Information Architecture Help and Tips

Information Architecture means working out and implementing the best way to place data to help both a site's users and its operators. It compliments site design.

The site operator wants the user to be guided to a certain section of the site. Often this will be somewhere the user will spend money. The users want a range of different things, but most of them are some sort of information.

If we take a holiday booking site as an example, users might be looking for prices, special offers, activities, types of accommodation available etc. If they can not easily find the information they want, they are very likely to simply navigate to a different website.

To avoid that, you have to make the information they want obviously available, but to do that you have to know what it is they are after.

One way of doing this is working out what it is your site offers, and thus what people might be looking for. You can then split your site up into different pages, with obvious links on the home page to these sections. For our holiday site example, that might be:

• How to Reach Us
• Accommodation
• Prices
• Things to Do
• Special Offers

Arranged on a navigation bar at the side, these are immediately obvious to the user when they land on the page, and if, when they click them, the information on the page is arranged to be easily readable, then their want has been satisfied.

The site operator, however, has yet to be fulfilled. Once the user has been given the information they want, that should be capitalised on. It should be easy to make a booking from any of the information pages, or to look at other information from those pages. This can be done by adding

• Book Now

to the side bar, or by having it in a prominent and visible location on each information page.

As a site grows this can become harder, but it should always be considered. Search boxes can help larger sites, as can categories of pages.

Tom Sangers regularly contributes to the Online SEO Blog, who offer SEO advice.