By now, the basic rules for writing online content are well known.
Design the content so it is easy to scan using bold subheadings and bulleted lists. 'Chunk' the information so that large slabs of text are broken into bite-sized components, each describing a single idea. Drill down from general information to more detailed, complex explanations.
This information is important, but it's not enough. Each piece of content destined for your web site needs to have a specific purpose. It needs to be phrased and located in a way that meets the needs of the users. It needs to support and further the site's information architecture.
Designing your information architecture
An information architecture provides the guiding principles by which a web site’s content is organised, promoting discovery and easy access. These guiding principles are designed with the user in mind.
For example, if you were designing a web site for a chain of movie theatres your consumer research might reveal that the majority of users will access it for the following:
- the locations and session times of particular films
- the schedule at particular cinemas
- the price of the tickets and how to buy them.
With that in mind, your guiding principle might be, 'Highlight the session times of current films and cinema schedules and facilitate ticket purchase.' This principle reflects the value chain for cinema information presentation.
Your information architecture might then include the following top-level categories: 'Films', 'Cinemas', and 'Tickets'. Those three categories would form the main links from your home page.
Each of these subject descriptors provide a contextual point of entry to cinema content that meets the needs of cinema goers looking for online cinema information.
Adding content
Once the information architecture is confirmed, all future content must serve to support its guiding principles. That's not to say that you can't include content beyond your initial specification, but anything extra needs to have a defined relationship to that core principle. Otherwise, you may not be justified in presenting it to your audience using your online communication channel.
Say that six months after launching your movie theatres web site, you decide to add movie reviews. That's fine, but keep your guiding principles and information architecture in mind. That means adding 'Reviews' as a subtopic under 'Films'. Not renaming 'Films' to 'Reviews' or adding a new point of entry to reviews at the same level as films. In this way you support the user’s logic—'I want to know what films you are offering me to view at this time. [Click Films] Now I know what you are offering, I am interested in this one, tell me more about it. [Click Reviews].' This way, the user is still able to find the session times of current films easily. You have not compromised the architecture but logically extended it.
Seeing it their way
As with any task related to communication, the first step to designing an information architecture is to understand your target audience.
Conduct stakeholder research to find the needs of the target audience. Ask them what they want from your web site and what they expect to find there.
From the feedback, consider whether your target audience is looking for information based on:
- topics, as with search engines
- functions, only offered by your business units
- tasks, as with how-to guides
- chronology, as with news stories
- classifications, as with product catalogues
- spatial references, as with location maps
- alphabetic arrangement, as with glossaries
- sequence, as with process flows.
Organise the information in a way that will be most applicable to the intent of the web site and the information needs of the target audience.
Phrase the information in a way that will be clear to the target audience using their language. Using the previous example, do not call yourself a theatre if your audience recognise you as a cinema. Avoid industry or organisational jargon and acronyms in your information architecture. Use standard web site terms. For example, 'Contact Us' and 'Home'. A user with any experience on the Internet will recognise and know what those terms mean. Leverage all opportunities for common understanding.
The challenge
If someone else sat down at your desk tomorrow would they be able to find your information, quickly and easily understanding the way in which you have categorised and stored it? That is the kind of transaction you facilitate when you design an information architecture. Someone is going to sit down at your web site and use it to find information you’ve arranged. Without any instructions.
Can you meet the challenge?
Quick tips
Work with existing web conventions, not against them.
Build the tenets of your information architecture into your content style guide.
Learn to see things from the perspective of your audience.
How we can help
iFocus retains expertise in the development of complex information architectures and provides technical and copywriting support.
For more information
Contact iFocus.