Website management

Building Your Taxonomy, the Concept

Before getting started with the technical stuff, let’s have a good look at how the Taxonomy can be built, structured and implemented into your P4 website.

📚 Manage Planet 4 > Information Architecture > The Concept

Let’s dive into the specifics of building the Taxonomy for your P4 website. This step is particularly relevant to build a structure that meets the user’s needs and at the same time fulfills your NRO’s most important goals.

🤔 Key suggestion: If you are reading this and thinking about changing your taxonomy, please let the P4 team know, in case you want a specific study of your UX-Sitemap and current Taxonomy done for you.

Background Information

The following recommendations and explanations are based on the following thorough actions and research of P4 Sites conducted by the P4 Team:

Main P4 Users Goals

The most important conclusions regarding the previous analisis show us that:

Main problems of P4 sites current structure

Unfortunately the current Information Architecture and Navigation presents the following obstacles:

Due to a confusing journey to get to these topics or them not being addressed at all.

Given the main user’s motivations, we have to develop ways to meet the users needs with a new site structure. One in which there is a visible space for news and stories, to learn more about Greenpeace’s goals and work, and more about environmental issues in general.

Your site should be a trustful source of information highlighted with victories, scientific research or investigations as a fundamental part of the structure.

The New Taxonomy Approach

The ways we have found to address these issues are the following:

This is how the need to develop a new Information Architecture and Navigation was born, and why it is important for your NRO to develop a new Taxonomy that fits your needs and reflects your current content in the most transparent way.

What is a Taxonomy?

A Taxonomy is the practice of categorisation or classification. A taxonomy for your website starts with being intentional about the terms you use.

The activity of agreeing on what those words mean and choosing which ones to use (or building a controlled vocabulary) are the first steps of creating a taxonomy. In a digital context, a taxonomy is the arrangement of these terms in a way that makes sense to the users of your website, so they can easily search your content and find what they’re looking for.For this to be as effective as possible, it would be important to make sure that internally, everyone is aligned on the definition of each term, what it should contain and how it should work, so you can all speak the same language before beginning.

Exercise 

To ensure that everyone on your team agrees and knows the names and definitions of the various elements on the GP website and the structure of them, it would be important to meet with your team and define the terms that might not be clear across your office. Example for these concepts can be (but are not limited to):

High level topic, Deep Dive Topic, Action, Campaign, Tag, Category, Content Type, Post Type, Story, Press Release, Publication, Feature Story, Reports, Blog, Article, Job Posting, Petition, Pledge, Form, etc. Here you can see GP Nordics exercise, for inspiration.

Best practices to define a taxonomy

Know your target audience

The primary goal for the taxonomy you will create is to help your audience find the information they need. Once you clearly understand who your target audience is, it becomes easier to create a taxonomy that addresses their specific needs.

Use relevant language for each audience

Understanding the language used by your users is essential when creating a taxonomy. You can find the language of your supporters by taking the time to find out how they talk about your organization. Once sure about the language, use it when building your taxonomy. You can rely on the findings of your SEO Audit to choose better keywords, or use this free keyword generator.

Unify across your organization

It’s a good idea to share and use the same taxonomy across all your business units to ensure a common language and understanding. Keep in mind that your supporters know or see you as a single entity and not as separate units. So make sure you speak the same language.

Allow for extensibility

Taxonomy is not a one-time event. A need to add new content will pop up as your organization goals grow. This means you have to plan to examine the existing structure and modify it as needed. The taxonomy is a living document and shouldn’t be just a one-shot exercise. It needs to be re-tested and updated on a regular basis.

Focus on reduction

A complex taxonomy hurts findability. That is not something you want to happen to you when focused on making your content more accessible. The best approach is finding a balance between reliable, accurate and accessible.

Ensure functional alignment

Make sure your taxonomy supports search, website navigation, and integration with other potential applications or social media communications.

Define clear content management rules

This is a task that can feel overwhelming… but you got this! The suggestion here is to establish the following before tackling the taxonomy to have a better overview while figuring out your own:

For the next exercise it is necessary to ask the P4 Design Team to showcase your current UX-Sitemap and  current taxonomy and navigation for you.

To be guided through the following exercises you can ping the P4 team and have your Taxonomy Workshops calendarized. It is also possible to do them by yourself.

Exercise

Meet with your team and:

Alright! So now you are ready to approach your new navigation, and the establishment of your site’s new tags and categories. Feel free to follow our recommendations to the extent in which they are practical and useful to you. Remember there’s also the possibility to do these exercises within the Taxonomy Workshops the P4 Team offers for you.

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