Website Information Architecture Design Strategy Examples & Best Tools

But when combined with those general best practices, it helps you make your WordPress site easier to navigate. Posts Table Pro is especially helpful for sites with lots of information, because it gives visitors a much more concise, filterable method to browse your content catalog. For example, you can let visitors search or filter without reloading the page, which saves them from having to scroll through large numbers of pages.

The same way an information architect is well-versed in the science of organization, content strategists and content creators are experts in SEO and how to improve the content structures. There are several useful IA software that can assist you in your UI development process, like OmniGraffle. OmniGraffle is used to create visuals and graphics for use in prototypes and mockups. As mentioned above, high-fidelity site frameworks utilize these types of visuals and graphics to help designers strategize where to put information and why it belongs there. Visual design concepts that can help draw users’ attention to the right content. An effective user interface design does more than simply provide information.

Why is Information Architecture important to web design?

This way, users can easily engage with the information and reach their destination quickly without hassle. Thus, designers spend time arranging and representing information well on the site https://globalcloudteam.com/ to make it easy for users to find the information they want. For instance, if you compare a blog and a retail website, you’ll see different structures to accomplish particular objectives.

Organizing website’s data and content affects usability, conversions, and ranking. Ranking places the website higher in the search results, usability makes the website easy to use, and a seamless flow leads to a higher conversion rate. If you have repetitive content, or index huge amounts of poorly defined content, it could adversely affect your SEO. If there is a bad IA for internal content, it can result in wasted time and reduced productivity. In 1999, the International Data Corporation conducted research into knowledge workers to find out the financial cost of this.

Get architectural on your content

By creating customized information you are not enabling your team to get a better result of your project. The more clarity you have about the website you are going to create the more effective and lucrative results you will be able to produce. A better understanding of the project allows the designers and developers to estimate when the website will be ready to launch. The reason why today every business looking to hire an experienced WordPress web design company so that they do not end up creating a confusing website whose content is virtually inaccessible. If your website goal is to create a strong presence by outperforming competition then you need to pay special attention to information architecture while designing your business website. According to Peter Morville , the purpose of your IA is to help users understand where they are, what they’ve found, what’s around, and what to expect.

Much like the essay structure we were taught to write in school, information architecture in UI/UX depicts the basic things of design and the degree of importance of each of them. Below we will talk about its main principles and share with you some tips to build it. There’s also a primary navigation bar for different areas of the site (e.g. forums, job board, freelancing guides, etc.). Navigation and structure are kept simple, which enhances the usability of the site. Doing it this way shows an understanding of how different target customers might shop.

How does information architecture differ from user experience design?

Once you understand your audience, you can use wireframes to plan out your website architecture. A wireframe is a basic white-and-black layout for your website and its key structure. You can create a wireframe or similar deliverables using free tools like Pencil Project or Mockplus. If you’re not sure who your user personas are, you can employ user research to understand your target audience.

• Using four shapes, no color, and smartly-placed text snippets, every major interaction is understandable without prototypes, and more importantly, it can be understood by anyone working on it.
• This way you will be able to eliminate the layer that might distract your site visitors from engaging with your website or performing the desired action.
• In this article, I’ll describe some principles of information architecture, then look at the role of information architecture within the context of UX design.
• They may also be used to limit the number of times you see an advertisement and measure the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
• Do more user testing with your initial user group to test your final website labels and categories.

Working with complicated content, managing a few resources, and making sure the IA is adaptable enough to alter in the future are additional difficulties. The research conducted by the IDC in 1999 proved the financial implication of low productivity caused by bad IA design. Information architects are the ones who normally cover a wide range of tasks.

Keep your brand personas in mind throughout the UX design and content strategy process.

Creating an information architecture is an essential part of UX design for all types of Web sites—whether you’re designing an online store, a news platform, a social network, or a Web directory. The role of information architecture is especially important for sites that comprise so many pages and have so much content that a simple navigation system would not be sufficient. In the absence of a Web site’s content, design is just a decorative art, which is not enough. Apply visual hierarchy in presenting the site’s content to support scanning patterns. This enables users to understand the importance of all the content elements on a page based on the brain’s ability to distinguish differences in color, size, and alignment.

So if you wonder why you need to create information architecture then remember it offers you a clear scope of the project. That is the reason why near perfection has become crucial web information architecture to service in the competitive marketplace. A well-planned information architecture ensures that things on your website are placed where they should be on the website.

Importance Of Using Information Architecture In Web Design

Image by Nick Babich.A sitemap should not be fancy; you can create it using tabs like in the example below. This format works well when you need to communicate the structure to other people. You need to structure the information based on the mental models. Show exactly what users expect to see at places where they expect to see it. This guide will discuss 10 steps you need to go through to design information architecture for your product.