www’ and ‘.com’. Even the reduction of URLs into a more convenient format via TinyURL or Bit.ly for Twitter. What is more important is the relationship between the referring party to the TinyURL – that the referring party is trustworthy and is viewed by the referee as an authority in some way. The result is based more on individual needs and desires and the brands, products and services to meet them rather than the URL.
Underlying all this techno-stuff is a more important fundamental shift in the movement of the value provided by content, more sophisticated users. The brand is being defined by the consumer perception of the capabilities of it to meet their needs rather than broadcast its own unifying message. As smart content strategy practices accelerate and the underlying semantic web structure develops, content will seek out relevant viewers rather than enticing users to seek relevant content.
Having pondered this for a few days, now I have a much larger question: is the web site dead?
More to come…
This ignores the many contexts where URLs are used. While I agree that brand is a perception of one’s entire experience with an organization or service, that has nothing to do with the validity of URLs as access points.
Lots and lots and lots of people go to Amazon.com, just as they go to Yahoo.com and Google.com.
More importantly, for URLs where it’s likely (or even possible) that they will be given verbally (in a hallway, meeting, on the phone), it’s very important that they be easy to remember (not the same as memorable), reasonably short, and evince a clear connection between the architecture and whatever the user’s task is. (E.g. company.com/contact and not company.com/84jfsf?s=sdidhfkjn)
agovella
January 20, 2009 at 1:39 am
URLs are going the way of the dinosaurs.
Yes, lots of people do type in URLs and a few still do it the old-fashioned way as you mentioned, but the growth, which is what I’m concerned with, is coming from deep linked sites that serves up tailored, more precise information for the user.
Consider the explosion of mobile internet devices reaching their tipping point in the US around 2012 where sites like Google are simply an icon the user taps on — no URL is seen.
So, as an information architect or designer or digital marketing guru, would you rather be chasing the past or designing for the future?
Lori Laurent Smith
January 20, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Designing fpr the past or future has nothing to do with whether your URLs are designed well. Just like text should be readable and sites should be searchable, URLs should be communicable. It’s like gravity for web design.
That doesn’t stop you from shooting for the moon.
agovella
January 20, 2009 at 5:22 pm
As web users grow more sophisticated, they are wading through mountains of data to find the nuggets that are relevant to them. It’s about designing for systems, not a site. For example, here’s a visual from Digg labs showing the content that someone ‘diggs’:
http://labs.digg.com/swarm/
People find stuff that appeals to them and they digg it. This is a microcosm of what is happening online in the way people are finding content that is relevant to them. No URLs involved in the way you describe them, rather they are are invisible to the user, hidden as relevant deeper links, as I mention in my post — often shortened by bit.ly (and the like) or served up by the search engines.
Lori Laurent Smith
January 20, 2009 at 6:33 pm
I certainly agree with the need to plan for the future but we also can’t discount the past and the clientele. As a partner in a well established and successful (10 years this year) retail web business I have data showing a high percentage of deep linking to our site, but I also know that our brand is strongly established by our URL and will continue to be for some time. Based on discussions and observations a very small percentage of our customers use “social sites” or deep links to initially come to our website, but we expect and hope that this will increase over time and we are beginning to “work” that approach. Deep links from other sources are good but a strongly branded URL *and* deep links from other sources is best.
billc2
February 18, 2009 at 5:23 pm