Information Architecture (AI) Best Practices And Techniques For Web Design
A website has many pages and a bundle of content. To help the users to drive across all the tasks and goals of the website information architecture is used. It is essential for labeling and organizing the content. IA is important in web design to overview the web pages and their content. As a website design Delhi, we recommend building the information architecture by using the best practices and techniques of this blog!
Content Organization Design Patterns
You can say it has types or models of information architecture. There are seven models of patterns. By understanding their uses, you can select an appropriate design for your website. We as a website designing company in Delhi suggest you select a single design pattern for the best practices. These are the five information architecture design patterns:
- Single Page:
As the name says, a single page is a narrow model, which focuses on a single page such as a contact info page, home page, etc. It will help you structure the limited amount of information. Single page model is helpful for the single product eCommerce website, portfolio resumes. The pattern is the least used.
- Flat Structure:
The flat structure puts all the page’s content equal, which makes all the pages of the same level. Every page becomes equally important. It is very helpful for a handful of web pages. The brochure-style websites are most suitable for flat structure information architecture.
- Index Page:
This form of information architecture pattern is most commonly seen on various websites. This design pattern consists of one jump-off point page (known as the home page). It is like an index of the book. The sub web pages of the website are of the same level and equally important in this design pattern. Hence, the Index page is the most used structure by the developers.
- Strict Hierarchy Design Pattern:
This Hierarchy pattern is the best suitable for eCommerce websites. It begins with an index page, and it has subpages (parent) and their sub-pages (children). This design pattern is used by some websites to structure the information. In this format, child pages are only linked with parent pages. The consistency is maintained within the sub-pages (children) and parent pages. The design is more like a tree diagram.
- Co-Existing Hierarchies Design Pattern:
The co-existing hierarchy pattern is the best information architecture for large websites. It has a bundle of web pages. The design is similar to strict hierarchies design pattern, but in this design pattern, the sub-pages are interlinked, unlike strict design patterns. As the higher-level subpages (parent) are interlinked with other higher-level pages and the same with the lower-level subpages.
- Web Design Pattern:
It is an information pattern that is unstructured, and content is linked together. However, the overview of this pattern is more like Wikipedia. It has some benefits, such as user-generated content, but it is an unstructured pattern that may lead to undiscovered content. Web design patterns will break the flow.
- Linear Pattern:
Here the content is structured in a step-like manner. This information architecture pattern is most used in the guide form websites, where the user can flow through the content step-by-step.
Above are the most common design patterns of information architecture, but IA has two basic styles. It is important to know before using the information architecture.
Information Architecture Styles
Top-down and Bottom-up are the two basic information architecture styles. To implement the IA effectively, you need to look at the website from both angles (Top-down and Bottom-up). It will help you to organize the content in a structured manner and fill the gaps.
- Top-Down Architecture:
It gives a broad overview. Along with that, you get an understanding of the website’s goals and objectives. Where you get to develop the basic information architecture structure. As the website grows deeper you can refine the content using the information architecture.
- Bottom-Up Architecture:
This architecture looks at the content relationships in detail. Which will help you to link the content beautifully. Also, you get an idea of how users will flow through the content of the website. However, you can design accordingly or tie it, rather than looking at how it relates.
Hence, both styles are important to build the best content strategy using information architecture.
Best Practices Of Information Architecture
Till here, we have driven through the design pattern and styles. Now, you can select the best suitable design and style for your website content. With the selective design pattern, here is how you can make the best practices of information architecture.
Note, you have to keep the user experience in the forefront, to organize the content for your website.
- Design According To User:
Don’t design the content as per your preference. Since you are not the user, you need to analyze the traffic and their choice by looking at your competitive websites. Get an idea, and build the design through IA.
- Research The Needs:
Needs are important, but they should be of users. You need to research it through multiple data collection methods. One of the best ways to know the needs of the visitor is A/B testing. When you know what your users need, use the information architecture design for the effective content structure by keeping the needs of users in mind.
- Remember The Objective:
The website goal is as important as users’ needs. Keep the objective or goal of the website in mind while selecting the design pattern and structuring the content of the website. It will help you to grow through websites.
- Purpose Of The Website:
Every website has a purpose, the purpose of driving customers to a conclusion. It may be selling a product, service, content, information, guide, etc. nothing can be effective without a purpose.
The organization of the content should be related to the purpose of the website. As the goal varies from industry to industry and websites. Your end goal must be the purpose, for example, buying a product, service, etc. Here the content on the website will drive the audience to the end goal. Information architecture should drive the audience through the content in a structured manner, that one page leads to the last page.
- Consistency:
Everyone looks out for consistency from cricket to information architecture. Users arriving at your website will look for consistency. So we mentioned, choose a single design pattern and stick to it. Deviation of the pattern can be chosen, but it should be logically strong and convincing to the audience. But you must have the same tendency of changing the pattern in similar cases, to make deviation of pattern consistent. It won’t make a difference. When you are inconsistent, it will make the visitors confused.
Techniques For Information Architecture Design
There are simple and effective techniques to perform the information architecture design. Which will help you to build an effective design and link the content in a flow.
- Content Inventory:
Before making out the content structure layout, you need to list out the elements that will help you develop SEO-friendly and readers friendly content. Hence, content inventory is the first step of IA or the base of the technique. The component list should be based on consideration of future design too. Because the website and web design evolve with time.
The components list includes all the things necessary to make the content strong such as multimedia, meta element, copies, etc. it will help the web designers to plan the web page accordingly using the content inventory.
- Wireframing And Prototypes:
Wireframing will deliver a lot more than just a layout or design of the content structure. To get a good sense of content arrangement, you need to put the content in wireframing and prototyping, to also understand how well the IA is planned and achieving the goal.
While wireframing and prototyping, you must have demo content, which will have a similar content structure to the final one. However, it will be helpful in time and energy-saving, and it will give you optimized results too.
- Site Mapping:
Site Mapping is the easy and quick way to understand how the content will be related or linked with one-another pages. For that, you need to have research and form a mock-up idea, how and what will be the content.
This outline will show the web pages grouped. The order and their appearance will look similar to the hierarchy patterns of the above. It is often prepared for the site, which is in the development stage, which is simple to prepare and execute.
Wrapping Up:
Best Website design Delhi focuses on information architecture. Since it is the subject, that is prepared in the initial stages of web designing. Where the designer gets an idea to deal with UI/UX keeping the content structure in the mind. It becomes easy for the designer to make the web page layout if the designer gets the information architecture. It also eases the job of making the number of web pages, since consistency is maintained.
