Where on a website does one start when they’re looking for content that interests them? They could use the pagination and start from page one, but that could take up a lot of time. To give users more flexibility and speed in browsing, you should use content filters.
A content filter classifies content and displays them in unique ways. They allow users to view content through multiple dimensions, not just one, giving them a richer browsing experience. The hardest part in designing a content filter is figuring out what all those dimensions are.
The LATCH Principle
Believe it or not, there are only five dimensions to classifying content. This is known as the LATCH principle. LATCH is an acronym that stands for location, alphabet, time, category and hierarchy. No other site uses LATCH for content filtering better than iTunes Movie Trailers.
Location
Location is a dimension you can use if you have content that comes from several different sources. iTunes Movie Trailers gives users the ability to browse movies by the different movie studios they come from. If a fan of Disney wants to see a list of all the Disney movies, they can easily do that using the ‘Studios’ filter. They don’t have to sift through all the other movies to find the Disney movies they want. Users wouldn’t have the power to do this if the site didn’t offer a content filter by location.
Alphabet
Classifying content by alphabet is another dimension that most sites can use. However, sometimes classifying content by alphabet doesn’t give users enough information. In the case of movies, users don’t care whether a movie has a title that’s higher or lower in the alphabet. That information isn’t good enough for them to decide on what movie to watch. For this reason, iTunes Movie Trailers doesn’t offer an alphabetical filter, but instead displays their movies alphabetically in their ‘Genres’ filter to make them easier to scan.
Time
Time is a popular dimension to use for content filters because time is a dimension that all content shares. Users who visit a site regularly want to see new and fresh content. That’s why it’s imperative that sites allow users to filter content by time. iTunes Movie Trailers sets their ‘Just Added’ filter as the default one that users first see when they visit the site.
Category
Category is another popular dimension for filtering content. Organizing content in categories is important because it not only makes browsing easier, but it gives users a better understanding of the content itself. With movies, the obvious categorization is genres. Classifying movies by genre gives users a high-level impression of what they can expect out of a movie emotionally.
Hierarchy
The hierarchy dimension is one that offers a lot of possibilities. It’s best to use when you want to distinguish content by rank or degree. This is beneficial for users because with so much content on a site it’s hard for them to figure out what deserves more of their time. With movies, you can easily filter content by what’s popular. iTunes Movie Trailers takes hierarchical filtering a step further by also showing movies that are exclusive.
By using LATCH you can design content filters that meet your user’s browsing needs. Instead of restricting their browsing to one dimension, give them the flexibility to browse in multiple dimensions by offering content filters.
Book
Affiliate
Don’t assume users see your homepage first and reverse engineer your LATCH. Users enter a single page somewhere in the site (from google, facebook, weblog etc) and see if they find what they are looking for. Even Amazon puts its Hierarchy behind a tiny drop down.
Users more and more visit sites like hit-and-run, LATCH only works for a few sites, don’t you think?