Spotlight on Information Architecture

Tips for helping you produce a set of deliverables for a user-friendly website

Although it may sound obvious, the early planning stages behind building a website are critical. The Information Architecture process, starting with a requirements gathering and definition exercise and concluding with a blueprint for the site, can help you to clarify the overall scope of the project.

From identifying and matching your business goals with the expectations of your audience to making sure that potential issues or problems are not overlooked, Information Architecture can help you plan a well-scheduled project within cost and resource limitations.

An effective Information Architecture process includes research, planning and testing that help you:

Know your audience and their motivations
 Your users are likely to want different things from your website, but how well do you know what those things are? Conducting user interviews and analysing site statistics and existing market research, you can develop user profiles and real-life scenarios to provide that crucial first step in developing a user-friendly service.

Understand your business requirements
 Your business models are crucial to the building of your website – you may need a number of different subscription models, membership benefits, and pay-per-view options operating on one site. You may have new products that will impact the site in the future, or you may have requirements based on competitor sites and services. Through strategy meetings and interactive workshops we can help you ensure that both your users' requirements and your business requirements are covered from the outset.

Analyse the content being presented
 As your site develops, conduct a range of interactive activities that help mold the user experience to be as intuitive as it can be with logical structure, organisation and retrieval of information. Be sure that your site's technology is able to identify the content a user is able to view according to their identities and rights. Once this process is underway, navigation and the user interface can begin to take shape.

Put the ideas to the test
 Developing mock-ups and prototypes, both on paper and on the Web, enable representatives from your target audience to test the site for usability issues from an early stage and, in turn, allows for modification along the way.

The result? A set of deliverables that provides a sound blueprint for a user-friendly website.
If you would like to learn more about the Information Architecture process at Ingenta, and how we can help you best prepare for the future success of your online services, please email sales@ingenta.com.