The InformationTransformation Principles

Below are some of the most important principles for developing your information product. These will be elaborated on as the site develops.

1. Focus on your customers and their learning needs. The time has come for infoproduct developers to find out more about the different ways in which their customers learn and then to develep their products accordingly.

2. Develop a crystal clear product structure. If you don't have a clear idea about how all the different parts and concepts of your product fit together or don't explain it properly, then how do you expect your customers to work it out (unless you're happy to subject them to much frustration and wasted time).

3. Ensure clear action paths. Most information products require their buyers to take some sort of action to solve their problem or meet their goals. Many infoproducts don't have clear action paths so customers can be left in a limbo.

4. Use multi-media for different learning styles. People learn in lots of different ways. Therefore you need to present your information in different media formats (eg. text, audio, screen video) so you address different learning styles.

5. Explain complex points with graphics. Graphics can illustrate complex points much more effectively than text so it's important to use them.

6. Make sure your information is usable. There are simple ways to increase the usability of your information, such as providing transcripts, extracting key points and developing a quick start guide or a new user orientation video.

7. Link learning to motivation. Learners learn because they want to achieve something so make sure you keep them motivated by linking your information to their goals.

8. Quality is better than quantity. Information is not like gold ie. the greater the quantity, the greater the value. Advertising 16 hours of audio shouldn't be a selling point for any product as who's got the time to listen to all those mp3's.

Instead the goal should be finding ways to efficiently transfer knowledge and skills to learners in the shortest time possible.

Implementing these principles should make your information product much more usable and increase the results your customers get.

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