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Content on a website doesn’t just happen. In fact, how the content is developed and structured will play a crucial role in the success of your SEO and conversion rates. What kind of content should you have on your site? How should you structure the menu? What should be the first-level menu items? One or two menus? What should the menu links be called?

The Importance of Information Architecture

Information architecture is crucial, yet many businesses treat it as an afterthought. While common sense is a useful tool and a lot of sites are very simple (e.g. 5 pages total), there’s a better way to go about it.

If your site already has dozens of pages, you should still conduct a proper information architecture analysis. Guiding people through the vast amount of information on offer is something that requires thought and research. Intuitive navigation doesn’t happen by on its through luck. It’s a gamble you don’t want to take.

What is Information Architecture?

According to Wikipedia: it is the “art and science of organizing and labeling data including: websites, intranets, online communities, software, books and other mediums of information, to support usability.”

Simply put, it is the art and science of organizing information on a website.

The organization of content and flow on your website should be based on research and planning. The ultimate objective of information architecture is to develop a structure and design that matches the user’s desires with the needs of your business.

A visitor to your business website has four key questions they want answered: Am I in the right place? Do they have what I am looking for? Do they have anything better (if this isn’t what I want)? What do I do now?

Your website needs to answer those questions on every page. This means you need to:

• Assure your visitors are in the right place (always make it clear where they are).
• Make it easy for visitors to find what they’re looking for (clear navigation, search etc).
• Ensure your visitors know what their options are (links like “See also”, “Related products”).
• Prompt them to take various kinds of action (clear CTAs).

The final objective is to plan this flow with site maps, site-flow diagrams, and wireframes to plan how the website will work from a practical standpoint. The information architecture should provide the big picture by organizing the content in ways that guide the users through the tasks they want to perform – or the tasks you want them to perform.

This includes issues such as deciding whether products on search pages are ordered by name or price. The little details are critical, and they need to be based on actual research and data, not opinions.

There are many methods to developing a successful information architecture. Over the next 5 blog articles, we are going to offer you some excellent ideas on how to build your information architecture.

Step #1: Gather Data on the Users

In other words, you need to know your customers down to the tiniest details. This is a primary task for any business. Prior to beginning the work on an information architecture, ask and answer these questions:

• What problem are we solving?
• Who needs it?
• What’s this site for?

By determining the purpose and objectives clearly and early, you will avoid many pitfalls, stay more focused, and achieve better end results. Ultimately, you need to have a deep understanding of your customers, what they want, and why they want it.

Our next post will delve into creating customer personas and writing user stories.