Information Architecture Planning Processes

By Paul Fervoy, Fundación Acceso
May 2001

This article looks at the planning process for defining the information architecture for a sustainable development Web site.

After reading this article, the reader will:

• understand what composes the Web site information architecture planning process;
• be able to produce an information architecture for a Web site by following a series of simple steps; and
• and be able to design Web sites that offer a better and more rewarding experience to their audience that, as a result, offer a greater benefit to the organization.

What information architecture planning is and what it involves.

Before beginning the information architecture planning process, you should have already completed your Web site planning process and defined your Web site's short-term and long-term goals, intended audiences, content selection, editorial policy, and a series of other factors that will guide you through a successful web development process and toward building a successful web presence for your organization.

Based on your Web site's goals, audiences, and the content and functions you wish to deliver via your Web site, you will now need to design a Web site structure that will seamlessly bring these elements together in order to provide an enjoyable and fruitful experience to your audience. The information architecture planning process will help you bring together the elements of your Web site planning into a cohesive structure.

A Web site is an information system that seeks to allow users to achieve a set of clearly defined goals. The standard system is three steps (the three I's):

Interest your audience -> Inform them ->Interact with them.

The effects of a poorly planned architecture can be devastating to the success of your Web site. The Web site will have difficulty conveying a clear message to its users about the content and services available on the site. Poorly planned structures often use language and images that are unclear or inappropriate for the site's audiences. Visitors to the site, as a result, are often confused about what the site can offer them, and are easily lost or distracted. These visitors will unlikely achieve the goals the Web site has set out for them and may hold a negative image of the site and its parent organization.

The I.A. planning process

The goal of information architecture planning is to allow visitors to get to the information and services they need, and achieve the goals your organization has established for the Web site.

The following steps will allow you to develop an information architecture for your Web site.

• Step One: Review and list your Web site objectives and goals (the goals should be measurable)

Your Web site planning process should have helped you define a set of goals for your Web site. These may be things such as "stimulate interest in our activities and capture 20 new subscribers to our bulletin each month," or "disseminate our publications and facilitate the downloading of 100 PDF copies of our new publication each week," or "increase the requests for our service by 15% by facilitating information about our services." Make a list of your Web site objectives and goals.

The achievement of these goals relies on how your information architecture directs your users. If your targets are achieved repeatedly and by a high percentage of users, your Web site architecture is probably very good. If they are not being achieved, you must reflect again on the architecture of the site (are users getting to where you want them?), as well as the barriers for achieving these goals (what does it cost the user to achieve your goals—time and hassle, detailed personal information, money?), and if the text on your site is doing its job of creating interest and instructing on users on what to do next (e.g., subscribe, download, request, etc.).

• Step Two: Review and list audiences and their interests and goals

In your planning process you should have defined your Web site's target audiences. Remember, the Web site audience and the target population of your organization's mission are not necessarily the same. If you happen to work with a local population with little Internet access, you may still benefit from a Web site that targets your peers and funders, and helps your organization stay in the vanguard in its area of expertise.

Your Web site probably has more than one goal and more than one target audience. Not all goals are for all target audiences, although there may be overlaps between them. The goals for your Web site and those for your audience might also cross.

The information architecture needs to reflect where your site's goals and those of your audiences overlap. For example, if you wish to make your downloadable publications available on your Web site and you find that visitors come to the site looking to download these publications, you should create a section on the site called "Publications" or "Downloadable Publications" (if you need to differentiate).

• Step Three: Review and inventory content and functions

Once you have defined your site's goals and those of your audience, you will want to create a detailed inventory of the content (information, functions and services) that your organization has available or has the resources to make available. The distinction here is that you may have a publication you wish to put online, but if it is not in digital format, you may need to cover costs of scanning or retyping the entire document.

Example of a Web site content list:

• Mission statement (one page text)
• Personnel list and contact info (name and e-mail address)
• List of our publications (five page text)
• Brief descriptions of 200 additional publications
• Full text of publication entitled "Public Policy Considerations" 1999 edition
• Full text of publication entitled "Public Policy Considerations" 2001 edition
• Microisis database of our reference centre (includes our publications and those of other organizations)
• Last monthly bulletin
• Subscription form for our bulletin
• Archive of all monthly bulletins since Jan. 1999 (29 in total, 2 pages each)
• Brochure on how to order publications
• Order form
• Credit card processing (in process of negotiating electronic credit card processing with our bank. The bank will let us know what to do to receive payment online).

• Step Four: Decide on a metaphor or orientation for the Web site structure

Once you have an idea of the type of content you will put on your site, you will be able to come up with a clearer shape the Web site structure will take on. The metaphor or orientation is the conceptual framework for the way you will later group and organize the content of your Web site. A metaphor is used to say what commonly recognizable thing your Web site is similar to, while its orientation may reflect the principal purpose or use.

Web sites commonly use metaphors/subjects such as:

• it's like a brochure/magazine/newspaper
• it's a virtual community
• it's a virtual toolbox
• it's like a display case or window front

Orientations might be something all the lines of the following:

• it's audience-oriented
• it's function-oriented
• it's service-oriented
• it's focused on timeliness

In our example, because of focusing on delivering publications, we might consider the Web site to be like a bookstore on the one hand and a library on the other. Also, we can say that the site is function-oriented (providing the platform for the sales transaction for the publications and providing the platform for subscriptions to the bulletin), and also service-oriented (providing some full-text publications as well as a searchable bibliographic reference database).

• Step Five: Grouping content

Once you have an inventory of all the content of your Web site, and a guiding metaphor or orientation, try to organize the content into groups by these affinities. At the same time, try to include content that will interest, inform and allow your audience to interact within each content grouping.

Here's an example based on the list of resources above:

Group One

• Mission statement
• Personnel list and contact info
• Last monthly organization bulletin "What we are up to"
• Archive of all monthly bulletins since Jan. 1999
• Subscription form for our bulletin

Group Two

• List of our publications
• Brief descriptions of 200 additional publications
• Full text of publication entitled "Public Policy Considerations", 1999 edition
• Full text of publication entitled "Public Policy Considerations", 2001 edition
• Microisis database of our reference centre
• Brochure on how to order publications
• Order form
• Credit card processing

In this example, I have chosen to put the content into two main groups. Group one is all the content that talks about the organization itself and provides contact and bulletin subscription information. The current edition of the bulletin will be at the front of the site, and the archive will be accessible to allow interested users to get a better feel for what we have been involved in over the past two years. Users will be invited to subscribe to an e-mail version of the bulletin. The audience can read about current news, who we are and our history, and interact by way of the contact forms and the bulletin subscription.

Group two contains the content that has to do with the publications we produce and sell, as well as those in our reference collection. The site includes lists and descriptions of our publications, free full-text versions of a few of them, information on our reference centre collection and how to obtain copies, and the ability to purchase copies online.

• Step Six: Put it down in black and white

The most difficult part of information architecture planning is already done. You have grouped your content around clearly defined goals and intended audiences. The only step remaining before sending your Web site to production is writing down your structure in a fashion that your development team can clearly follow and execute.

Perhaps the best way to document the structure is to create a flow-chart that shows the hierarchy and navigation between sections, subsections and the content of the Web site. Another method is the storyboard (borrowed from the film industry), that describes step-by-step what happens on the site. While a flowchart might be represented on a few pieces of paper with boxes and arrows showing the hierarchy, the storyboard will probably require a "screen" or piece of paper for each step of the process. These screens can then be laid out to illustrate the relationship between content and functions.

• Step Seven: Determine your indicators of success

The success of your information architecture needs to be evaluated based on your established goals. One method is sitting down with a few typical users and watching them use your Web site. This will let you see how they understand your architecture and where they get lost or distracted along the way.

Once your Web site is live, you will want to continue to monitor your audience and their use of the site. You will of course know how many publications you sell and how many subscriptions you receive, but you may not know how many people have visited your site and each section and page within it. Ask your Web-hosting service provider if they provide statistics on the use of your site or if they can set up "cookie tracking" (a technique used to trace the path your users take through your site).

As a Web manager monitoring the success of your Web site and the continuously evolving needs of your organization and audience, you will begin to detect new types of user experiences, new audiences will emerge, and as such, your Web site goals and perhaps even your organization itself will begin to "think outside the box" of how it has traditionally operated, delivered its services and thought about its user populations, and create new organizational goals.

SD Case Study

MetaBase.net: Designing Bibliographic Architectures
The MetaBase designers were careful to plan the site architecture such that the content of the database was "viewable" and indexable by the major search engines. Each of MetaBase's 200,000 pages is accessible directly from outside search engines.