Who are you? ‘About Us’ is now a standard menu option.
What do you do? What products or services are available?
Where do you do it? Are the products and services available internationally?Designing the information architecture
Rosenfeld and Morville (2002) emphasise the importance of information architectureto
an effective web site design. They say:
It is important to recognize that every information system, be it a book or an intranet, has
an information architecture. ‘Well developed’ is the key here, as most sites don’t have a
planned information architecture at all. They are analogous to buildings that weren’t archi-
tected in advance. Design decisions reflect the personal biases of designers, the space
doesn’t scale over time, technologies drive the design and not the other way around.In their book, Rosenfeld and Morville give alternative definitions of an information
architecture. They say it is:1 The combination of organization, labelling, and navigation schemes within an information
system.2 The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive
access to content.3 The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help
people find and manage information.
4 An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of
design and architecture to the digital landscape.
Rosenfeld and Morville (2002)Essentially, in practice, creation of an information architecture involves creating a
plan to group information logically – it involves creating a site structure which is often
represented as a site map. Note, though, that whole books have been written on infor-
mation architecture, so this is necessarily a simplification! A well-developed information
architecture is very important to usability since it determines navigation options. It is
also important to search engine optimisation (Chapter 8), since it determines how differ-
ent types of content that users may search for are labelled and grouped.
A planned information architecture is essential to large-scale web sites such as trans-
actional e-commerce sites, media owner sites and relationship-building sites that include
a large volume of product or support documentation. Information architectures are less
important to small-scale web sites and brand sites, but even here, the principles can be
readily applied and can help make the site more visible to search engines and usable.
The benefits of creating an information architecture include:
A defined structure and categorisation of information will support user and organisa-
tion goals, i.e. it is a vital aspect of usability.
It helps increase ‘flow’ on the site – a user’s mental model of where to find content
should mirror that of the content on the web site.
Search engine optimisation – a higher listing in the search rankings can often be used
through structuring and labelling information in a structured way.
Applicable for integrating offline communications – offline communications such as
ads or direct mail can link to a product or campaign landing page to help achieve
direct response, sometimes known as ‘web response’. A sound URL strategy, as
explained in Chapter 8, can help this.CHAPTER 7· DELIVERING THE ONLINE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCEInformation
architecture
The combination of
organisation, labelling
and navigation
schemes constituting
an information system.Site map
A graphical or text
depiction of the
relationship between
different groups of
content on a web site.INMA_C07.QXD 17/5/06 4:23 pm Page 318