The Right Trigger Words

CNN.com's designers have gone out of their way to make their workdifficult. They could have built a very simple home page with justtheir logo and a handful of links:

• The Most Important Story
• The Second Most Important Story
• The Third Most Important Story
• An Unimportant, Yet Entertaining Story
• Yet Another Story about Michael Jackson

If this was CNN's home page, the designers could go home and not haveany work for weeks. After all, what is a news site's home page but alist of links to the most important stories? (And the unexplainableinsatiable curiosity about Michael Jackson's latest antics.)

Yet, these links aren't effective for users because they're missing akey component: the Trigger Words. Trigger words are the words andphrases that *trigger* a user into clicking. They contain theessential elements to provide the motivation to continue with thesite.

> The Move-Forward-Until-Found Rule

When dealing with information, a web page can do only one oftwo things: either it contains the content the user wants *or* itcontains the links to get them to the content they want. If a pagedoesn't follow this rule, then the users stop clicking and they aren'tlikely to find their target content.

CNN.com's home page follows the Move-Forward-Until-Found rule: Almostone-third of the home page is content -- the most important story ofthe moment. (Because it's news, this content is updated every 15minutes, giving the CNN developers plenty to do all day.)

The rest of the page contains dozens of links, in case the top storyon the home page wasn't everything the user wanted. These links onlywork when they contain the right trigger words. It's CNN's mastery oftrigger words that make it so interesting.

> Dissecting Detailed Descriptions

A few years ago, we studied a handful of users while they searched forspecific items of interest on large web sites. These were items *they*were interested in and no two users searched for the same items inthis study. Each item they searched for was on the sites we werestudying.

Before every user started their search, we interviewed themextensively about what they hoped to find. We had them describe theirtargets in excruciating detail. We recorded every word they said.Then, we set them off on their hunt, recording every page they visitedon the site.

After seeing which users succeeding at finding their target contentand which didn't, we analyzed each page they visited thoroughly,including the home page. Part of our analysis including studying thewords they used to describe their targets.

It turned out that users were far more successful at finding theirtargets when the description words, which they told us *before* theysaw the site, appeared on the home page. In the tasks where userssuccessfully found their target content, the description wordsappeared on the home page 72% of the time. When users wereunsuccessful, their words only appeared an average of 6% of the timeon the home page.

Description words are a major type of trigger word. This studyindicates that if those trigger words are found on the home page,users are far more likely to get what they are looking for.

> Trigger Words as Search Keywords

Another interesting fact from that study: In those tasks where theusers didn't find their target, they were far more likely to use thesite's Search function than in those tasks where the description wordsappeared on the home page. When the words did appear, users usuallyclicked on the associated links instead of using Search.

In fact, when users did eventually go to Search, they almost alwaystyped one or more of the description words as their search terms. Itmakes sense to us that users would use their description as theirsearch term. This was when we realized the failed searches in a site'ssearch log are important clues to understanding the users' triggerwords.

> Getting Scent from Flower Displays

It would be silly for the CNN.com home page team to change to thegeneric links above. However, you'd be surprised how often it happens.

One of the more outrageous examples is the site for the popular StatenIsland landscaper, Wiesner Brothers. After clicking on the landscapinglink at the top of the home page, the user is presented a page forwhich the only links are the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8,representing different showcase projects from the landscaper. (See apicture of the landscaping page at Wiesner Brothers' site)

You'd be hard pressed to provide *less* trigger words than thesedesigners have. When the user clicks on a number, say #5, they get anew set of links with a similar lack of trigger words. Here you getlinks that are labeled "View 01", "View 02", "View 03" and so forth.(See a picture of "project 5")

It's obvious that the designers intended the user would focus on thebeautiful landscapes and just click through each picture serially.Maybe that's the case, at which point this design may be optimal forthat use. (We don't know because we haven't tested it.)

However, is it possible some users are coming to the site with aspecific project in mind? How would they jump to those showcases thatare most similar to their project? Would they become frustrated havingto look through unrelated projects?

> An Analogue at Analog

If you visited the web site for Analog Devices a few years ago, itlooked like many other high tech product company's sites: a single800x600 design that had a few key category links like "DataConverters", "Amplifiers and Linear", and "Corporate Information".Just what you'd expect for a leading electronics producer. (See apicture of Analog Devices home page in February of 2003)

Recently, however, the site has completely redesigned. With the helpof our friends at InContext Enterprises, Analog has major revamp oftheir home page. This new design tested very well with users and thecompany has already seen positive effects. (See a picture of thecurrent Analog Devices home page)

What's the big difference between these two designs? Well, beyond theincreased use of screen real estate, the major difference is the hugenumber of trigger words they've added to the home page.

Since many of Analog Device's customers are engineers looking forinformation about components to build into their products, the companyhas focused on making sure their trigger words appear on the homepage. Instead of having to guess what major category a particularcomponent falls under, the engineers now can quickly pick the closestcomponent out of a list, going directly to the content they desire.

> Identifying Users' Trigger Words

How do you find out what your users' trigger words are? Well, youstart by asking them.

Visiting your users in their natural environments is a wonderful wayto start. You can bet that Analog Devices didn't make their changeswithout spending time watching engineers research and selectcomponents.

We've found that personas are a great way to communicate trigger wordsto everyone on the design team. A persona is a detailed description ofa user the team wants to ensure is successful on the site. Listing,within the persona, the trigger words that person would use helps thedesigners understand how the users' own language will impact the finaldesign.

In addition, we've never conducted a usability test that didn't yieldtremendous insight into how users react to the links the team isusing. It becomes obvious immediately when links are missing the cluesthe users need to go forward.

This powerful trio -- field studies, personas, and usability testing-- are a great way to start identifying the trigger words that workfor your users.

> Getting the Most Out of Every Link

The purpose of every link is to move users forward. Each link needs togive off enough "scent" to clue the user into the content to follow.That scent comes from the trigger words. When creating new content,the designers' most important task is to ensure that the links to thatcontent contains the right trigger words

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A permanent version of this article is athttp://www.uie.com/articles/trigger_words/

If you'd like to know more about the Scent of Information and howTrigger Words work, see our latest report, Designing for the Scent ofInformation.

Jared M. Spool, Founding Principal
A software developer and programmer, Jared founded User Interface Engineering in 1988. He has more than 15 years of experience conducting usability evaluations on a variety of products, and is an expert in low-fidelity prototyping techniques.

Jared is on the faculty of the Tufts University Gordon Institute and teaches seminars on product usability. He is a member of SIGCHI, the Usability Professionals Association, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the IEEE. Jared is a recognized authority on user interface design and human factors in computing. He is a regular tutorial speaker at the annual CHI conference and Society for Technical Communications conferences around the country.