SubscribeWho Named My Cheese?
by Jennifer SmithI know where the parmesan cheese is in my local supermarket. Since I’m treating myself by getting my shopping delivered, I’ve just tried to find the parmesan I use on the Tesco home delivery website. But I can’t find it!
All I can find is that pre-grated parmesan that smells awful. I can’t believe they don’t sell blocks of parmesan online.
Two names, one cheese
I go to the fridge to check the parmesan I have to see if there are any clues, and find it’s labelled “Parmigiano Reggiano.” Are they really expecting people to search for that, not parmesan?
So I try searching for “Parmigiano Reggiano” and I find the cheese I’m looking for immediately. I wonder how many sales they’ve lost by not including the name by which most people would search?
If I went to my local Tesco store and asked a shop assistant for parmesan they would be able to take me straight to it, and probably neither of us would notice it was called anything other than parmesan.
But when I search for parmesan in the online store, what I’m searching for is not cheese, but information about cheese. I need my search terms to match the information that Tesco used to describe this cheese.
It’s not cheese, it’s information
Helping customers find what they want in the online store doesn’t require shop assistants, it requires information professionals. It requires people experienced in understanding what terms users are likely to search by, and ensuring the items are described by those terms.
This isn’t a job for the IT staff building and maintaining the online store. It isn’t the job of the grocer. Neither of these noticed that “Parmigiano Reggiano” was not going to be found by customers searching for parmesan. This is a job for an information professional: someone trained and experienced in helping bridge the chasm between people searching, and the information they want to find.
I doubt many small companies have problems finding their cheese, but they do have trouble finding their information. All it takes is to think of how your colleagues will try to find the information you’re producing, and make sure you describe it in those terms. Your colleagues will thank you when they find what they need, first time, every time!