Making your navigation work harder 💪🏼

‍

‍

There are many ways that your website can work wonderfully and of course, the converse is very true. There are lots of (simple) ways a website isn’t working as well or as hard as it can. Your website navigation is crucial to creating a brilliant user experience (UX). As well as being visible to search engine crawls, completing the circle by making your website more visible to potential visitors.

‍

You’ve got a strong homepage, it’s modern, clean, bright and tells your story just right. But your conversions just don’t seem to be happening? Have you considered your navigation? No, not only the menu at the top of your website, but your Information Architecture (IA) sitting in behind. And not just this, but how it is used, interacted with and navigated by your users?

‍

Even if you haven’t already identified an issue with your website it can be super valuable to test your usability regularly. Moments like; building a new website, adding, removing or structuring content can be times when navigation changes can impact how your website performs. And also can be a great instigator for testing and improving. There are some very effective tools to help with finding navigational issues, and with great data and insights shining the way to better sorting and ordering.

‍

‍

‍

What is website navigation? ╰┈➤

‍

‍

Simply put, website navigation is the links within your website that connect the pages. The purpose is for your website visitors to find what they need on your site. And importantly it is also used by search engines to discover and index the content housed on your website.

‍

Search engines use links between pages to understand context and relationships between pages. Ultimately building a picture of what your website is about and who would want to see it, and why. 

‍

Whilst strong SEO is vital to finding users, it is always best to make sure your users come first. If your website only talks to search engines it is unlikely to really speak ‘human’ and do what it is intended, make conversions. Users first, search engines after.

‍

Let’s explore some common navigational issues and how great UX research can solve them.

‍

‍

‍

Your Information Architecture 🗺️

‍

‍

Your website Information Architecture (IA) is always important to consider. How content is stored, ordered and found will impact the UX and the performance of your website SEO. Using a card sorting tool to research how users expect information and content to be sorted, stored and found can be vitally important to how effective your website is. Optimalsort is a quick and effective tool to establish where and how users expect information to be sorted.

‍

Building intuitive IA and making sure navigation, and menus are simple to follow will ensure your users are confident and comfortable making their way through your website. Understanding where they can find the information they need and progressing to the next step.

‍

As well as understanding the order of content with card sorting, combined with our tree-testing tool, Treejack, it can be incredibly useful to understand where users expect information to be found. Looking at how users interact with your website, where they look for information and where they get lost is all great stuff!

‍

Using these insights will keep them on your website longer, more likely to see the task through. And let’s not forget that search engines love it when your website is performing, keeping users longer with strong content that is seen as relevant.

‍

‍

‍

Content hierarchy 📝

‍

‍

The order of your content is important. This can be how content is stored and the order of your navigation and creating intuitive IA. But can also be as simple as where navigational sign posts are. 

‍

It seems obvious, but there is a case for keeping the most important information at the top of drop down menus, and where you want users to take action, usually on your most important pages. Studies show that attention and retention are highest for things that appear at the beginning and at the end of lists.

‍

This is why ‘Contact’ should always be found at the top right corner, the last on the list and in a standard, expected location. Keeping this in mind when creating the order of your pages and what you want your users to interact with will inform your structure.

‍

‍

‍

How is your website used now 👨🏻💻

‍

‍

Understanding exactly how your website is used currently and identifying areas that need to be improved will lead to much stronger user experience (UX). Usability testing should be an essential part of ongoing research for your website success.

‍

One of the biggest issues with website usability is building intuitive navigation. If your users can’t find their way through your website to complete a task, they’re not going to try too hard. They’re far more likely to abandon and find another website (organisation) that makes it easy. Great navigation should act as a simple to follow map from landing page through to task completion. 

‍

Using a research tool like Reframer can allow you to test how users complete tasks across your website. Following their journey from their first interaction through to task completion. The data will provide insights into how users engage, navigate and complete their tasks (or don’t). Where do they get stuck, lost or confused? How do they feel (even down to their body language)? How quickly can they find what they are looking for? And the next step?

‍

All great stuff to inform the design team to build an engaging, usable website.

‍

‍

‍

Homepage expectations 🤡

‍

‍

Your users already have set expectations when they arrive on your website. They anticipate your website to look and behave in a regular way that makes navigation, and their decisions, easy. Simple design features, such as your navigation menu across the top of the page, with clear options. It is vital to make life simple and easy when it comes to navigating your website. 

‍

Creating an interface that looks clear, is easy and quick to follow will build trust and engagement quickly (remember the 2 second rule). Simple to follow navigation, including descriptive labels, can make completing tasks much simpler and quicker for your users. Guiding them smoothly through your website and ultimately to conversion.

‍

‍

‍

Confusing homepage navigation  🫣

‍

‍

Your homepage is the hardest working page on your website. It’s the first place (most) users will interact with you and it is make or break. 

‍

Did you know? You have less than 2 seconds to grab users with a well designed, organised and simple homepage. If they don’t immediately know what to do, trust what they see and get started they will move on (to someone else).

‍

Increased bounce rate does the converse for your SEO. With a homepage that users bounce away from you are likely to see a drop in SEO rankings, meaning ultimately you will see less users!

‍

Did you know that 87% of people that find themselves on the right path after the first click will complete their task? Ensuring that when users land on your homepage they can clearly find the road signs, but not everything that your website contains. Your homepage should simply guide your user to navigate your site, know what to do and how to do it. 

‍

A cluttered, busy homepage with too many links will distract your users’ attention, confuse them and maybe even lose them forever! First-click testing will take an informative look at how your homepage interface is performing. Mapping where your user is clicking once they arrive on your homepage and conversely, where they are not engaging.

‍

This can all be highly informative in designing, re-designing or even removing clicks from the users journey through your homepage, and beyond. Using Chalkmark to test your users first clicks is a great way to get started now.

‍

‍

‍

Wrap up 🥙

‍

‍

With a website that is intuitive to navigate and content that is relevant you will find users that are engaged and SEO that ranks!

‍

Get started quickly and simply with our range of tools to sort out your navigation.

‍

If you need some more inspiration to help improve your website navigation, grab yourself a copy of our Actionable IA guide that explores actionable ways to fix, refine and build better IAs.

‍

You can also explore Content Design Hub for resources and events for content designers.

What is Information Architecture?

‍

Information architecture (IA) is a term used to describe how content or information is organised and arranged. This can relate to a website, a retail store or an app. And you could even consider the way a library is sorted to be IA. 

‍

For the purposes of this we will be focussed on websites. IA is fundamentally important to the success of your website. It determines how your users will access the information and the success of their user experience (UX) whilst on your website. And ultimately if you can keep users on your website long enough to complete their task.

‍

IA can be broken down into 3 main areas to consider when building 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. Maybe even simple? But these tasks need to be straightforward for your users. Putting thought, time and research in at the front of your design and build can mean an intuitive website is built. But at any point in your websites life cycle it can be of value to test and review. IA is the structure that sits in behind and allows the design to tell the story and the content to be found in an easy way.

‍

Why is Information Architecture important to web design? 🏗️

‍

If you’ve ever tried to use something and thought, “where am I supposed to go next?” or “this doesn’t make any sense,” you are encountering an issue with an information ‍architecture.

The Information Architecture Institute

‍

The way in which your users will use your website depends largely on how the information is presented and organised. By following through the tasks that you expect your users to undertake you can better understand the user experience. If the user can easily flow from point to point, finding what they need in a quick and efficient (and ideally intuitive manner) they are far more likely to stick around. And return when they need to.

‍

The opposite is definitely true also. If users find your website difficult to follow, hard to navigate and get lost or confused. They will not stick around to find out more. They will move on, and swiftly, to your competition. Frustrated, and disengaged. You will find it difficult to win them back.

‍

What does good information architecture look like for my users? 👀

‍

By providing a simple, clear and straightforward path users can stay focussed on their task, removing overwhelm and confusion. How often do you disappear ‘down a rabbit hole’ when on the internet? Confusing paths or overwhelming options may mean users move off on tangents, and become less likely to complete their initial task. Ultimately the best user experience is one that delivers the right information at the right time. Not too slow and not too complicated. 

‍

Always keep in mind that a great IA is:

‍

• Navigation: Always think straightforward, simple and intuitive.  Keep the navigation menu clean, clear and brief. Content and information where it’s expected to be. No point putting dog collars under dog food.
• Labels: Consider how pages, content and information is named. This needs to be direct and simple to understand. If you want people to find your store label the page ‘location’ or ‘find us’ or even ‘find our store’.
• Search: Most of your users will use search as a last resort. They will try to navigate their way through your website before resorting to a search option. Considering carefully the keywords for information that support the search tool. If they have already failed to find the information through your navigation, don’t let them down now.

‍

With all of these lined up in behind great web design, which is clear, bright and attractive. Along with language which appeals to your user.  You are providing a UX that will entice, engage and ultimately keep them on your website and converting.

‍

What does great information architecture look like for my organization?

‍

Great IA goes beyond simply being about your user experience. Your organization can benefit hugely with testing, research and insights put into your website IA. 

‍

With an IA that creates an easy navigable and engaging website your users are less likely to move off to your competitors. You’ve worked hard to get them to your website, through marketing and SEO. Delivering what your user expects and making it easy to find, means they will complete their task, and are far more likely to return. 

‍

By finding what they need quickly, and intuitively, users are more likely to be converted and generate leads or sales. Delivering and answering questions can also reduce the need for support. If you can, your organization's website should answer your users questions, before they complete. This means they are less likely to need to email and /or call for support, reducing overheads and time lag before conversion.

‍

Your organization's reputation is so important, your website may be your only interaction with users. If they have an easy user experience, their questions answered, and are able to complete what they need simply they leave with a great impression of your organization. They are more likely to return and their overall takeaway is that your organization is trustworthy, organised and easy to deal with. The opposite is quite possible with poor IA and design. You get but one chance to grab their attention and keep them. Do it badly and you may never get them back.

‍

Creating great information architecture 👷🏻

‍

User research with OptimalSort

‍

Of course the best website IA is based on your users experience. And there is no better way to get a full understanding of your users than by conducting research. At any point in your website's life cycle it can be beneficial to undertake research such as card sorting. At the beginning stages of your website build is best, but your website should be evolving as your organization does, therefore any time there are shifts in what you do or offer is a great time to revisit your UX and how best to deliver this. OptimalSort tests users on how they intuitively would like to see information sorted on your website. Building IA based on data, rather than assumptions, will mean that content and information can be sorted in a way that truly delivers a simple and intuitive experience.

‍

Maintaining your website with Treejack

‍

With a great IA, based on card sorting user research, your website content needs to be maintained. Tree testing allows you to see where your users are getting lost in your website navigation. And also how they expect to look for key information. The Treejack tool provides real user insights on how your website navigation is working, how it can work better, and ultimately how to fix paths that don’t work. Providing hard data to inform an intuitive IA.

‍

Wrap Up 🌮

‍

So, information architecture is fundamental to your website and how it operates. Want to learn more about information architecture? Take a look at our article, or download 'The Actionable IA Guide'.

‍

Supporting your website with user research can mean you build and design a intuitive website that simply rocks! 

‍

Learn more about card sorting with our 101 guide. And more on tree testing. 

On the fence about card sorting and why you should be using it to improve your user experience? Let’s take a look at why you should take advantage of this powerful user research method.

Simply put, card sorting can help you discover how your users think your content should be organized and categorized. Card sorting gives you insight into how people conceptualize, group and label ideas, enabling you to make confident, informed information architecture (IA) decisions.

What is card sorting?

In a card sort, participants sort cards containing different items into groups. You can use the results to figure out how to group and label the information on your website in a way that makes the most sense to your audience. 

Using card sorting at the start of your website build means you’re able to make decisions based on data, not assumptions. Being informed at the start of your website build can mean saving a lot of time later with revisions or rebuilds. Better to build something intuitive now, than be left wondering later why parts of your website aren’t working as you expect.

When should you use card sorting?

It’s best to do card sort research when you want to answer a specific, information-related question. For example, maybe you’re adding a new range of “natural products” to your Health and Beauty site. On the other hand, you may want to redesign how information is grouped together across your entire website.

Card sorting is at its most effective when you’ve got the information and detail you need but you just need guidance on how it's best (most intuitive) to organize it.

While card sorting is typically used in the early stages of the design process, when there’s no live IA, it’s also common to use the technique to make changes to a live IA down the line. 

Card sorting: A powerful way to understand users’ mental models

Card sorting is a powerful tool to understand your users and how they make sense of information when they arrive on your website. A good rule to keep in mind is that what makes sense to you and your colleagues may not make sense to your users.

Using an online card sorting tool like OptimalSort it can be useful to check in with users to understand where they think information should sit on your website. As product ranges increase or change over time, it can also be useful to undertake card sort research when updating your website. 

Let’s take a look at how card sorting might work for an e-commerce website. 

Imagine you run a health and beauty e-commerce business with an active and successful website with a vast range of products that can be grouped in many different ways. At worst the website is clunky and hard to search, making it difficult for shoppers to find the right product, quickly. At best everything is there but it doesn’t quite answer what the user is looking for. It can be incredibly powerful to have a fuller understanding of how our website is viewed from our shoppers (rather than just internally). The goal of our website should be to showcase our products in a way that makes shopping easy, quick and even intuitive.

We are introducing a full range of natural based products that include products intended for babies, children, women and men. These products have previously  been categorized by who they are intended for. But we want to know if there is a better way that these could be made available, especially with a market shift to an increased demand in  natural based products.

By doing some card sorting with OptimalSort, we gather data from users and the pattern that our audience use to group these products. Through the data analysis we have discovered that a large majority of our users would group by natural products first and then by who the product is intended for (baby, children, women, or men). Armed with this insight (amongst others) we can use it to influence our IA. Ultimately, we end up with a far more intuitive and streamlined user experience (UX).

Three ways to use card sorting

Did you know that there are multiple ways to use OptimalSort card sorting? Let’s take a look– you may be surprised.

1. Building a new website

This is by far the biggest use-case for card sorting. When looking at building a new website or making better use of an existing one, utilizing card sorting at the research stage can be insightful and informative. Seeing your website, products and/or navigation from your end user’s perspective can enlighten, inform and assist in creating an enhanced user experience.

2. Combine card sorting and tree testing

When combined with card sorting, tree testing, with Treejack, can help you to improve your navigation and give you a fuller understanding of how your website is used. Tree testing is a technique for evaluating the findability of topics on a website. It’s also commonly known as reverse card sorting and is the perfect technique to complement card sorting. After you’ve analyzed your card sorting results and transformed them into a draft IA, you can test these insights using a tree test. Using this technique, you task users with seeking as opposed to sorting. This technique aims to replicate the experience of using a website – without visual distractions.

Unlike usability testing, tree testing only focuses on the IA of your website. It makes the process of developing an IA much faster, as you can easily make refinements and tweaks without needing to get bogged down in costly redesigns. 

3. Make collaborative design decisions

You can use OptimalSort to get your team involved and let their feedback feed your designs — logos, icons, banners, images, the list goes on. By creating a closed image sort with categories where your team can group designs based on their preferences, you can get some quick feedback to help you figure out where you should focus your efforts.

Use OptimalSort to run your first card sort

Card sorting can take place in person, or online with a tool like OptimalSort. OptimalSort gives you the flexibility to conduct moderated and unmoderated card sorts online. Now, you can collect the data you need, how and when you need it. Plus it only takes a few minutes to design and launch your study. 

Not only is OptimalSort simple to use,  but it’s backed up with the strength of powerful analysis functionality. Taking the pain of trawling screeds of information, OptimalSort pulls out useful, usable insights from your card sorting data. This allows you to quickly identify common groups at a glance with comprehensive and vibrant visualizations and use this data to support design changes and recommendations. 

What is 3D Cluster View?

Part of our OptimalSort analysis is the 3D Cluster View (3DCV). While the addition of ‘3D’ may throw off red flags of being a gimmick, it’s actually entirely appropriate. 

The 3DCV basically allows you to visualize the similarity between cards as three-dimensional spatial relationships. Each point in the 3D visualization represents one of the cards from your original sort. Cards that are closer together were more frequently sorted into the same category. Likewise, when you see 2 cards that are quite far apart, they weren’t sorted together as frequently. If you’d like to find out more take a look at OptimalSort 3DCV, we think it’s pretty clever.

Wrap Up

If you’re now interested in a card sort of your own, we obviously recommend OptimalSort (which you can get started with for free). Or you want to find out more, take a look at our Card Sorting 101.

Happy sorting!

You’ve just finished running your card sort. The study has closed and the data is waiting to be analyzed. It’s time to take a look at the analysis side of card sorting, specifically in our tool OptimalSort. Let’s get started.

‍

A note on analysis 📌

‍

When it comes to analysis, there are essentially two types. There’s exploratory analysis (when you look through data to get impressions, pull out useful ideas and be creative) and statistical analysis (which really just comes down to the numbers). These two types of analysis also go by qualitative and quantitative, respectively.

‍

You’re able to get fantastic insights from both forms.

‍

“Remember that you are the one who is doing the thinking, not the technique… you are the one who puts it all together into a great solution. Follow your instincts, take some risks, and try new approaches.” Donna Spencer, Maadmob.

‍

Getting started with analysis 🏁

‍

Whenever you wrap up a study using our card sorting tool, you’ll want to kick off your analysis by heading to the Results Overview section. It’s here that you’ll be able to see how many people actually took part in the study, the average time taken and general statistics about the study itself.

‍

This is useful data to include in presentations to interested stakeholders, just to give them a more holistic view of your research.

‍

Digging into your participant data ⛏

‍

With the Results Overview section out of the way, you can make your way over to the Participants Table. This is where you can find information about the individual people who took part in your card sort. You can also start to filter your data here.

‍

Here are just a few of the different actions that you can take:

‍

• Review your participants, and include or exclude certain individuals based on their card sorts. This is a useful tool if you want to use your data in different ways.
• Segment and reload your results. This function can allow you to view data from individuals or groups of your choosing.
• Add additional card sorts. If you also decided to run manual (in-person) card sorts using printed cards, you can add this data here.

‍

Analysing open and hybrid card sort data 🕵️♂

‍

The Categories tab is the best place to go for open and hybrid card sort results. Take some time to scan the categories people came up with and you’ll be able to quickly build up a good understanding of their ‘mental models’, or how they perceived the theme of your cards.

‍

Consider how different the categories might look for cards containing food items, for example. Some participants might create categories reflecting supermarket aisles, while others might create categories reflecting food groups.

‍

A good place to get started here is by refining your data. Standardize any categories that have similar labels (whether that’s wording, spelling or capitalizations etc). Hybrid card sorts have some set categories, and these will already be standardized.

‍

Note: Before you start throwing categories with similar labels together, take a closer look to see if people had the same conceptual approach. Here’s an example from our card sorting 101 guide:

‍

Of the 15 groups with the word ‘Animal’ in the label, 13 had a similar set of cards, but two participants had labeled their categories slightly differently (Animals and Environment’ and ‘Animals and Nature’) and had thus included extra cards the others didn’t have (‘Glaciers melting faster than previously thought’, for example).

‍

Reviewing the Similarity Matrix 🤔

‍

One really useful tool for understanding how your participants think is the Similarity Matrix. This view shows you the percentage of people who grouped 2 cards together.

The most closely related pairings are clustered along the right edge. Higher agreement between participants on which cards go together equates to darker and larger clusters.

‍

‍

There are a few different ways to use the insights from the Similarity Matrix:

‍

• Put together a draft website structure based on the clusters you see on the right.
• Identify which card pairings are most common (and as a result should probably go together on your website).
• Identify which card pairings are least common so you don’t need to waste time considering how they might work on your website.

‍

Spotting popular card groupings 🔍

‍

Dendrograms are a tool to enable you to spot popular groups of cards, as well to get a general feel of how similar or different your participants’ card sorts were to each other.

‍

There are two dendrograms to explore:

‍

• More than 30 card sort participants: The Actual Agreement Method (AAM) dendrogram gives you the data straight: “X% of participants agree with this exact grouping”.
• Fewer than 30 card sort participants: The Best Merge Method (BMM) tells you “X% of participants agree with parts of this grouping”, and so enables you to extract as much as you can from the data.

‍

Looking for alternative approaches 👀

‍

The Participant-Centric Analysis (PCA) view can be useful when you have a lot of results. It’s quite simple. Basically, it aims to find the most popular grouping strategy, and then find two more popular alternatives among participants who agreed with the first strategy.

‍

This approach is called Participant-Centric Analysis because every response (from every participant) is treated as a potential solution, and then ranked for similarity with other responses. What this is telling you is that if you see a card sort with a 11/43 agreement score, this means 10 other participants sorted their cards into groups similar to these ones. 

‍

Taking the next step: Run a card sort and try analysis for yourself 🃏

‍

Now that we’ve taken a bit of a deep dive into the analysis side of card sorting in OptimalSort, it’s time to take the tool for a spin and start generating your own data.

‍

Getting started is easy. If you haven’t already, simply sign up for a free account (you don’t need a credit card) and start a card sort. You can also practice by creating a card sort and sending it out to your coworkers, friends or family. Once you start to see results trickling in, you can start to make sense of the data.

‍

For more information, check out the card sorting 101 guide that we’ve put together, or our introduction to card sorting on the Optimal Workshop Blog.

‍

Happy testing! 

Despite the abundance of user research methods, card sorting remains one of the best ways to get into the minds of your users and discover how they understand and categorize information.

Given that one of our most popular tools is an online card sorting tool called OptimalSort (You may have heard of it), we thought that we’d answer some common questions about online card sorting – the research method that OptimalSort uses.

Let’s begin!

1. What’s the difference between online and offline card sorting?

Traditional card sorting can be done using paper cards and hosted in-person, hence “offline”. Online card sorting is pretty much what it sounds like: a card sort hosted over the internet. But there’s a little more to it.

Primarily, running a card sort online as opposed to hosting one in person means that the process becomes much easier to facilitate. Instead of needing to schedule a time for your participants to come into an office, you can simply send them a link to your card sort. Then, they can complete the test in their own time.

Note that the very benefits of online card sorting mean that you can lose certain insights gained from an in-person card sort, like understanding why your participants sort cards in a certain way. There are ways around this, however. For example, you could pair your card sorting tool with an online video recording solution.

2. When should you run an online card sort?

Card sorting is best suited to answering specific, information-related questions. For example, maybe you want to rearrange the layout of your magazine? Or perhaps you need to add several new shopping categories to your website.

In the latter example, card sorting is the perfect technique to find out where people would commonly expect to find those categories on your website. In the card sort, you present participants with a list of cards containing the names of items within certain categories and task them with sorting those items into groups that make sense to them. The end result? You have a clear picture of how your users or customers would arrange the content on your website.

Card sorting is useful when you’ve got the information you need to organize, but you’re just not sure how to organize it.

3. Do I need to compensate participants for taking part in my card sort?

Compensation is tricky when it comes to online testing methods like card sorting. While there are no hard and fast rules, you may find that it’s the best way to incentivize people to take part in your study. Now, taking part in an online card sort is much easier than trekking across town to sit down for a user interview, so you may want to offer participants the chance to win a prize for taking part instead of compensating them directly.

Note: Offering a discount for your product or service is a great way to compensate users and encourage the use of your product. 

4. How do I make sense of the data?

Most card sorting tools offer powerful analysis functionality built right into the tool itself, so all you have to worry about is actually putting the card sort together, sending out the links and promoting it.

Using OptimalSort as an example, let’s take a look at some of the analysis functionality and why it’s useful. Other card sorting tools will likely have different analysis options available.

• Participants Table: Review all of the people who took part in your card sort and segment or exclude them.
• Participant-Centric Analysis (PCA): See the most popular grouping strategies as well as the alternatives among those people who disagreed with the first strategy.
• Dendrograms: Quickly spot popular groups of cards and get a sense of how similar or different your participant’s card sorts were.

5. Is online card sorting expensive?

Online card sorting tools can be expensive, but it’s all relative. As just one example of this, online research platforms mean that you’ll likely be gaining access to a whole host of other tools by signing up for an online card sorting tool.

There’s also the fact that it’s a cheaper exercise overall than in-person card sorting as you won’t have to pay as much for compensation, or even use as much of your own time. Time is money!

6. Can I still get qualitative insights from an online card sort?

You can draw qualitative insights directly from the results of an online card sort, but you can also use online card sorting tools alongside participant recording software to build a more holistic understanding. By using recording software, you’ll be able to watch participants as they complete a card sort, and ask them to talk through what they’re doing to learn why they placed cards in a certain way. 

7. How many participants do I need?

In a nutshell, a larger number than you’d probably bring in for a user interview. Aim for between 20 and 30 participants.

Card sorting (whether it’s performed online or offline) is what’s known as a generative user testing method. This means that you’re typically starting without a design, and you’re using the method to get an idea of how people think with regards to the problem you’re trying to solve. A good example of this would be that you’re building a new website, and are using card sorting to learn how people think the content should be grouped and arranged.

Here’s a great quote from Nielsen Norman Group: “There is great variability in different people’s mental models and in the vocabulary they use to describe the same concepts. We must collect data from a fair number of users before we can achieve a stable picture of the users’ preferred structure and determine how to accommodate differences among users”.

8. How many cards should I use?

We recommend aiming for between 30 and 60 cards, as per our comprehensive 101 guide. Why? Because:

• People will be more likely to complete your card sort.
• You’ll only be able to include the most relevant cards, and be forced to discard the rest.
• You’ll get enough useful data and insights to make informed decisions about your website, app or project.

9. What online card sorting tools are available?

There are a number of online card sorting tools available, including our very own OptimalSort, which is one of the tools included in our platform. OptimalSort has a number of useful features to make it easy to set up and run a card sort with participants based all over the world. Once you’ve gathered all of your responses, built-in analysis features can then help you make sense of the data.

Of course, there are other options available. Take a look at this tools map from User Interviews for a comprehensive overview of the major research tools.

10. What do I do after a card sort?

With your card sort done and dusted, it’s time to take that data and build a draft structure of your website or mobile app. Once you’ve put this rough structure together, you can use tree testing to to see how people navigate through it. We’ve got a guide for that too, which you can read here.

Wrap-up

So that’s 10 questions about online card sorting – answered! If you’re interested in diving straight into a card sort of your own, we obviously recommend giving OptimalSort a try (which you can do for free).

Happy testing!

Few methods surpass card sorting when you need to figure out how your users understand and categorize information.

Whether you’re working on a new website, mobile app, intranet or even a physical store, this user research method is a powerful way of getting into the minds of the people you’re trying to serve.

For those of you unfamiliar with this method or just needing a recap, a card sort involves participants sorting cards containing different items into groups. It’s as simple as that. You can use the results to then determine how to group and label the information on your app or website in a way that makes sense to the people using it.

When to use card sorting

Imagine for a moment that you’re the owner of a small fitness apparel store called FitSmart, and you’ve just ordered in a shipment of new fitness trackers. You need to add these new products to your website, but you’re not exactly sure how they fit in alongside the shoes, clothing, equipment and supplements that you also offer.

This is where card sorting comes into play.

With this user research method, you can quickly determine where people might expect to find a fitness tracker category on your website. The card sort will present the test participants with a list of cards containing the names of items found on your website, and ask users to sort the cards into groups that make sense to them.

Remember: You are not your user, and while it is possible to take an educated guess as to where to position these products, using a card sort will take out the guesswork.

One of the other benefits of card sorting is that you can routinely come back to the method whenever you need to update your website.

How to run your first card sort

Running a card sort is quite straightforward – and much simpler when using an online, unmoderated tool. Yes, you can run a card sort in person using paper cards, but you’ll then also have to coordinate with participants to have them meet you in a physical location, actually host each card sort and carry out all of the analysis manually.

Using an online tool like OptimalSort eliminates all of the admin and instead allows you to get on with the task of actually analyzing your results and making effective decisions. If you’d like to try card sorting, you can give OptimalSort a go for free and then follow this guide to set up your first test. We’d love to hear how you get on!

Pair card sorting with tree testing

When you’re working in the realm of information architecture – whether that’s reorganizing the way your website is laid out or trying to arrange categories in a mobile shopping app – card sorting isn’t the be-all and end-all.

Card sorting can show you which things should go together, but you also need to be able to work out how people make their way through a website structure. This is where a method called tree testing comes into play.

Also known as reverse card sorting, you can use a tree test to evaluate the findability of different items. In a tree test, you task participants with completing a certain action (like finding fitness trackers) and observe them as they navigate through a text-only version of your website structure. By recording every step that they take, including any wrong turns and how long it takes them to complete the task, you can make more informed changes to the specific placement of different pages and elements.

It’s best to use card sorting and tree testing together.

• If you’re building a new website, start with a card sort to group items together, and then use a tree test to put your structure through its paces.
• If you’re trying to fix or update an existing website, start with a tree test to assess the current structure, then move to a card sort to make changes based on the results of the tree test.

Wrap up

Card sorting is one of the most effective ways of building products and services that are intuitive for the people using them. If you’re interested in learning more about this research method, check out the hub page for card sorting on the Optimal Workshop Blog.