The purpose of information architecture, or IA, is to link content, context, and your users. More precisely, information should be structured in a way that makes sense and the site should be easy for the user to navigate. Ultimately, the goal is to create a site in which visitors have no problem finding what they are looking for.

What is Information Architecture (IA)?

Information architecture is the art and science of organizing and labeling data including: websites, intranets, online communities and software to develop usability and structural aesthetics.Wikipedia

Admittedly it sounds like a pretty boring job and not one an IA professional must relish explaining to people at parties, but I cannot emphasise how incredibly important IA is when planning a website. And it is relevant regardless of whether you are planning a five or 5,000 page website. Below I look at some of the basic principles of applying IA to your website.

Defining Goals

If you don’t know what you are trying to achieve then don’t start building that website yet! First stop and ask yourself some questions… here are a couple to get you started:

• What is the driving purpose behind your business/organisation?
• What are the short and long term goals for the website?

Answering those two questions alone will help you more clearly understand the purpose of your website.

Define the User Experience

This process can be as complicated or as simple as you make it. In a nutshell this is the methodology I would recommend:

1. Define the Audience

Who is your target audience and what will they want from your website? In some cases you may have multiple targets so group them and their corresponding needs. Next prioritise those needs based on which group is most important to you. Don’t forget if you aim to please everybody you will inevitably please nobody.

2. Create Scenarios

Time to get creative… Creating scenarios (or stories) begins with creating a character (with a name, personality, background etc) and then giving him/her a task to complete on the website. Of course, you don’t know what exactly will be on the site yet so you’ll need to use your imagination. At first this may feel a bit silly but it can be incredibly helpful when you come to planning content and choosing features – it can also be a great tool for validating a site’s design once it has been completed.

3. Competitive Analysis

Here’s your opportunity to do what I know you have been yearning for – busting open that spreadsheet software! List your competitors in columns and start listing features in rows. Do not rely solely on your own knowledge of your competitors, but take advantage of Google. Mark a row whenever the corresponding feature is found on a competitor site. You’ll soon see a pattern as to which features are considered essential and which can be done without. But don’t think that just because your competitors are doing one thing that you must too. This task is more about thinking hard on what is important for your own site and with any luck should hopefully give you some new ideas along the way.

Organise Content

1. Content Strategy

We all know the mantra, “content is king” and yes, it’s true, your website will not excel without great content. So planning that content is unsurprisingly an important process. But for large websites this task can almost seem insurmountable without the right workflow in place. Content strategy is a beast and I’m not going to cover it all in these two paragraphs. If you want to dive in a little deeper take a look at How to Create a Content Strategy (In Only 652 Steps)

In brief though, put your content items in a list – do the same for features. This is where your previous ‘Competitive Analysis’ can really help. Prioritise those lists and make realistic decisions about what you can afford to achieve with the time and budget you have to hand.

2. Site Structure and Navigation

Once you know what content and features your website will provide you need to start thinking about how it will all be organised. If you’re not already collaborating with your web designer on this. now is the time to get them involved. Defining the structure and therefore the navigation should be about delivering the most important content to your visitors, enabling them to find what they are looking for intuitively and preventing anyone from feeling lost. How you organise or categorise your content will vary but always keep it as simple as possible. We use SlickPlan for visualising site structures – it’s basic but good at what it does and it’s very simple to use.

Example of a site structure in SlickPlan

3. Wireframes

Wireframing is the stage at which all your previous planning comes to fruition. A wireframe is not about style. It is about the basic layout of your pages – simple labelled boxes will do the job when it comes to setting out a basic layout. See the example below of a wireframe we created alongside the final design. On first glance they appear to be worlds apart but a closer inspection will reveal just how similar they are.

The wireframe and final design for pancreaticcanceraction.org

Wireframing is an iterative process – it will take time to get the balance right but by making decisions about how to present content before you start getting constrained by styling decisions you will have the right foundations to move forward.

Wrapping it Up

With careful and thorough planning and by utilising the solid information architecture processes outlined above you will ultimately put your content and therefore your customers first. The end result will be a website that is not only universally easier to use but also considerably better at achieving the goals you want for your business.

1. Give your customers reasons to trust you

Hackers, phishers, scammers and spammers – the internet can be a big, bad and scary place. There is no time we are more conscious of this fact than when we are being asked to hand over personal details on a site we don’t fully trust.

• Serve your checkout and account pages via a secure (SSL) connection and make it clear to the user that they are using a secured connection. But don’t make the mistake of thinking every page on your store should be secured – an SSL connection will slow down page load times considerably and nothing shake’s a customer’s confidence like a cumbersome and unreliable store.
• Reviews on your own site are great but mean less to the cynics among us so also consider developing an after-sales strategy for gaining reviews on a trusted review site.
  
• Offer live chat on your store so that you can immediately respond to queries – this brings a vital element of human interaction which will ease any lingering doubts. Word to the wise though: don’t have a live chat option if it is going to be “offline” through business hours – advertising your lack of presence won’t help build confidence.

2. Provide detailed information

Avoid the temptation to believe that “short and sweet” is best when selling products online. Be succinct, yes, but always be thorough in offering all the information a customer could potentially require before committing to a purchase. Don’t skip on important details (such as dimensions) for fear that they will put a customer off because you will only encourage a misinformed purchase that will result in a refund and/or unhappy customer. Above all, if you are selling physical goods, always include detailed quality photograph(s) of the product.

3. Provide user-friendly navigation

If your customers can’t navigate your store quickly and intuitively they will lose patience.

Ensure your store has clear and logical categories that can be navigated intuitively – avoid abstract categorisations but also be careful to not be overly-specific. For larger product catalogues consider offering a search function for extra usability. Ultimately, put yourself in your customer’s shoes – consider how effectively your store is helping you find what you want.

4. Ensure your store is responsive

The advantages to mobile optimised sites are becoming increasingly well known and increasingly valid. The simple truth is, more and more customers will be arriving at your eCommerce store via a mobile device and if you provide a sub-par user experience you will not gain conversions from that mobile traffic.

Do not implement a separate mobile version of your site (e.g, m.yourstore.com) but instead use the technology that is available today to build a responsive eCommerce design that allows your store to adapt seamlessly across all devices.

5. Make paying easy

Once a customer has made their way to the checkout with a selection of your fine products do not waste time in completing the transaction. Keep the checkout as quick and simple as possible with a short form and easy to follow steps. Ask yourself, do you really need to know the customer’s salutation, fax number, etc… probably not! Oh, and don’t make the customer write their address twice: “shipping address same as billing address” checkbox is essential.

6. Up-sell & cross-sell

Don’t forget to show a customer what else you have to offer. But before you do so consider this: up-selling (the process of suggesting a similar, albeit more expensive product) is 20 times more effective than cross-selling on the product page. Cross-selling still has its place though: a well managed cross-selling tool placed at the checkout (such as “customers who purchased these items also bought…”) can account for an average of 3% revenue.

Open source is a philosophy as well as a business practice; it is a community that strives to create something better through cooperation and sharing – a rather peculiar idea in the merciless world of modern day business where copyrights, trademarks, and patents rule. Open source and the on-going revolution of the tablet PC, smart phones, and the ever-shrinking world of smaller and smaller devices, is altering the way people work together and understand competition.

Instead of building an operating system that relies on encryption to hide its nuts and bolts, open source development opens up the code for all to admire, ridicule, transform, and improve. Open source gives companies a chance to enter markets previously inaccessible to them though the cooperative principal inherent in its philosophy: From Unix came Linux; from Linux came FreeBSD, Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Knoppix, Fedora and a list that now goes on for pages.  The open source code for Apache, PHP, HTML, and now WordPress and Magento altered the landscape of the Internet in ways unimaginable if the original developers had slavishly guarded their creations.

One of the preeminent early spokesmen of the Open Source Initiative in 1990s, Eric S. Raymond, likened the open source movement to a bazaar versus the traditional cathedral model of software development. In a bazaar the sights, smells, and movement are chaotic and free; everyone has a different agenda, a particular approach. The point of the bazaar is not to centralize control of the trading system, but instead to leave it open for everyone to interact within. A cathedral is an enormous construction under a single roof, where control is central and the priests speak an incomprehensible and enigmatic language.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) believes that more minds equals better systems: bug fixes come quicker, early releases aid in beta testing procedures, code changes are more easily accessible, assorted versions of new software allow backwards development and future progress, modularization promotes developers to work on parallel projects, the possibility of new innovation becomes significantly greater.

Ask any cathedral builder about open source and they can list many disadvantages. Licensing profits, the sale of patents and trademarks, along with other economic-commercial benefits fall to the wayside. General consumers don’t get access to the support systems available for packaged, cathedral-built programs, since so many hands have aided in the open source product’s growth. Security remains a constant issue; those with malicious intent can more easily code holes into open source software, though OSI advocates say the nature of open source makes it less vulnerable to security issues. Security updates and patches for open source software come slower as well, though Linux-based systems do have far fewer bugs than traditional software packages.

Arguments aside, open source development is growing ever larger. The world of tablet PCs, smart devices and consumers’ desire for ever more apps to fill their digital universe means that open source is becoming The Source for the future models of technology development worldwide.

Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving a site’s ranking in search engine results pages. The higher a site’s search engine ranking, the more traffic it will receive from users searching for keywords and phrases relevant to that site. This makes good SEO a vital part of any web strategy.

An understanding of basic SEO terms and technologies is important to anyone with a web site. Like many internet-related topics, SEO has its own vocabulary. In order for you to understand the basics of SEO, you first need to cut through the jargon.

White Hat SEO

Search engines recommend a number of techniques and strategies which site owners can use to boost their rankings on search engine results pages. These techniques are called “white hat SEO,” and they always conform to search engines’ guidelines.

A white hat SEO strategy provides the best long-term results and relies on creating great content which will also appeal to users.

Black Hat SEO

Some site owners seek to improve their rankings using deception and other techniques which search engines disapprove of. These tactics, called “black hat SEO,” often include designing sites which show search engines one set of pages while redirecting people using browsers to another.

Most search engines penalize the use of black hat SEO, even going so far as to ban sites which use them. No matter how a search engine might penalize a site using black hat SEO, the end result is that any gain in search engine ranking from black hat tactics is temporary.

On-Site SEO

On-site SEO consists of those practices site owners follow on their own sites in order to improve their positioning in search engine results. Having a good site structure and hosting original, keyword-driven content are the two most important elements for solid on-site SEO.

Off-Site SEO

Off-site SEO consists of those strategies used by site owners outside of their own sites to improve their search engine ranking. Encouraging well-known and trusted sites to link to them is one important tool site owners use to improve their off-site SEO.

Keyword

A keyword is an informative word which captures the essence of a topic. When a search engine analyzes a web page, it tries to associate that page with the keywords found on it. When a user searches for one of these keywords, the search engine returns a link to that page in its results.

Keywords are at the heart of how search engines work and are thus at the heart of SEO. When site owners look to maximize their sites’ positioning on search engine results pages, they first choose a list of appropriate keywords upon which to build their efforts.

Keyword Density

Keyword density is the number of times a keyword appears on a page, as compared to the total number of words on that page. In the past, the higher a keyword’s density, the more likely a search engine was to consider that page relevant to the keyword. Search engines today use sophisticated algorithms to determine if a page is truly relevant to the keywords found on it.

Very high keyword density is often a sign of black hat SEO and is commonly referred to as “keyword spam.” Search engines are likely to penalize a site if they suspect it of keyword spamming.

Organic Traffic

Organic traffic comes from users who click on a link to a site they see on a search engine’s results page. It consists entirely of visits from people who actively searched for keywords found on that site. Growing a site’s organic traffic is the reason site owners practice SEO.

Backlink

A backlink is an incoming link to a web site. Whenever a site links to another, the site being linked to is said to have a backlink from the first site.

Backlinks from trusted sites are a critical part of off-site SEO because search engines give a high ranking to those sites which receive links from popular, trusted sources.

Meta Tag

A meta tag is a hidden element found on a web page which provides information about the page to browsers and search engines. This information might consist of a brief description of the page, a list of keywords the site owners believes are relevant, and the software used to create the page.

In the early days of the web, search engines relied heavily on the information provided in a page’s meta tags. Unfortunately, many site owners abused meta tags by stuffing them with inappropriate keywords. Because of this abuse, most search engines now ignore meta tags completely.

Your Questions

Have you been hit with some SEO jargon that you’d like some sense made of? Let me know in a comment below and I’ll see if I can help you out.

I found a workaround that worked for me today that hopefully  will work for anybody else with the same problem. Open (or install) the official Twitter app on your smartphone or tablet then simply upload the image through the app.

The problem is communication. Let’s break this down:

Web Designers & Developers

Here’s an obvious one to get started with. If you’re going to build a website you would expect your web designer to work very closely with your web developer (assuming they’re not the same person). I mean, designers’ imaginations can run wild if they have no concept of what is feasible from a development perspective and a developer can entirely mistranslate a design if a developer does not have clear instructions from the designer. This problem isn’t as common today as it used to be but you would be amazed how many agencies still segregate these two groups.

SEO Providers

Search engine optimisation is all too often advertised as a one stop solution for solving all of a companies internet marketing woes. Perhaps 10 years go, but no longer can an SEO provider consistently offer proper results without a decent knowledge of web development techniques. The biggest ranking factors today in the era of the mighty Panda and Penguin (Google’s most infamous algorithm updates for years) are undisputedly measured on your website itself. Proper URL structures, document structures, even the ratio of text versus code on a site all matter immensely and none can be manipulated in the way they should be without an experienced web developer.

In an ideal world an SEO will be talking with the designer and the developer during the initial production of your website. This isn’t always possibly though so an SEO has to be prepared to work with their peers after the initial launch of a site and to provide clear and actionable instructions.

Social Media Consultants

It would be fair to assume that social media experts are the least susceptible to poor communication skills but alas, in general they’re about as bad as those already mentioned above when it comes to collaborating on internet marketing strategies. Again, talking with designers and developers is paramount to building the right sharing tools and the best interactive experience for users. Social media and SEO are two sectors that are rapidly becoming aligned. Search engines care about the signals the social sphere can provide about a website and with the help of a solid SEO strategy the positive effect these signals have can become increased dramatically.

The Bottom Line

Don’t be afraid to get your team talking. If they can’t or worse won’t then it can only be because they don’t feel their objectives are aligned and if that is the case then it means they aren’t all working to the objectives you want to reach.

The fear that many website owners share revolves around the idea that any content that is not immediately viewable without scrolling will not be seen. In many minds the obvious solution here is to squeeze everything deemed important (and this can be many things) into the small space at the top of their website thought to be “above the fold”.

This solution is a really bad idea. Once all that content is condensed into one small area you can wave goodbye to white space, readability and any sense of storytelling through your website.

And where exactly is the fold anyway? Well, contrary to popular belief, it is not 600 pixels from the top. In fact, it isn’t anywhere at all. Websites are viewed on a huge range of displays including televisions, tablets and smartphones. The proliferation of devices and the end of the PC era makes it impossible to determine exactly where the fold lies.

Where the “above the fold” rule has been allowed to spread within the web design industry there has been significant damage to the interest levels generated amongst visitors and the quality level of content is undisputedly suffering.

Ultimately scrolling to reach content has never proven to be a hindrance for internet users of any sort and any fear of such hurdles should be forgotten. Instead place your focus on enticing and guiding your visitors through your website content and we promise that important content will be found and appreciated all the more.

1. Create Relationships

Yes it all sounds pretty airy-fairy but this is serious business. A blog is the perfect opportunity to forge strong valuable relationships with your customers and clients or your industry peers. Your readers may be appreciative of the wise nuggets of information you post each week or perhaps they’re just curious about the internal culture that drives your organisation. Your comment thread is the ideal place to drive conversation amongst your readers giving you invaluable insight into their inner-most thoughts and for them to become familiar with you and your brand. I’m sure you’ve already began imagining the great opportunities this level of interaction and insight could bring so let’s carry these positive vibes forward to my next reason.

2. Become an Authority

It’s just one of those things – if one shares enough interesting thoughts on a particular topic then one eventually earns the label of ‘expert’. And there is no situation where becoming an ‘expert’ in your particular field is not beneficial in one way or another. Even if you don’t earn that label overnight you will instantly begin to gain credibility in the eyes of visitors to your website. This is about instilling confidence in your readers which only makes the step from reader to customer that bit more comfortable and likely. It’s not just humans that will take you more seriously, take a look at reason three…

3. Google Hearts Blogs

The final reason, and this one really is a good’un – a blog will drive lots of valuable traffic to your website. You will be creating relevant content that the major search engines will want to link to and therefore you will receive regular visits from people that are likely to convert. It’s not just your blog that will see a steady flow of visitors, but your main website will be treated more seriously by the search engines and you will begin ranking on the first page of results for those high value target keywords you’ve been yearning after for so long.

Wrapping it up

Perhaps you’re still not totally convinced in the importance of blogging and that’s ok. The truth is that no blog is better than a poorly run and uninspiring blog, which is exactly what you will have if you don’t feel at least some excitement at the benefits a blog will bring in time. If you do feel motivated then seize the moment, set aside a regular time every week or so to write content for your blog and keep it up. You won’t see results overnight (unless you’re lucky) but they will come and when they do you’ll wonder why you didn’t start sooner.

Oh, and did I mention, we happen to offer a complete blog creation and management service?

A responsive website adapts seamlessly to different devices such as desktops, netbooks, tablets and smartphones or any other web enabled devices.

The easiest way to understand what responsive web design is all about is to see a responsive website in action. Believe it or not, this website is responsive! To see its responsive nature in action on your desktop browser, grab the bottom right corner of your web browser and slowly make the browser shorter and narrower – you’ll see the site layout magically adjust itself to the new viewport size. Or just simply visit this website on a smartphone or tablet, you’ll see the different layouts to give a great user experience in all devices. Rotate it, flip it, you’ll see the site respond to the different orientations.

Why have a responsive website?

The way people access the web has evolved rapidly in recent years. In the past websites were almost exclusively accessed on desktop computers whereas today over a third of internet access is via mobile devices. In fact, mobile browsing is expected to outpace desktop-based browsing within three to five years.

Technology never stops marching forward, the plethora of devices from new smartphones to new tablets and netbooks all with different screen sizes and resolutions is widening every day. It is now becoming vital that your website is dynamic and can adapt to be user friendly on every type and size of device.

Your visitors come to your website for the content and with a responsive web design you know that the content will be tailored to any device. The layout will make the content more accessible and easier for your visitors to digest.

Dropdown menu on handheld devices for Jolora.co.uk

With a traditional (non-responsive) website mobile devices are forced to shrink your design and content and so your users are forced to zoom in to view content and interact with it. With a responsive website design the site will be easy to navigate on any device and so users will be able to get to the all important content comfortably. For instance take a look at our menu and how it adapts to smaller resolution, no chunky finger will be able to miss those links.

Building a responsive website is a cost-effective way to optimise your site for evolving web-browsing devices and bring your content and brand to more people in the best way possible.