During the design process information architecture is often carried out by an information architect and/or a team of UX designers, developers, and other professionals.  As a content professional, it’s best not to stand at arm’s length. It's important to understand the basics of information architecture and how it impacts your content strategy and user experience.

What is information architecture?

Information architecture (IA) is the system and structure designed to organize and label content on your website, app, or product. It is often visualized through wireframes, spreadsheets, and diagrams. It is the way the content is ordered as well as the labels given to the content, and the differing pieces of information. The IA is created with this knowledge as well as an understanding of the product owner’s intentions and the user’s requirements. 

Put simply information architecture looks at the organization, labeling, navigation, and search for supporting usability, functionality, and findability.

When designing IA, it is important to consider questions such as:

• What content do we currently have?
• What labels/names do users use and how do we reflect this in our website?
• How will the pages all be related to each other?
• What metadata and taxonomy are needed?
• How will navigation and browse work?
• How will search work?
• How will the information be laid out on the page?
• What do the product owners want users to do/find?

Taxonomy and content strategy

When it comes to content strategy, it can be equally important to focus on the taxonomy of the content. But what is taxonomy? Taxonomy refers to how information is grouped, classified, and labeled within a shared information environment. The overarching structure of that shared information environment is the information architecture (IA) which we find our way around using navigation.

With this understanding, the content strategy looks at what the needs of the organization are, the desires of the users (what are they looking for), and what sits in between. Using a strong, logical, and intuitive taxonomy structure will knit these needs together in a way that makes sense.

What is content architecture?

Content architecture, if you like, is the umbrella term used for encompassing the way that content is organized, structured, labeled, and linked together. Effective content architecture is essential to creating a great content management experience for editors, content managers, and content strategists who need to load, manage and organize the content on an ongoing basis. More importantly, solid content architecture is essential to creating a positive user experience for those consuming the content.

Focusing on creating content architecture that works will benefit your organization by increasing your content team’s agility and empowering them to rely less on developers to find and organize content. When the content team has a clean and easy-to-navigate backend of a website, it benefits the front end as the team can easily grow the content on its front end over time.

What is the relationship between IA and content?

Effective, thought-through information architecture is the backbone of a well-designed website. When developing a website considering how it is used (internally and externally), the content strategy, and how it can function for both sides is vital.

With an understanding of how the content is organized, labeled, and navigable, the content strategy can play a big part in informing this and vice versa. Developing a content taxonomy that makes searching and finding content intuitive can improve the user experience. Not only that, a content strategy that works with the established taxonomy can show up gaps in content. Possibly showing where there is space for more content that speaks to what users want to see. Delivering great content, well organized and easy to find.

How to make the most of content strategy and IA 

Content strategy shouldn’t only be thought about once the website is built - it should also be considered at the beginning of the development. Why? As the organization evolves and grows, so will the content strategy. With a well-established content taxonomy, the IA can be tweaked and worked as things change. Just as much as the content strategy is changing, the information architecture should also.

And never forget that information architecture isn’t only about what the end users need, effective IA creates a back end that is simple to use, load, tag, and sort for the content team. Keeping the website up to date, content frequently updated and added to. Easing the flow of great content delivered to users. Everyone is happy!

Wrap Up

Content strategists and information architects aren’t miles apart. Each is working to make the very best website for the end user. Information architecture uses taxonomy to make order of the information, where content strategy can drive this taxonomy, helping to label, name, tag and order the content in a way that makes sense to the user and the website owner. And even to preempt what might be needed in the future.

Information architecture is so much more than finding your way around a website or app. IA should be considered the foundation of a great user experience. The planning and consideration that goes into how information is organized labeled, and named. Once this foundation is laid, the user interface is what sits above and allows users to access the information. Navigation is one way that designers can point users in the right direction. But without correct labeling and naming (or even searching) navigation can only get us part of the way.

Let’s go into detail about what information architecture and the role navigation really plays. 

What is information architecture for a website?

Probably the easiest example of navigation is on a website. We are familiar with websites and how navigation can make or break a user experience. A website's information architecture (IA) can be considered to be made of two main components:

• Identification and the definition of the site content and functionality.
• Underlying organization, labeling, and structure that will define the relationship between the site's content and functionality.

When a user lands on your website they won’t see the information architecture, rather, they will be interacting with the user interface (UI). While the IA itself is not visible while using the user interface it most certainly impacts the user's experience (UX). 

The IA should be planned and the content structure visualized through diagrams, spreadsheets, and with wireframes, prototypes, or comprehensive layouts. Designing with the IA in mind web designers can create a better user experience. The user will not see the structure of the website but they will quickly discover the way the content has been divided up and then connected visually. And how well the information architecture matches these expectations will influence their UX.

When this interaction is not a great experience, users may leave feeling that your website content or functionality is not what they needed. They may end up feeling disappointed with the experience due to poor organization, naming, or structure.

What’s the difference between IA and navigation?

Ensuring that the information architecture is thought through, considered from the end users’ perspective, tested, and planned is essential to building a great website from the ground up. Great navigation is what cues users to move on to the next step in their journey and ultimately will determine their experience.

Navigation is but one part of the story and tools to help users find their way through a website, app, or other product. 

Information architecture can be broken down into three main areas to consider when building a great user experience:

• Navigation: How people make their way through information (website content)
• Labels: How information is named and represented.
• Search: How people will look for information (keywords, categories)

When put like this it does seem pretty straightforward. Information architecture isn’t just how your information is navigated (on a website or app) but how it is labeled, the taxonomy, and the searchability help users find what they need from the information architecture.

How do the IA and navigation work together best?

An information architecture that has been planned, considered, researched, and structured with understanding and the intention of the needs of users and the owners will be robust and at its very best intuitive.

With an information architecture that has been organized well the navigation doesn’t need to work as hard. With correct labeling and organization of the content, navigation acts as a visual guide on your product to help users find their way to what they want. Imagine well-named road signs that are expected and easily seen. It makes finding what (where) you want much easier, even on a dark night.

Coupled with robust IA navigation will provide intuitive pathways for users to complete tasks. For instance, if you want your users to find where your contact information is, making certain that there is a navigation tab at the top of your website labeled ‘contact us’ which then has what might be expected (address, phone number, map, and even an email contact form) will make sense for users and the owners of the website.

Wrap Up

Whilst navigation is a key component to users finding their way through your content information architecture is so much more than navigation. IA is the foundation of a great product, naming, labeling, organizing, and planning your information in a logical and expected way. Navigation is the sign that directs people to the content they want. And from there to the task or product they are looking for. If there is navigation without thought through information architecture, they may look in the wrong place, becoming lost and abandoning their task altogether.

Information architecture (IA) is the backbone of the web – and essentially every other digital experience. It’s the system that’s used to organize and label content on websites in apps, and it ultimately determines the paths that people take to find what they’re looking for.

IA also underpins the design. Functioning as a kind-of skeleton beneath the polished veneer of what people see, it’s the foundation. Get it wrong, and the house falls down. A poorly thought-out IA and UX may not always cause your target audience to leave a website and look elsewhere, but the odds are certainly higher.

A good IA can make all the difference. After all, would you rather stumble through a website, dropping in and out of pages trying to find what you’re looking for, or use a website with a structure that’s intuitive and reflects the people using it?

We’re always focused on the importance of good information architecture here at Optimal Workshop – after all, we’ve developed a platform of tools to help people do just that – so we thought it was a good idea to compile some more useful IA resources.

5 resources from Optimal Workshop

The Optimal Workshop blog is a goldmine for resources on information architecture. For 10 years, we’ve been busy writing our own helpful guides and resources – and sourcing information from some of the brightest minds in the industry, covering everything from site maps to visual hierarchy.

1. Learn about information architecture – Our getting started guide is great for anyone wanting to learn the basics of IA or just as a refresher. It’s also a useful tool if you’d like to get someone onside for a project you’re about to begin. We’ve also got guides for tree testing, card sorting and more.
2. Anatomy of a website series - Architecture, labeling and footers. Our ‘Anatomy of’ series covers some of the basics of website structure. In our first 3 articles, we cover website architecture, website labelling and website footers. Stay tuned for more to come!
3. How to benchmark your information architecture - Before doing any work on your IA, you need to benchmark it. Here, a guest author explains how to benchmark a site navigation using tree testing.
4. The ultimate IA reading list - A list within a list! This compilation is a community favourite, and we’re constantly adding more detail to it. It’s a great place to get started if you’d like to expand your IA horizons.
5. How to develop a taxonomy for your information architecture – Taxonomy refers to how information is grouped, classified and labeled within a shared information environment. Learning how to create and test a taxonomy is essential.

4 resources from the community

1. Card sorting: Uncover users' mental models for better information architecture – As Nielsen Norman Group states, “Card sorting is a UX research technique in which users organize topics into groups. Use it to create an IA that suits your users' expectations”. It’s one of the best methods to create a better, more user-focused IA.
2. 5 information architecture warning signs in your analytics reports – Identifying IA problems is difficult – if you don’t know what to look for. While methods like tree testing are invaluable in diagnosing problems, you can also use your analytics reports! Pageviews, conversions, entrances and bounce rates are all great places to start.
3. The difference between information architecture (IA) and navigation – “IA is the information backbone of the site; navigation refers to those elements in the UI that allow users to reach specific information on the site.” Would you like to know more?
4. 5 examples of effective information architecture – This article covers off some examples of effective information architecture, taking a look at site mapping, content inventories and audits, tree structures and more. 

Alan & Co: Information architecture in the real world

Read about how a small retailer with an online store used Optimal Workshop to improve its website just in time for the busy Christmas shopping season.

Alan & Co is a retailer with several stores and a popular online storefront. Though it still services a lot of customers through its physical stores, the online arm of Alan & Co is growing rapidly. People from all over the world purchase goods through Alan & Co’s online store.

But, despite sales going up and up, staff at Alan & Co have been hearing from customers that the online store can be difficult to use. Finding certain items is confusing and time-consuming, and many are starting to get frustrated and look elsewhere instead.

Seeing an advertisement for Optimal Workshop, the head of online sales at Alan & Co decides to give them a go and see if she can get to the bottom of the problem.