People often want an easy example of the benefit of taxonomy. An Auto Trader commercial from a few years ago, called "Woosh!" illustrates the idea perfectly. In the spot, the customer is able to quickly search through a large volume of cars by identifying the attributes or metadata that are important for his buying decision. This search is driven by robust automobile taxonomy and metadata classification.
In this spot, the customer initially does a keyword search for "car". Thousands of results woosh into the screen. Next, he filters the results by the metadata value "Convertible" and then by "Red" and finally by "less than 15,000 miles" to find the single car that is a fit for him. As it ends, he is doing a new search for "Loans". This commercial demonstrates how Auto trader invested in their metadata because it helps customers find the right product as quickly as possible so they can make a purchase.
Creating a taxonomy can enable the very same experience for enterprise content. The common, normalized language provides the set of metadata or tags that can be applied to documents.
Enterprise content is then tagged with the taxonomy metadata, giving users the ability to quickly filter to the right content after doing an initial keyword search. Imagine doing a search for "Product XYZ" then being able to filter those results by "Repair" and "Engine" and having the correct document whoosh on to your desktop.
Finding the right enterprise content doesn't correlate directly to a new sale, to be sure, but it is does ensure that employees are efficient and have the right information to do their jobs. In fact, according to a 2013 Findwise Enterprise Search and Findability Survey, 78% of respondents said that finding the right information is either critical or imperative to their organization's business goals and success.
If you want to add some woosh to your enterprise content, taxonomy is a necessary investment. Learn how the WAND Taxonomy Portal can help add Woosh to your content.
