2025-01-03 Module 1 Introduction: Definition, Value, and Best Practices

By Kidd, Denise
2 min

Defining the business taxonomy

What is taxonomy?

Controlled vocabularies used to describe or characterize explicit concepts of information, for purposes of capture, mgmt, and presentation.

Taxonomy and metadata

  • Classification, categorization, systems of classification

  • Gives structure to unstructured information

  • Relate disparate sources of info.

  • Provide multiple opportunities to find/discover info (findability)

    • Facet searching

Get the right information to the right people in an intuitive way.

Taxonomy vs ontology

  • tax is hierarchical

  • ont is a web of information, defining multi-relationships

Lift and conversion

  • Lift - instead of putting one thing in their shopping cart, they put two in

    • Discovery is the greatest thing for an organization

    • Finding the info they came for and discovering something new

  • Conversion - when the put something in the cart, they complete the purchase

    • User finds and uses information to complete tasks

Searchers vs browsers

  • Searchers go to the search bar

  • Browsers navigate using menus

When searches outnumber browses, it indicates poor navigation/taxonomy

Metadata card

  • Title

  • Author

  • Document type

  • Topic

  • Department

(add this metadata to Page Properties macro to each page)

Metadata fields should include all of the content in your scope. Topics and subtopics have metadata that don’t have relevance anywhere else (secondary and tertiary levels)

It’s okay to have different taxonomy structures for metadata fields, they can be either flat (doc type) or hierarchical (topic > subtopic).

It’s ok to have title/description as free text and control all other metadata field values.

Example

Instructions for new employee orientation

  • Doc type - instructions

  • Audience - new employee

  • Topic - orientation

Maybe change name to orientation guide.

Traditional vs Business Taxonomies

  • traditional - for the sake of classification

  • business - for the sake of findability

Sacrifice granularity for usability. Use 3-4 metadata fields.

Gnosis: you look at a term and you “get it”

Use plain language understandable by an 8th grader.

Stuff is about more that one thing and we need to be able to accommodate it.

Business taxonomy

Characteristics:

  • usable: flat, easy to navigate

  • intuitive: does not require training

  • natural: uses the organization, vocab, and logic of the user

design for lowest common denominator so everyone can use it from day 1

 

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