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• If you run an open card sort to generate ideas for your site tree, pay attention to the headings that your participants create.
  
  
• If you do contextual inquiry or other qualitative research with your users, review your notes or recordings for verbatim terms that they use.
  
  
• Check your search logs to see what your site visitors are typing into the search box.
  This has the double value of showing what your users couldn't find by browsing, and what words they use during navigation.
  
  

Be

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wary of brand names

Organizations love to come up with catchy or cute names for their products or services. And this is not limited to commercial products; government agencies also have a long history of creating programmes with catchy "marketing-speak" names, such as StudyLink (for student loans) and Keeping Connected (a transport portal).

The problem here is that while the organization knows what its label meansthese labels mean, it often makes the mistake of thinking assumes (wrongly) that its users know too.~.

Brand names used by themselves in headings can cause the following issues:

• Site visitors may not know what the brand name means.
  "I have no idea what LUCAS is."
  For more on heading clarity, see below.
  
  
• They know what they want, but not its brand name.
  "Where's the portal login?" (hidden behind a Keeping Connected link)
  
  
• Brand names may be hard to distinguish from each other.
  "What's the difference between the At Home package and HomePlan?"
  For more on distinguishable headings, see below.

Make headings clear

When we "speak the user's language" (see above), we are ensuring that we're using words that our users understand.

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