This talk is for anyone who thinks that when building websites, the first and most important goal should be serving the visitor’s needs. Whether you’re a blogger, designer, copywriter, marketeer or developer, understanding the importance of structure in relation to context, content an users is crucial.
Ask yourself this question: when you’re building a website, do you actually know what you’re building? Has your website project got the right structure fit for the purpose?
The most important factor for people in web design is, that it makes it easy for them to find what they want. Yet, so many websites are so poorly structured, that it’s impossible to do so.
Information architecture is something serious, however, the majority of businesses have structured their sites in a bad way, using the ITTIR-method – “I think this is right”. Although people think Information Architecture only comes in sight on large scale websites, it is useful to think about good structure ahead with smaller website projects as well. If you already have tens of pages on your site, you should do proper information architecture analysis. Guiding people through the vast amount of (usually growing) information on offer is something that requires thought and research. Intuitive navigation doesn’t happen by chance. So don’t jump the visual part of your web design too quick, but take plenty of time to think about the architecture of the information you offer on your site.
This helps you answer user’s four most important questions when they arrive at a website:
- Am I in the right place?
- Do they have what I am looking for?
- Do they have anything better (if this isn’t what I want)?
- What do I do now?
After this talk, you’re aware of the importance of information architecture and you’ll never want to design a website without doing some form of IA again!