Digital Wayfinding

What is wayfinding anyway? The easiest way to understand this is not through a textbook definition, but rather a real-world experience. Let’s imagine you are going somewhere for the first time – maybe it’s a new office building, a friend’s residence, or a different grocery store. The ability to recognize signs and symbols and take action that navigates you to your destination requires an information system of maps, signs, and landmarks. We’ve all received directions from helpful people like “Turn right, at the second stop sign, go left, and once you see the public library building, turn in and go to the end.” This is a cognitive mental model.

In the above example, and with technology in the mix, the reliance on visual cues and cognition is being replaced by tools that reinforces the user’s expectation for simplicity. If your website is not keeping up with this demand, you may be missing out on creating a valuable experience.

Forward-thinking product strategists are capitalizing on this shift by changing the interaction model entirely. And with that, changing the way their organization views wayfinding.

When your user visits your site, they have a goal in mind. To buy a specific item, to sign up for a specific service, to receive help, or to learn more about a topic. One upon a time, this user would have shown up at a brick-and-mortar location and talked with an employee. This employee would help the user by taking them to the item they want or answering questions. In a digital world, in which self-service is a primary goal, this interaction model has evolved with the help of technology – namely, Chatbot. A chatbot can drive your user to your content or features and hand-off to a live agent as needed.

But is chatbot enough? I mean, you have site search, you have design systems that carry menu and links and breadcrumbs so users can get to and from pages but what type of experience is this?

While chatbot, search, and site navigation all are considered self-service, in reality it is just another channel for customer service. And why not combine them? Using technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, a rich SEO platform, and deep integrations with personalization, to anticipate and personalize the result, the possibilities become endless.

Like any good communications strategy, using digital and leveraging technology to deliver the right information, at the right time, to the right user, in the right way, not only solves the pesky problem of outdated wayfinding strategies, but sets your brand ahead of the pack.