Providing our end users with a first-rate experience is one of our top priorities. When people come to BOTW and enjoy using the directory, they will be sure to return. We work hard to provide meaningful navigation throughout the directory. In the end, this creates a gratifying experience for our users, more traffic for our advertisers and a great sense of accomplishment for our editorial team.

When first beginning to edit with BOTW, the most bewildering aspect of the job was learning about @links and “see also”. What exactly is an @link and what purpose does it serve? When is a “see also” necessary and when is it best to just leave well enough alone?

An @link is used when the user may try to find a certain topic in one place, but we uniformly would add that topic elsewhere in the directory. For instance, a person may look here thinking Restaurants and Bars would be under A&E: Missouri/Cities/Kansas_City/Arts_and_Entertainment however, they would find an @link to Restaurants and Bars which would lead them here: Missouri/Cities/Kansas_City/Business_and_Economy/Restaurants_&_Bars/ because Restaurants and Bars are unvaryingly placed under Business and Economy. In this way, @links improve the user experience because they guide the user to the proper place when looking for something that could reasonably be placed under other category headings.

Currently, we are working on @linking the major categories to localities within the directory. Such as the following: California/Travel_and_Tourism/Localities/ If you go to this link, you will find @links for every locality in California which further guides the user who might be looking in the broad category of California/Travel & Tourism to all 220 cities currently listed in California and specifically to Travel & Tourism in each city. We have started listing @links in all states to all localities under Business & Economy as well as Real Estate under Business & Economy. You will also find some states where we have already @linked localities within Travel and Tourism as well as Lodging under this category. This improves traffic for those who have submitted their business links to our directory as it gives extended coverage for regional information to those subscribers. You will find more information on this development here: Regional Listings and the Future of Search.

“See Also” improves the user experience as well. The function is to point the user to related information in other areas of the directory. For instance, if a person is interested in Parenting and they are looking around in this category, they will find a “See Also” for Home: Family: Child_Care ; Business: Shopping_and_Services: Children ; Home: Family: Grandparents ; Kids_and_Teens ; and Health: Reproduction . This makes navigation throughout the directory effortless because the user is guided from one area of information to another within that same interest with ease.

Whether you are an advertiser, reseller, user or editor, it helps to understand the purpose of @linking and “see also”. It gives you an idea of where we are headed in this area. As we build out the directory, more and more of this development will be visible and contribute to the overall project here at BOTW. As a result, advertisers will receive even more traffic, resellers will have more great features to expound upon, users will have an informative, enjoyable experience and editors will be able fill in their @links and give even more thought to the end user’s experience as they place their “see also” links.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 31st, 2006 at 11:27 am and is filed under Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.