Information architecture (IA) is everywhere. Like the best websites and apps in the digital world, information architecture also brings clarity and understanding to the real world. It helps us navigate complexity and clutter, enables us to get things done more easily even with enjoyment, and reduces our cognitive load as we go about our lives.

As Abby Covert, IA advocate and author of ‘How to Make Sense of Any Mess’, puts it: 

‘I believe information architecture has the power to make the world a clearer place’

We share five examples of information architecture at work in everyday life.  

Access Apps

Does your phone home screen look like a random bunch of icons or a well-laid-out work of art? Fitness, entertainment, shopping, transport, banking…these days there’s some kind of app for every aspect of your life. While it’s handy to be able to access all these apps on the go, keeping track of them can be a mission unless you have some kind of system. If finding the right app at the right time is driving you crazy - maybe it’s time to give your phone information architecture some love?

Look up books

Are your books arranged by subject, category, author, size, color, or something else? Do you go for the common approach that everyone understands like a library or something more personal like ‘books I read a lot’ or ‘books I’ll never read’? However you do it, there’s some kind of system, (or information architecture), at work that drives your decisions about where individual books end up on your shelf - what’s yours?

Enlist a list

When you’ve got lots on and feeling overwhelmed or you’re packing for that well-earned holiday and don’t want to forget anything, chances are you enlist the help of some kind of list. What a relief to get all that stuff out of your head somewhere, in some kind of order. Whether you put pen to paper and stick it on your fridge or carry it around on your phone, the main thing is you’ve got a list somewhere - that’s a great information architecture starting point.

Shop around

Supermarket shopping - love it or hate you - it’s got to be done.  Do you browse the aisles or aim to get in and out as quickly as possible?  Whether you’re pushing a trolley around your local haunt, out of town in unfamiliar territory or simply shopping online, you’re relying on some kind of signposts to guide your way through the myriad of products.  Phew - Information architecture can be a lifesaver.  It can also change lives as Jennie Leng discovered in her case study on online shopping at Countdown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abnHLaGV_aw&list=PLKQWFP9YS6b479paxcG89cOjHUjQcPlem&index=19&t=7s

Find who's who

Imagine you’re doing a spot of research ahead of a job interview,  looking for the right person in a big company to pitch your product or you’re the newbie at work and unsure who’s who - an organizational chart can save time, and embarrassment - and generally make life easier. All power to information architecture!

So there you have it. Information architecture isn’t all about content audits, complex site maps or complex tree testing projects. It’s also about systems and structures that help us navigate everyday life in the real world.

When I first heard the word ‘taxonomy’, I had no idea what it meant. I remember enthusiastically nodding my head at my boss about how awesome it is while frantically Googling it under the table. We’ve all been there early on in our careers. Although, what I found left me feeling even more confused — something about classifying animals? Whether you’re as confused as I was all those years ago or just in need of a refresher, this quick guide to all things taxonomy will sort you out.

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What is a taxonomy in information architecture?

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In information architecture, 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) and we find our way around it using the navigation. Think of an IA as a house. The taxonomy determines which pieces of furniture belong in each room and we navigate around the house via doorways and hallways. It all fits together to create one shared environment.

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For a website architecture example, think of an online shoe store. The shoes might be organized and labelled by color, size, style, season or collection — that’s the taxonomy. The overall picture of where those groups of shoes live is the IA and in our pursuit of new shoes, we might navigate that structure via a navigation bar at the top of the page. In the amazing Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names visualization below, we can see how the information is categorized, connected and labeled through the lines and the colors. There’s no structure or hierarchy to it yet; that would be the next step in the process to build the IA.

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Creating a taxonomy

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There are so many different ways to carve information up into a taxonomy and the key drivers for determining that are your content and, of course, your users. Your taxonomy needs to make sense to your users.You may be starting from scratch with a new website or you may have inherited a taxonomy that for whatever reason just isn’t fit for purpose. The first step when creating an initial taxonomy is to do a comprehensive audit of your content. Ask yourself, is your content relevant? Is it up-to-date? Is it all necessary? Are there opportunities to delete or condense content? Once you have your content sorted, you’re ready to move on to the next step of running a card sort with users.Running a card sort early in your taxonomy creation process will allow you to build it up from an evidence based foundation. There’s no point guessing then testing and potentially going back to square one, when you can co-create with your users and then test that informed approach to validate and further evolve your thinking.When you’re designing your card sort, you’ll need to decide if you’re going to do an open, closed or hybrid sort. Here’s a very high level look at what each type involves:

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• Open: participants sort cards into groups and name their own categories
• Closed: participants sort cards into categories determined by you
• Hybrid: participants sort cards into categories determined by you AND they can also make up their own.

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This early in the taxonomy creation process, it’s best to start out with an open card sort. Not only will this tell you how your users expect your content to be grouped, but will also provide insight into the language and labels that they would expect that content to be associated with. You never know, an open card sort may even surface something you hadn’t considered. At this stage of the process, it’s important to be open to ideas and new possibilities and an open card sort will do just that.Once you’ve settled on the type of card sort you’ll be running, you’ll need to test which can be done through a tool such as Optimal Workshop’s OptimalSort. OptimalSort enables you to run unmoderated card sorts remotely (or print out cards for a moderated/in-person card sort!). After your participants have completed your card sort, you can access the benefits of OptimalSort’s powerful result analysis functions.

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Learn more about running a card sort and more through our 101 guide.

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After you’ve run your initial open card sort with users, you should have everything you need to create the first iteration of your taxonomy. Consider everything you learned during the card sort and cross reference that with your business goals and any tech constraints you might be facing. Don’t stress too much about nailing it this time around — remember this is the first iteration and as you test more and learn more, you can make changes. Build out your taxonomy in Post-it notes with a team and then whack it into a spreadsheet to make future testing and iteration activities easier.

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How to test a taxonomy

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Now that you have the first iteration of your taxonomy, it’s time to have a go at structuring those groups into an IA and running a tree test. A tree test works like a card sort but in reverse — it allows you to test your thinking by working backwards. Optimal Workshop’s Treejack is an online tree testing tool that helps you assess the findability of your content without any visual design elements. All you need are clear objectives for what you’d like to learn more about and a spreadsheet version of your draft IA (told you it would come in handy! ).

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Learn more about Treejack and tree testing through our equally handy 101 guide.

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Another way to test your taxonomy thinking is to run another card sort. However this time, a hybrid or a closed card sort might be more suitable. A closed card sort would be useful if you’ve got evidence to suggest that your group labels are making sense to users but you’re not 100% sure what belongs in each group. A hybrid sort will let you go one step further and tell you if your content does in fact fit within those labels and if not you’ll also pick up some new ideas to iterate your taxonomy further.

Developing a taxonomy is like any other design process. Bring users into your process as early as you can and never stop iterating, improving and learning.Oh, and about those animals — I wasn’t entirely wrong. The way we classify animals (e.g., vertebrates and invertebrates) is a taxonomy. There are taxonomies everywhere and they’re not all digital. From libraries to supermarkets, we are immersed in taxonomies. It's the role of information architects to determine how these taxonomies are presented to us and how we navigate through them — the possibilities are truly endless!

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Further reading

• "What is information architecture" — a guide we created to help people learn more about information architecture, including stuff for beginners and those who are more advanced.
• "An introduction to taxonomies" — an article from UXBooth's Sarah Khan that details what taxonomies are, taxonomy displays and more.

As an information architect, I’ve worked on loads of website redesigns. Interestingly, every single one of these projects has come about because the website has had navigation problems. But before you go ahead and change up your information architecture (IA), how do you figure out whether the new navigation is any better than the existing one? How do you know if it’s worth the hours of design to implement it?

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In this article, I’ll walk you through how to benchmark a site navigation using tree testing.

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The initial groundwork

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When you start any project, you need to identify success metrics. How would the project sponsor (or your client if you’re in an agency) consider the project to be a success? What KPIs determine how the project is doing?

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Put your stake in the ground, draw a line in the sand — or whatever metaphor you wish to use. This is how you objectively determine how far you’ve gone from where you started. At the same time, benchmarking is the perfect exercise to figure out the areas that need improvement. To do this, you’ll need to lay down the groundwork.

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If you’re benchmarking your IA as part of a web redesign project, great! Hopefully, that means you’ve already gone through the exercise of determining who your users are and what it is that your users would be doing on the site. If not, it’s time to find out. User research is a crucial part of benchmarking. If you don’t know who your users are and why they’re on your site, how can you improve it?

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Of course, everyone has a different approach to benchmarking information architecture. Different navigation problems merit different solutions. This is one that I’ve talked myself into for a global navigation project and it’s worked out for me. If you have a different approach, please share! I’m always open to new processes.

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Without further preamble, here’s the quick rundown of my approach to assessing and benchmarking a site navigation:

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1. Conduct user research with the end goal to identify target users and user intent
2. From user research, determine at most 8-10 primary user tasks to test with the identified target users
3. Tree test the existing navigation with target users - using those user tasks
4. Tree test a competitor navigation with target users - using the same user tasks
5. Tree test a proposed navigation - using the same user tasks.

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Step 1: Know who your users are

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If it’s a new project, who is your target audience? Set up some kind of intercept or survey to find out who your users are. Find out what kind of people are coming to your site. Are they shopping for new cars or used cars? Are they patients or healthcare providers? If patients, then what kind of patients? Chronic care, acute care? If the project timeline doesn’t allow for this, discuss this with your project stakeholders. Ideally, they should have some idea of who their target audience is and you should at least be able to create proto user segments to direct your discovery.

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If you have more than one user group, it’s best to identify the primary user group to focus efforts. If you have to design for everyone, you end up getting nowhere, satisfying no one. And guess what? This is not a novel idea.

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“When you design for everyone, you design for no one.” — @aarron http://t.co/JIJ2c82d Ethan Marcotte (@beep) May 24, 2012

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Your project stakeholder won’t like to hear this, but I would start with one user group and then iterate with additional user groups. Focus your efforts with one user group and do a good job. Then rinse and repeat with the remaining user groups. Your job is not done.

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Determine what your users do

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Interview or survey a couple of people who use your website and find out what they are doing on your site. What are they trying to do? Are they trying to find out information about services you provide? Are they trying to purchase things from your online store? How did they get there? Why did they choose your site over another website?

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Identify priority user tasks

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From your user interviews, could you identify 8-10 priority user tasks that you could use? For this, we’re trying to figure out what tasks to use in a navigation test. What are the main reasons why users would be on your site? How would the navigation best serve them? If your navigation says nothing about your users’ tasks, then you have your work cut out for you.

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Step 2: Tree test your existing navigation

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How would you benchmark without some metrics? There are a couple kinds of metrics that we could collect: quantitative and qualitative. For quantitative, I’m assuming that you have some kind of analytics running on your site as well as event tracking. Track which navigation links are getting the most interaction. Be sure to use event tracking on both primary, utility, and footer links. Name them accordingly. Try and determine which links get the most interaction, on which pages, and follow where the users tend to end up.

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Of course, with quantitative data, you don’t have a really good understanding of the reasons behind user behavior. You can make assumptions, but those won’t get you very far. To get this kind of knowledge, you’ll need some qualitative data in the form of tree testing, also known as navigation testing.

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I’ve only used Optimal Workshop’s First-click testing tool for tree testing, so I can’t speak to the process with other services (I imagine that it would be similar). Here are the general steps below — you can find a more detailed process in this Tree Testing 101 guide.

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Create/import a sitemap for your existing site navigation.

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For my recent project, I focused benchmarking on the primary navigation. Don’t combine different types of navigation testing in one — you can do that in a usability test. Here, we’ll just be testing the primary navigation. Search and utility links are secondary, so save those for another time.

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Set up user tasks and questions.

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Take the user tasks you’ve identified earlier and enter them into a tree test. From this point on, go with best practices when setting up your tree test.

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• Limit to 8-10 tasks so that you don’t overwhelm your participants. Aim to keep your tree test to 15 minutes long or less so your participants don’t get exhausted, either.
• Prepare pre-study questions — These are a good way to gather data about your participants, reconfirming their priority and validating any assumptions you have about this user group.
• Prepare post-task questions — Use confidence and free-form feedback questions to feel out how confident the user is in completing each task.

For more tips on setting up your tree test, check out this Knowledge Base article.

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Run your tree test!

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• Do a dry run with someone who is not on your team so you can see if it makes sense.
• Do a moderated version with a test participant using screen-sharing. The test participant could think aloud and that could give you more insight to the findability of the task. Keep in mind that moderated sessions tend to run longer than unmoderated sessions so your metrics will be different.
• Execute, implement, and run!

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Analyze your tree test results

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Once you’ve finished testing, it’s time to look for patterns. Set up the baseline metrics using success rate, time spent, patterns in the pietrees — this is the fun stuff!

Focus on the tasks that did not fare as well, particularly the ones that had an overall score of 7 or below. This is an easy indicator that you should pay more attention to the labeling or even the choice you indicated as the correct answer.

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What’s next?

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From here, you can set up the same tree test using a competitor’s site tree and the same user tasks. This is helpful to test whether a competitor’s navigation structure is an improvement over your existing one. It also helps with discussions where a stakeholder is particularly married to a certain navigation scheme and you’re asked to answer: which one is better? Having the results from this test helps you answer the question objectively.

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• here are the reasons why a user is on your site
• here is what they’re trying to do
• here is what happens when they try to find this on your site
• here is what happens when they try to find the same thing on your competitor’s

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When you have a proposed sitemap, test it again with the same tasks and you can use these to figure out whether the changes you made changed anything. You can also conduct this test over time.

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A few more things to note

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You could daisy-chain one tree test after another to test an existing nav and a competitor’s. Just keep in mind that you may need to limit the number of user tasks per tree test so that you don’t overwhelm the participant.

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Further reading

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• "How to get the most out of tree testing" - This presentation from Steve Byrne contains some key things you need to keep in mind when planning and running a tree test.
• "Tree testing in the design process - Part 1: The research phase" - This blog by Dave O'Brien discusses how tree testing fits in when you're designing a website.
• "Treejack takes a trip with American Airlines" - This article shows how Treejack is used in a real-life scenario.

Qualitative user research is about exploration. Exploration is about the journey, not only the destination (or outcome). Gaining information and insights about your users through interviews, usability testing, contextual, observations and diary entries. Using these qualitative research methods to not only answer your direct queries, but to uncover and unravel your users ‘why’.

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It can be important to use qualitative research to really dig deep, get to know your users and get inside their heads, and their reasons. Creating intuitive and engaging products that deliver the best user experience. 

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What is qualitative research? 🔎

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The term ‘qualitative’ refers to things that cannot be measured numerically and qualitative user research is no exception. Qualitative research is primarily an exploratory research method that is typically done early in the design process and is useful for uncovering insights into people’s thoughts, opinions, and motivations. It allows us to gain a deeper understanding of problems and provides answers to questions we didn’t know we needed to ask. 

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Qualitative research could be considered the ‘why’. Where quantitative user research uncovers the how or the what users want. Qualitative user research will uncover why they make decisions (and possibly much more).

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Priorities ⚡⚡⚡⚡

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When undertaking user research it is great to do a mix of quantitative and qualitative research. Which will round out the numbers with human driven insights.

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Quantitative user research methods, such as card sorting or tree testing, will answer the ‘what’ your users want, and provide data to support this. These insights are number driven and are based on testing direct interaction with your product. This is super valuable to report to stakeholders. Hard data is difficult to argue what changes need to be made to how your information architecture (IA) is ordered, sorted or designed. To find out more about the quantitative research options, take a read.

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Qualitative user research, on the other hand, may uncover a deeper understanding of ‘why’ your users want the IA ordered, sorted or designed a certain way.  The devil is in the detail afterall and great user insights are discoverable. 

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Priorities for your qualitative research needs to be less about the numbers, and more on discovering your users ‘why’. Observing, listening, questioning and looking at reasons for users decisions will provide valuable insights for product design and ultimately improve user experience.

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Usability Testing - this research method is used to evaluate how easy and intuitive a product is to use.  Observing, noting and watching the participant complete tasks without interference or questions can uncover a lot of insights that data alone can’t give. This method can be done in a couple of ways, moderated or unmoderated. While it can be quicker to do unmoderated and easier to arrange, the deep insights will come out of moderated testing. 

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Observational - with this qualitative research method your insights will be uncovered from observing and noting what the participant is doing, paying particular attention to their non-verbal communication. Where do they demonstrate frustration, or turn away from the task, or change their approach? Factual note taking, meaning there shouldn’t be any opinions attached to what is being observed, is important to keep the insights unbiased.

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Contextual - paying attention to the context in which the interview or testing is done is important. Is it hot, loud, cold or is the screen of their laptop covered in post-its that make it difficult to see? Or do they struggle with navigating using the laptop tracker? All of this noted, in a factual manner, without personal inferring or added opinion based observations can give a window into why the participant struggled or was frustrated at any point.

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These research methods can be done as purely observational research (you don’t interview or converse with your participant) and noting how they interact (more interested in the process than the outcome of their product interaction). Or, these qualitative research methods can be coupled with an

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Interview - a series of questions asked around a particular task or product. Careful note taking around what the participant says as well as noting any observations. This method should allow a conversation to flow. Whilst the interviewer should be prepared with a list of questions around their topic, remain flexible enough to dig deeper where there might be details or insights of interest. An interviewer that is comfortable in getting to know their participants unpicks reservations and allows a flow of conversation, and generates amazing insights.

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With an interview it can be of use to have a second person in the room to act as the note taker. This can free up the interviewer to engage with the participant and unpick the insights.

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Using a great note taking side kick, like our Reframer, can take the pain out of recording all these juicy and deep insights. Time-stamping, audio or video recordings and notes all stored in one place. Easily accessed by the team, reviewed, reports generated and stored for later.

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Let’s consider 🤔

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You’re creating a new app to support your gym and it’s website. You’re looking to generate personal training bookings, allow members to book classes or have updates and personalise communication for your members. But before investing in final development it needs to be tested. How do your users interact with it? Why would they want to? Does it behave in a way that improves the user experience? Or does it simply not deliver? But why?

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First off, using quantitative research like Chalkmark would show how the interface is working. Where are users clicking, where do they go after that. Is it simple to use? You now have direct data that supports your questions, or possibly suggests a change of design to support quicker task completion, or further engagement.

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While all of this is great data for the design, does it dig deep enough to really get an understanding of why your users are frustrated? Do they find what they need quickly? Or get completely lost? Finding out these insights and improving on them can make the most of your users’ experience.

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When quantitative research is coupled with robust qualitative research that prioritizes an in-depth understanding of what your users need, ultimately the app can make the most of your users’ experience.

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Using moderated usability testing for your gym app, observations can be made about how the participant interacts with the interface. Where do they struggle, get lost, or where do they complete a task quickly and simply. This type of research enhances the quantitative data and gives insight into where and why the app is or isn't performing.

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Then interviewing participants about why they make decisions on the app, how they use it and why they would use it. These focussed questions, with some free flow conversation will round out your research. Giving valuable insights that can be reviewed, analyzed and reported to the product team and key stakeholders. Focussing the outcome, and designing a product that delivers on not just what users need, but in-depth understand of why. 

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Wrap Up 🥙

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Quantitative and qualitative user research do work hand in hand, each offering a side to the same coin. Hard number driven data with quantitative user research will deliver the what needs to be addressed. With focussed quantitative research it is possible to really get a handle on why your users interact with your product in a certain way, and how. 

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The Optimal Workshop platform has all the tools, research methods and even the note taking tools you need to get started with your user research, now, not next week! See you soon.

Making your navigation work harder 💪🏼

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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.

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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?

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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.

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What is website navigation? ╰┈➤

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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

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Your Information Architecture 🗺️

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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.

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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.

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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!

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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.

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Content hierarchy 📝

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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How is your website used now 👨🏻💻

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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.

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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. 

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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?

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

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Homepage expectations 🤡

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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. 

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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.

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Confusing homepage navigation  🫣

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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. 

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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).

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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!

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Wrap up 🥙

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

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

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And, 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.

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What is Information Architecture?

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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. 

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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.

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IA can be broken down into 3 main areas to consider when building great user experience:

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• 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)

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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.

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Why is Information Architecture important to web design? 🏗️

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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

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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.

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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.

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

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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. 

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Always keep in mind that a great IA is:

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• 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.

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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.

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What does great information architecture look like for my organization?

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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. 

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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Creating great information architecture 👷🏻

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User research with OptimalSort

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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.

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Maintaining your website with Treejack

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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.

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Wrap Up 🌮

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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'.

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

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