How to create your information architecture
Posted on February 10, 2014 | No Comments
After you’ve gathered all of your branding content, it’s time for you to make some big decisions. Ready?
- What website pages will you build on your website?
- What website pages will you put in your navigation?
- How will you order the pages in your navigation?
- What pages do you think will be most important to your visitors?
All of this is just another way of asking:
What is the information architecture of your website going to be?
These questions aren’t always easy to figure out at first. But you can start with what you have and take it from there. So first maybe just decide on the basic website pages that you’ll have on your site. There are lots of great resources online (like this and this) about how to go about researching your information architecture and optimizing it. The site maps feature in HubSpot lets you easily map out the entire information architecture of your website in one place and quickly reuse that structure across your website pages as a navigation menu.
Why should you plan the information architecture of your website?
Information architectures are diagrams or maps that organize all of the content that you plan to have on your website into defined categories. They can eliminate a lot of guesswork when you are building out new pages in the future and help your website content keep its core focus. They also will make it easier for visitors to navigate and find content on your website.
Information Architecture Examples
What does an information architecture look like? Here are a few examples.
Service Company
This is an example site map for a service company. If you were to apply this structure to a landscaping company, Service A might be “Commercial Landscaping” and Service B might be “Residential Landscaping.”
Product Company
Here is an example of what a product company’s site map might look like. If this company only sold a remarkable frisbee, the product page might be called “Our Frisbee” and discuss all the features of that awesome frisbee.
Nonprofit Organization
If you are building a website for a nonprofit, your information architecture would be a little different. You would want to make it simple to figure out what your mission is and highlight how visitors to your website can get involved with your efforts.
Tags: AI | Information Architecture | Usability | User Experience | UX
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By Sameera Thilakasiri
,is a front-end developer based in Colombo, is a blogger and a lifestyle photographer.
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BIOGRAPHY
Sameera Thilakasiri is a front-end developer and UX Architect based in Colombo, Sri Lanka, specialist in User Interface Design, User Experience, Usability and Accessibility, Information Architecture, Responsive Web Design, Interactive Design, Search Engine Optimization, Trainging and Public Speaking.
In his profession, follow the best practices, W3C web standards and guidelines, responsive, semantic, usable, accessible, SEO friendly to cutting edge cording using XHTML/HTML5, CSS and jQuery for Pixel-perfect cross browser compatibility.
In his leisure blogging for technical articles and lifestyle photographer.