Information architecture (IA)
Your site's IA is the road map for all pages/sections of your site, and how they relate to each other. The IA is informed by the discovery process and aims to simplify the user experience.
The IA should include every page of content on your site (whether that page is reflected in the navigation menus or not). For each page, you should also note the main sections of content (typically your subheadings/H2s).
How to create an effective IA
"The goal of information architecture is to classify the content in a clear and understandable way and arrange it according to [relationships] between the content pieces, allowing users to find what they need with less effort."
–Altexsoft (source)
After you complete your discovery research, you'll have a good sense of:
- who your site's primary users are (from user research)
- which content they are most interested in (from website analytics)
- where their frustrations are (from stakeholder workshops with frontline staff)
- what your users expect, based on industry standards (from SWOT & competitive analysis)
1. Conduct user research
A key part of your discovery process, user research can include:- user interviews and surveys to identify the needs, motivations and pain points (frustrations) of your audiences
- user journeys to map how people move through your site to complete a goal
- user personas to group together users with similar web needs
2. Review & update content
After learning more about who your audiences are and what they need from your website, you can then organize and optimize your content to meet those needs.
Content inventory
- a list of all content on your current website and the location (URL) of each page
- text
- media (images, video, audio files)
- documents
Example content inventory (Altexsoft)
Content audit
Taking into account user needs, business goals and existing page performance (analytics) you can now audit your content to get rid of redundant, outdated or trivial (ROT) content.
3. Card sorting
Once you've audited your site's content to reduce anything that isn't serving your user's needs, you will want to reorganize what's left into related themes/topics.
The most common way to do this is through card sorting, sorting each content item into related groupings. These groupings will help inform your navigation structure.
- Card sorting vs. tree testing (Nielsen Norman Group)
- Card Sorting: Uncover Users' Mental Models for Better Information Architecture (Nielsen Norman Group)
- Card sorting for content classification (Altexsoft)
4. Build user-friendly navigation
Some people confuse IA and navigation, but your site's navigation menus are one part of the overall IA.
Menu navigation & labels
- not every page on your site needs to be reflected in the navigation menu
- instead focus on the high-level groups from your card-sorting exercise
- learn about the four types of navigation:
- hierarchical (site-specific primary navigation)
- global/site-wide (appears on all related sites, usually in the header and footer)
- local (appears only on a single page/section, in-page or secondary navigation, icon bar links, etc)
- contextual (related links)
- menu labels (the text/visuals associated with the link) should help the user understand what to expect when they click the link
Site maps
- shows all pages on a website (including ones not reflected in the navigation menus)
- shows the hierarchy/relationship between pages
- sitemaps are usually generated automatically by the CMS or another application
- presented in XML or HTML to help search engines understand your site's structure
5. Create a prototype
Once you have mapped out the content structure of your site, you can start building out each web page. Before adding final copy and images it can be helpful to create wireframes for each page to get a sense of how each piece of content will be laid out on the page.
Wireframes
Think of a wireframe as a schematic for your webpage. You don't need to have final copy or images at this stage (you can use placeholders for these), but your wireframe should include:
- primary and secondary navigation menus
- page titles
- headings and sub-headings
- any interactive elements, such as buttons, accordions, video and image blocks
Laying out the main elements of each page will help inform how much text you'll need for certain components, the types and size of images or what your main calls-to-action (CTAs) will be.
You can build out the wireframe for each page of your site directly in Cascade.
6. Test, iterate, improve
It's helpful to test different parts of your website separately with different stakeholders. Testing helps to validate your assumptions and can highlight important issues with your IA, layout or content.
- use tree-testing to validate your card-sorting decisions
- use first-click tests to validate your wireframes or prototypes
Once you have the full site built out, you can arrange more in-depth user testing sessions with representatives of your primary audiences.
- Card sorting vs. tree testing (Nielsen Norman Group)
- Tree Testing: Fast, Iterative Evaluation of Menu Labels and Categories (Nielsen Norman Group)