Harry Miller -- Editorial Approach

Editorial Success Factors	Why do some web sites or information products succeed, garnering high hit rates, circulation numbers, renewal rates, and customer satisfaction ratings while others languor for lack of audience interest? The following treatment of success factors is an informal description of editorial philosophy and approach.
Understanding Customer Needs	The key to success is truly understanding the target audience and their information needs. What are they looking for from the product? How do they use the information they gather? What are their alternative methods of gathering similar information? Successful interpretation of the answers to these questions and translating that knowledge into product features or content are hallmarks of a good editor. How do you gather such intelligence about audience information requirements? While it's a relatively easy matter to create market research instruments to ask those questions and quantify the answers, it's the interpretation that makes the answers valuable. People sometimes overstate, or understate, their impressions or needs. Or they ask for a particular feature, when a different one would really do a better job of meeting their requirements. It's only through customer interaction that the real story is likely to emerge, and the stated needs will coalesce and focus into concrete ideas for product features or content. One role of the editor is the representative of the customer interest in any discussion of product design or direction. Interaction is the only way to be a good representative in that context. Publishing is a relationship between publisher and reader or viewer. And like any relationship, understanding the needs and expectations of the other participant is an essential first step to success. The importance of some of the following factors can also come into focus when viewed in the context of building and maintaining that relationship.
Editorial Integrity	Editorial integrity can take on at least two meanings, and both have relevance and resonance in a discussion of my approach to editing and information product design. First, the more common interpretation concerns honesty and fair play. And clearly, readers and viewers expect and deserve to be able to believe what they read. In most of the products I've worked on, their jobs have depended on our accuracy and objectivity. The second, and also essential, meaning has to do with how elements of the product hold together. Articles have a beginning, a middle, and an end, populated with content appropriate for each phase. Web sites have structure driven by the logic of how the site is used. Training videos have a predictable pace, with descriptions of user actions building to the payoff of task completion, for example. In both interpretations, the audience learns over time that they can trust the publisher to deliver on their expectations of honesty and structural completeness. Further, such integrity is the only path to credibility. The payoff to quality control is the reader's or viewer's predisposition to believing what they see in your product. While many people might say that they don't care about form and presentation, but rather are driven by and satisfied with accurate content, good structure, correct spelling and grammar, and some style will subtly, but substantively affect the attitude and expectations they bring to their experience of the product.
Information Packaging	Many information products and web sites are overly dependent on big blocks of text to tell the story. In a few cases, there's really no better way. In most other cases, the message can best be conveyed by a combination of body text, images, meaningful headlines, pull quotes, and other elements. Building such information "packages" is often more time-consuming, but the payoff in message retention often justifies the extra time and effort. On internet sites, this principle still faces some unique challenges in trying to incorporate enough media elements to tell the story without straining the viewer's device bandwidth.
Motivating Pathways	Information products, and especially web sites, often have some specific goal in terms of viewer or customer action. But, in most cases, we structure those sites to follow some logical categorization, rather than to move viewers along a planned path that inevitably leads to the desired action on their part. For example, if we direct people to a site hoping they will download an evaluation copy and test a product, they should be confronted with benefit statements, testimonials, and demos, all designed to motivate the viewer to the next step of evaluating the product, and as much as possible conveying information designed to overcome objections. The desired action needs to be the path of least resistance.
Innovation	Living on internet time, we're never at a loss for new features and functionality to add to our sites and products. The trick is in knowing how much innovation will serve the communication process and when to not to let innovation detract from the customer experience. The innovations referenced on the Examples pages mostly had their genesis in customer requests or stated preferences. All were subjected to some level of usability testing to assure that they had a favorable effect on the user experience and effectiveness.
Teamwork	Web sites and all information products require diverse skill sets and large efforts. Most of the products I've worked on or created in the past 15 years have had recurring publications schedules (read "tight deadlines"). Successful sites and products can't happen without good teamwork, characterized by good and ample communication, mutual respect, and common dedication to the goal. The goal is for each team member to contribute some inspiration, lots of perspiration, develop a sense of ownership, and get appropriate recognition in return.