The five components of Web Development
2. Site Architecture
Site architecture (referred to as Information Architecture or 'IA') refers to the organization, labeling, and presentation of data in any context, from the appearance of a graph in a corporate newsletter, to the format of a recipe in a cookbook, to the organization of a card catalog in a library. As web developers at whatever level from Primary School to University we can all pick up and use IA techniques. They are not only in the realm of the 'experts'
The main tasks of information architecture are categorizing, labeling, and organizing fragments of information in such a way that humans can comprehend the framework and use it to retrieve the desired fragments. The whole point of information architecture is to manage complexity, which means to render it usable by making its structure visible.
Information architecture has many aspects. Once again I list just small a sample of IA methods which we can apply to a site. These in particular are taken from a course syllabus on this vast subject area.
IA & Structure (How to Organize Your Site)
- Human behavioral principles as they pertain to website organization
- Key elements of Information Architecture
- Common IA pitfalls
- How to determine which organizing principles best suit your site and its users
- test and refine IA
- Communicating IA to your organization to gain acceptance
IA & Navigation Design
- evaluate your existing navigation system
- choosing navigation components
- The pros and cons of different menu styles
- Determine Site Constraints
- search and navigation to complete tasks
- user success and situational awareness
The benefits of IA
The benefits of IA (or at least when effective work is carried out on IA) are massive! Though such massive benefits depend on the project and objectives of the project team we can list a sample of these benefits:
- reduced development time
- reduced maintenance cost
- increase in visitors
- increase in visitor time spent on site
- improved actual and perceived usability
- reduced time to accomplish tasks
- increased sales
- better alignment with the underlying business
Information architecture helps make sure that business needs and user needs are met, leaving everyone happy, and isn't that really what a successful web project it's all about?
