Your website should focus on your users’ top tasks. Unfortunately, lots of websites don’t do that. They put everything they have ever done and more on their website. Result: a website with loads of pages nobody’s interested in.

Is that really so bad though? I mean, a user can ignore those pages he’s not interested in, right?

Theoretically, yes. But in practice, those extra pages make for a more complex navigation stucture, more links and more choices.

Which makes it hard for people to find what they’re looking for.

If your website focuses on the stuff people really use it for, there will be fewer pages and people will find what they need a lot faster. Because there’s no clutter to distract them.

Less is more. More conversion. More satisfied visitors. More return on investment.

Use Google Analytics to track down rarely visited pages

I’m using Google Analytics as an example because it’s the most widely used tool. You can of course use other analytics tools as well.

1. Define a period that’s suitably long

For a first analysis, I usually take 6 months. That way, I minimise the risk that the results of my findings will be brushed aside by people who blame the holidays, the weather and other stuff for the lack of visitors on ‘their’ pages. Heck, if your website is heavily subjected to seasonal changes, make it 12 months.

2. Go to ‘Content’ and choose ‘Top Content’

On this page, have a look at the total number of unique pages that were visited in the period you defined and check this number against the total number of pages on your site. If the second number is far greater than the first, I’ve got some bad news for you: you’ve got lots of pages nobody ever visits.

3. Click on ‘Advanced Filter’ at the bottom

Don’t worry. There’s nothing advanced about what we’re going to do.

4. In the dropdown ‘Filter’, select ‘Unique Pageviews’

I choose ‘Unique Pageviews’ because ‘Pageviews’ is somewhat artificial. If a person visits the same web page 5 times during 1 visit, Google Analytics counts that as 5 pageviews but only as 1 unique pageview.

5. Enter a number

For a first analysis, I usually want an oveview of all pages with less than 50 pageviews over a period of 6 months. I think that’s being quite generous…

You can of course change this number to 100 or more.

6. Click on ‘Apply Filter’

Nearly there. On the screen you see now, you can already tell how many pages have been visited less than 50 times.

7. Sort by ‘Unique Pageviews’

This sorts the results by the number of unique pageviews. The standard setting is on the total number of pageviews. For our report, that’s not quite ideal.

8. Save report

For some strange reason, Google doesn’t allow you to save the settings of your filters. (In case you can and I’m missing something: do enlighten me.) As an alternative solution, I click on ‘Add to Dashboard’ at the top of the page. That way I can quickly access this report from my homepage (the dashboard).

What do you know now?

You know which pages have been visited less than x times in the period you defined.

Hopefully that number hasn’t left you shell-shocked. We had to tell a customer recently that over 80% of their web pages were visited less than 50 times during the past 6 months…

Not the greatest news to deliver, but they took it really well and decided to dedicate the next 12 months to managing existing content rather than creating new pages.

Is ‘barely visited’ reason enough to get rid of a page?

Not always, but it does give a good indication. Apart from the cold, hard figures there are other things to take into account:

• Conversion rate
  If the conversion rate is (much) higher than average, you need to wonder why that page isn’t visited more often. Is there a way to get more people to visit that page?
• Because you have to
  Sometimes, but only sometimes, that’s a valid reason. Not because your boss tells you to but because it’s a page you have to have for legal reasons for example.
• User research
  Interviews with customers, the analysis of your search feature and other methods of user research can help you to find out what your visitors top tasks are.

  We always advise to combine logfile analysis with one of these methods: logfiles can only tell you what people do on your website, not what they’d like to do or can’t find.

  If one of your visitors’ top tasks is the same as one of your site’s least visited pages, you know there’s a lot of work to be done.

What do you do with rarely visited pages?

• Delete
  For most pages at the bottom of this list: just hit the delete button. That news article you write 2 years ago will not be missed. Goodbye and good riddance.
• Cluster information
  A lot of sites use 10 pages where instead they should just have 1 page. Pull yourself together and have the courage to get rid of the stuff nobody’s interested in. Trim the fat. Stick to the essentials.
• Reactivate
  Reactivate the interest in pages that have a high conversion rate or are actually one of your visitors’ top tasks. Some possibilities: put a link on the homepage, give it a more prominent place in your navigation, rewrite the page, create more links to the page, etc.
• Leave them to rot in your website’s darkest holes
  This only applies to those pages you need to keep for legal reasons.
  Take care to bury them really deep where they’re not likely to bother people.

You might also like:

• Information architecture: the basics
• CMSs don’t manage websites, people do

Need some help?
Start with a content review or one of our information architecture or user research services. Or just give us a call on 0032 (0)3 293 39 96 or send me an email.

A client recently asked me: “Navigation, isn’t that a bit old hat? I mean, this is the time of Google. Doesn’t everybody just search?”

No, they don’t. Good navigation and good links are vital for the success of a website. A search feature is an added bonus, sure. But if you have one, it has to be as good as Google or even better.

Less than 5% uses the search feature

Google might be insanely popular but that doesn’t mean the search feature on your website is too.

On the contrary.

When we do visitor behaviour analysis (read: Google Analytics) we often see that the search feature is rarely used by more than 5% of a site’s total number of visitors. On our blogs the number of searchers is even lower: around 1,5%. On the website of a Flemish province we’re working for it’s just below 5%.

Things we know about search

During user tests we see the following happen time and time again:

• Most people only use the search feature after they’ve tried the navigation or the content links. Search is seen as the last resort.
• If people are looking for something very specific, like a product they know the name of, they’re be more inclined to search.
• Programmers and engineers use the search feature more often than ‘normal people’.

What if more than 5% of your visitors uses the search feature?

If the number of visitors that use your search feature is higher than 5%, that might be an indication that all is not well on your website.

Check whether your navigation is clear to your visitors. Do they understand the words you’re using? Do your overview pages contain the right links?

It’s also worthwhile to check on which page people start searching. And to see what it is about that page that might cause them to do that.

These rules obviously don’t apply to job sites, real estate sites, etc. where people basically come to search.

5 reasons to encourage people to browse rather than search

1. Most people aren’t very good at searching
   It’s quite shocking to see how bad some people are at formulating a good search query. Often they use words that are either too general, way too specific or just plain wrong.
2. Different words
   People often use different words than the website uses. They type in ‘night school’ for example, when the site talks about ‘lifelong learning’. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it usually doesn’t deliver great results.
3. Spelling errors are very common
   You wouldn’t believe the amount of ’sandels’ and ’sandles’ being offered on eBay when actually what these people are trying to sell are ’sandals’.
4. Most search features aren’t very good
   Most search features, especially the ones that come with a CMS, aren’t very good. The way of searching the data, ordering the results, accounting for spelling mistakes, … it’s all a bit depressing.
5. People who browse see more and buy more
   People who use the search feature look at less other pages after they’ve found what they’re looking for than people who browse. On e-commerce sites the shopping carts of browsers are fuller than those of searchers.

   On the other hand, searchers often have a higher conversion rate than browsers. That’s pretty logical, given that people who use the search feature know what they want and are often looking for something specific. And so not an argument in favour of just pushing any and every visitor towards the search feature.

Which brings us to the interesting subject of hooking up your website’s search feature to your Google Analytics account. Because there’s loads of interesting information to be found there. But we’ll talk more about that later.

Meanwhile, you might want to check out these articles

• Search = type-in field + button
• Layout tips for search results

But how do you write a good description tag? These 12 tips should point you in the right direction.

1. Use no more than 155 characters

Google shows only the first 160 characters of the description tag. After that, it simply adds an ellipsis (…). If you want to play it safe, don’t use more than 155 characters. Don’t forget: spaces and punctuation marks count as characters too.

2. Use keywords you want to score with for that page

Google only shows the description tag if there’s a sufficiently strong content relation between the description tag, the user’s query and the content of the page.

If you want Google to show your description tag, be sure to include the page’s keyword(s) in it.

3. Don’t create false expectations

Everybody likes to have loads of visitors. But it’s actually more important to get the right visitors.

Luring people to your website with vague promises or inaccurate description tags will work against you in the long run. Sure, you might get more people to click on your result in Google. But if you can’t deliver on your promise, they’ll be gone in a hurry. And they won’t come back.

4. Tell the user what to expect

The description tag needs to tell the user what the page is about. It should be a concise summary of your page.

5. Think about your target audience

Hopefully, every page on your website has a purpose. Some pages can be informative, others might be pages where you want to sell a particular product. Think about the goal of your page and the kind of people you want to attract. Make sure the description tag reflects that.

With our article ‘Information architecture: the basics’ we want to reach people who don’t know a lot about information architecture.

Our product page ‘Information architecture’ wants to attract people who are ready to make use of our services to improve their website’s information structure.

6. Write properly

Reading your description tag should be a pleasure, not a chore. So don’t just pile up the keywords but give people a proper indication of what the page is about.

You don’t necessarily have to write full sentences but do make sure it’s easy to read.

7. To the point

You’ve only got 155 characters. That means there’s no time for beating about the bush. Make your point in those 155 characters.

8. Don’t just repeat the page title

The description tag gives you 155 extra characters to explain what a page is about and to get people to click on your result in Google. Don’t just repeat the title tag, use those 155 characters to give extra information. (Read our 8 tips for the perfect title tag)

9. Being commercial won’t hurt you

There’s no shame in being commercial. If you know there’s one thing that makes your page stand out from the competition’s, say so.

You offer a best-price guarantee? Say so. Better yet: include the product’s price in the description tag.

Or include your phone number: “Order your tickets online or call 03 333 33 33”. Convenient for people who don’t have time or who are surfing on their mobile and need info fast.

If you offer a free online quote for a particular service, that’s a great way to end your description tag: “Get a free quote online”.

10. Unique for every page

Create a unique description tag for every page. Great for Google and for your visitors.

11. Use the right language

Make sure the description tag is in the same language as the page. Seems ridiculous to even mention but on multi-language sites you often see the description tags are all in one language.

12. What about the description tag of a language choice page?

That’s a hard one. Don’t write ‘Choose your language’ or ‘Language choice’. That says absolutely nothing.

Instead, say what your company does in your site’s main languages.

More tips?

Feel free to add more tips of your own in the comments.

10 years ago I thought so. More specifically: I thought I knew everything.

Surely my usability expertise, my deep knowledge of information architecture would be enough to find and solve all the usability issues on every possible website?

Without research you can never truly know your users

10 years of user testing have made me a bit more modest. Okay, a lot more modest. Expert knowledge alone is not enough.

Does that mean I’m not a good usability expert? Hell no. I think I know more about web usability and information architecture than anyone else in Belgium. (Non-Belgian readers, please suppress that giggle.) Actually, that’s a lie: Els knows more about it than I do. See, I told you I was modest.

And still, despite all of our combined expertise, we often say things like ‘That depends’, ‘We’ll have to ask your customers that’ or ‘We’ll have to test that’.

Usability rules are not stone tablets

A lot of web designers and programmers resent those answers. They like it when everything is fixed. That makes it nice and easy.

Admittedly, Jakob Nielsen’s rules, the interface pattern libraries you see all around and even the usability tips we write on this blog, sometimes suggest it’s all black and white, clear-cut.

Wake up call: it isn’t. Usability isn’t that thing you read about in books. To fully understand usability, you have to see real users in action.

There are lots of rules and often those rules are right. But sometimes they’re also flexible, open for interpretation. Quite often the things that we as experts thought might cause problems end up not troubling users at all, while the things we thought wouldn’t be too much of a problem cause half of the test users to trip up.

Is that because we’re stupid? Because we’re not really experts after all?

I don’t think so. And our customers, who gave us a client satisfaction score of 100% in our latest audit in 2009, obviously don’t think so either.

Content and structure are determined by your visitors

When it comes to your site’s information structure and your content, the rules don’t really help you much. They get more than a little vague.

A few examples:

• Use words that your visitors understand for your menu labels
• Put the 3 to 5 things that matter most to your visitors above the page-fold on a detail page
• Start every page and every paragraph with the most important information you’ve got

While these rules are all true, they’re also very theoretical. Which words do your visitors understand? What exactly are those 3 to 5 most important things according to your visitors?

Pretentious

In all modesty, we think web builders or information architects who claim they don’t need to involve real users because ‘they know what’s best’ are pretty pretentious.

Sure, those web builders’ and information architects’ common sense will probably keep their customers safe from all too big disasters. But is that really good enough?

User research gets you facts

Are you really so all-knowing that you know what people exactly want to know about a hotel, an airconditioing unit and an oil-free compressor? And a forklift, a handbag and a car loan?

Really? Wow, you must be making around 10.000 euro/hour. Congratulations!

In all fairness, nobody knows those things. The only way to find out what your visitors really want is by doing user research. That doesn’t have to be ridiculously expensive. You can do some of it yourself. A good online survey and interviews with potential or existing customers will already point you in the right direction.

Facts trump opinions

One of the biggest advantages of user research is that it gets you facts. The case for the information structure you present to your client is a whole lot stronger if you can base your decisions on facts rather than just your own opninion. Data from logfile analysis, survey results, user test videos – those are things that make compelling arguments, not your opinion.

Gathering facts is the main reason why we push clients to include user research in their project. Agreed, it costs a bit more when you’re doing it, but it sure saves time on meetings full of endless discussions based on nothing more than opinions.

Related articles

• Webdesign process: is the customer king?
• Information architecture: the basics

What do you think?

Are we right or are we right? Feel free to disagree.

The great thing about a content management system (CMS) is that it makes it really easy to create and publish content on your website.

So that’s what most webmasters and editors do: they create and publish content like there’s no tomorrow.

Cause it’s fun. And it’s what they’re being paid to do.

They’re often judged on the amount of content they produce. The number of pages and articles they put online. A nice and easy box to tick during the annual evaluation talk.

Managing content is boring

If you’re responsible for the quality of your company’s website, your main task should not be publishing new content. You should be managing and improving the content you’ve already got.

It’s less fun than creating new content. But it’s vital if you want to have a website that works.

It’s like Gerry McGovern says: “You’re not being paid to have fun. You’re being paid to run a good website.”

6 essential questions and tasks for every content manager

If you can answer yes to the following questions, you’re a good content manager.

• Is the content on your website up to date? Are you sure there’s not a single page you haven’t looked at in over a year? (For convenience’s sake, we’ll leave your news and blog articles out of this. Even though ideally you should have a look at those once in a while as well.)
• Are there no pages with overlapping or contradictory content on your website?
• Are your texts clear? Are they written with your visitors in mind? Are they really? Did you research that or are you just saying yes because that’s what you think?
• Do you have a list of all pages that were hardly visited over the last 6 months? Did you analyse those pages and try to figure out the reasons why?
• Do you know the bounce rates of the 100 most popular pages on your website? Have you looked into the pages with unusually high bounce rates and developed alternative pages? And then checked to see if those performed any better?
• If you’ve got landing pages, have you checked whether they are really contributing to your website’s goal? Have you tried changing them? And then checked again?

Can you answer yes to all of these questions?
Congratulations, you are either a great content manager or a fantastic liar.

You can only answer yes to less than 3 questions?
Don’t sweat it. Your competitors aren’t doing any better.

If you would do better though, that would really make a difference. Not adding new content on your website or doing a flashy new redesign.

Yeah but, isn’t that why we got a content management system?

Management’s reaction to content-related issues often is:”We’ve invested heavily in a state of the art content management system. We don’t have to do all this stuff by hand now, do we?”

Yes, you do. A CMS allows you to publish content and to assign it to a particular place or places on your website. You can add a publishing date and an expiration date as well. Hurray.

But that’s about as far as it goes when it comes to ‘managing content’.

A CMS won’t tell you that the page you’re writing is a piece of fluff nobody is interested in.

A CMS won’t tell you that what you’re writing looks suspiciously like 5 other pages you’ve already got.

A CMS won’t tell you which pages are really working for you and which ones are just dead weight.

A content manager’s job

• 80% of a content manager’s time should be devoted to managing and improving existing content
• 20% should go towards creating new content

You don’t like that? Tough.

Related articles

• Information architecture: the basics
• 8 writing tips to increase the impact of your website

You’re probably thinking that should be a statement instead of a question. Well… yes, the customer is king. And no, he isn’t really.

One of the main reasons a lot of websites fail to deliver is because they’re made according to the specifications of the company that ordered it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s good for a web builder or usability expert to find out what the customer wants. But it’s not enough.

We tell most of our customers at the start of a usability project that it doesn’t really matter all that much what they think or want.

What we think doesn’t matter that much either.

It’s not your customer’s opinion that counts, it’s his customers’ opinion

You don’t make a company’s website for that company. You make it for that company’s customers.

Their needs and expectations are what matters. A website can only be truly successful if it caters to the needs of its visitors, not to the needs of its owners or makers.

Finding out what visitors want is crucial if you want to base your functional analysis and information architecture on facts rather than feelings.

Companies know their customers

Yeah, right.

That’s what I thought. But 10 years of experience have taught me that a lot of companies know surprisingly little about their customers.

Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. Ask your customer (or yourself if you’re a CEO, communication or marketing manager) questions like:

• Who visits your website?
• Why do people visit your website?
• Why do people buy your product and not your competitor’s?
• Why do they buy product x and not product y of the same series?
• What are your potential customers’ 10 most frequently asked questions?

It’s amazing how often companies don’t know the answers to these questions. Or how often the answers start with “I think” or “According to us”.

Which basically means “We don’t know”. Time for user research to make sure you can start your answers with “We know”.

User research

How do you find out what people want from a website?

That’s easy: you ask them. And you check what they’re already doing on your site.

A few user research methods we use:

• Logfile analysis
  Logfiles can tell you what people are doing on your website. They can’t tell you what they’d like to do or what they can’t do.
• Keyword analysis
  Analysing the keywords people type into your search feature tells you what people are looking for on your site and which words they use.
• Customer contacts analysis
  Ask everybody in your company who comes into contact with customers to keep track of the questions they ask so you know what the 10 most frequently asked questions are.
• Online survey
  An online survey is a great way to find out more about your visitors’ profile and what they’re looking for on your website. A short survey with the right questions still gets loads of responses.
• Interviews
  Interviews with potential and existing customers are vital if you want to get details about what they really want from your website.
• User tests
  User tests will show you what people like and dislike about your website and your competitors’.

Is user research always interesting?

Absolutely. You always learn something new.

Of course you don’t always have to use all the methods we described. Our advice is to choose at least 1 analytical method (logfile analysis, keyword analysis or customer contacts analysis) and 1 other method.

Don’t get carried away with the number of people you interview or do user tests with either. Around 10 people is plenty, unless of course you have a huge website with loads of different target audiences.

Examples

• Environmental government agency
  The agency thought their website was mostly visited by 2 types of visitors:
  - Farmers and environmental professionals looking for scientific data.
  - Companies looking for information on environmental permits.
  Research showed these assumptions were wrong. Sure, 20% of visitors were companies and around 3% were farmers and environmental professionals. But about 75% of visitors were regular people looking for information on air and water quality in their area and tips on how to be environmentally friendly.

• Air conditioning manufacturer
  Our customer thought the website was very important for engineering companies, architects, etc.
  Research showed these people rarely visited the website. The real visitors were end customers looking for information on air conditioning. And they weren’t too impressed with sales arguments like ‘titanium air filter’ and ‘only 69db’. Their main reasons to buy a particular air conditioning unit were things like ‘it’s really quiet’ and ‘it fits with our decorating scheme’.

• Hospital
  The hospital we worked for was convinced their website had to inform people about medical conditions and treatments. User research told a different story. People were mostly looking for contact information, phone numbers of doctors and visiting hours. As a matter of fact, more people used the website to look for information on the cafeteria than information about a medical condition or treatment.

• Scientific research institute
  User research showed that the visitor profile was very different depending on the language version of the website. The Dutch version of the site was mostly visited by teachers, students and non-scientists, looking for general information or didactic material. The English version of the site was mostly visited by staff and scientists from other research institutes and industry, looking for information on specific research projects or scientists’ contact details.

So don’t talk to the customer?

Of course you should. Talking to your customer is always important.

But don’t just talk to the CEO or the web manager. Talk to people from all divisions of the company so you can find out what their expectations are about the website.

And always, always check the company’s wishes and expectations against those of the people it’s all about: the website’s visitors.

Conclusion: talk to your customer and his customers

What does all that talking get you? An excellent view on what the website should and shouldn’t do and what the visitors’ top tasks are.

The end result: happy website visitors. Which in turn leads to a happy customer for you.

Care to share your experiences?

We’d love to hear from you.

Everybody who shops on the web compares. They don’t just compare products from different vendors, but also different products from the same vendor.

This comparison behaviour goes for visitors of both b2c and b2b websites.

Allow users to compare

Comparing is a top task so make sure it’s easy to do on your website.

If you make it hard to compare your products, there’s a good chance your website visitors will not become customers.

What do your visitors expect?

• Main characteristics of the product or service on the product page, pereferably as a bulleted list.
• An overview of the similarities and differences of comparable products on 1 page. It’s really annoying if you have to get out pen and paper to write down product characteristics and then look for the differences between the products.

What do you need in order to compare?

• Clearly differentiated products or services. If you’re not sure what the difference is between product A and B, how is your customer supposed to know?
• If you want to compare products in a meaningful way, you need to know what the deciding factors are for your customers. Seems easy, right? Wrong. In about half of the projects we do, the company doesn’t know what their customers deciding criteria are.

What if you don’t meet these criteria?

• Make sure you do!

The choice is simple: adapt or lose customers.

Less than 10 products or services to compare?

Basic principle: all on 1 page

A search feature or wizard is not needed here. Your users probably aren’t rocket scientists but they aren’t idiots either.

Option 1: table

• Users love this. If it’s in any way possible, try this.
• Recent tests show that putting the most expensive products first is the most effective.

Top row: good examples by Shopify en Combell, lowest to highest price. Basecamp (bottom row) does slightly better: from highest to lowest price and with extra information on mouse-over.

Option 2: separate blocks

• Clear heading.
• Main characteristics in bullets, preferably in such a way that it’s easy to compare the different products or services (a.o. by the same order and approach).
• Price.
• Each block should be clickable in its entirety.
• Line up blocks horizontally whenever possible. That creates a better overview.

The blocks on the Telenet website offer a pretty good overview.

More than 10 products or services?

Facets

All products on 1 page with faceted search on the left.

2 good examples of refining results by faceted search: Bol.com (left) en Booking.com (right)

7 things to keep in mind about faceted search

1. Put the faceted search on the left. You can put it on the right, but less people will notice it. You can put it at the top of the page as well, but that will push the actual results down and that’s not ideal.
2. Limit facets to the main product characteristics. Don’t cram every detail in there.
3. Take your customers’ view on what the product’s main characteristics are. Remember: what you think, doesn’t matter. It’s all about your customers.
4. Make selecting and deselecting the facets easy.
5. It should be impossible for users to make a selection that delivers zero results.
6. In many cases, it’s helpful if the user can order the results list (alphabetically, by price, by size, …).
7. If there are more than 20 products in your list, it’s best to go for numbered results pages (cfr. Google).

Detailed comparison

A more detailed comparison, that sums up all characteristics of comparable products in a table can be very handy for certain products.

More on product comparison

• Trends in pricing tables
• 50 examples of pricing tables
• Best practices for faceted product search
• The basics of information architecture

Other options?

Have you seen other good examples? Maybe you came up with one yourself? Feel free to leave a link to it in the reactions or send us an email.

Want to know more about how to make good home pages, overview pages and detail pages?
Join us at one of our usability workshops.

What do you use Google for?

Ask 100 people this question and I guarantee you that at least 99 answers will contain the word ’search’.

A small group of people will also talk about things like Gmail and Google Maps.

An even smaller group will talk about Google Adwords, AdSense, Analytics etc. The stuff that only web professionals really know about.

Top task: search

Because search is the absolute top task people visit Google for, the new Google homepage focuses on it for the full 100%.

Strange?
Not at all. Search is what 99% of people visit Google for. Give people what they want.

Less important tasks: less prominent on the homepage

If you move your mouse over the screen, you get to see more. The other important tasks, like Gmail and Maps are at the top. Below the search are the things Google actually earns money with: the advertising programs and the business solutions.

A bold move?
Not really. Though it is true most people lack the courage to do this on their own website.

Google puts the stuf that generates revenue in the background. Most CEOs and web managers are afraid to do that. But at Google, they realise it’s not the advertising programs that generate the revenue, it’s the millions of people who ‘google’ every day. Why do they google every day? Because the website is so deliciously simple.

How do you identify your website’s top tasks?

We can help you on your way with user research.
That way, you can base your website on facts instead of opinions or feelings.

Related articles

• What would Google look like if you had made it?
• Focus: the basis of every good web page
• Page fold: myth or reality?

Applied to websites, intranets and extranets, we define information architecture as the discipline that puts the right information in the right words in the right place.

Why is a good information architecture important?

• If your visitors can’t find the information they’re looking for it might as well not be there.
• Surfers are extremely impatient. If they can’t find what they want where they want it when they want it, they’ll leave. Too bad if it’s on your website somewhere else. They didn’t find it. And left.
• Our user research shows that 7 out of 10 usability problems are related to:
  • Confusing navigation
  • Missing information
  • Too much information
  • Unclear presentation of the information
  • Incomprehensible content

Is information architecture only a concern for big websites?

Absolutely not. Just because your website only has 20 pages doesn’t mean the information architecture can’t be a problem. True, it’ll probably be easier for a visitor to find the page they’re looking for on a smaller website.

But the story doesn’t end when the user gets to the right page:

• Does the page contain all the information he needs?
• Can he understand everything on the page?
• Is the answer to his question clear?

What do we mean by ‘information’?

Information is everything you put on your website. Not just text but also pictures, movies, forms, …  

What is ‘right’?

‘Right’ has very little to do with what you think is right. It has everything to do with what the visitor thinks is right.  

The right information

• In general
  • Which information do your visitors expect to find on your site?
  • Why do they visit your website?
  • What are their top tasks?
• In detail
  • What are the most important things your visitor wants to know about each of your products and services?
  • Does your product page have all the information your visitor needs?
  • What kinds of pictures do your visitors like? Do you need any pictures at all? Have a look at some examples of meaningless pictures.

The right place

• In general
  • Where do people look for certain information?
  • Does your navigation structure reflect the way your visitors think or the way you think?
  • Which information should be on the homepage? And where on the homepage?
  • What should your overview pages look like? What do people expect to find there?
  • Which lay-out directs their attention most efficiently?
• In detail
  • Which information do your visitors want to see first about a product?
  • Which lay-out works best for your particular product: anchor links, in-page tabs, …?
  • Where should you put the action-button or the contact information?
  • Should the picture be on the left or on the right?

The right words

• In general
  • Do your visitors understand the words in your navigation?
  • Do they know what they’ll find when they click on an item in your navigation?
• In detail
  • Do you speak your visitors’ language?
  • Are your headings, sub-headings, links and texts clear to all your potential customers?
  • Are you sure?
    Have a look at our copywriting tips for a better website.

Is it hard to get it right?

Well, yes. Making a successful website is not easy.

For starters, you need answers to these questions:

• Who are my visitors?
• What do they want?
• Which words do they understand?

You’re not going to find the answers to these questions by having a good old think about it. A brainstorm session with your coworkers won’t cut it either. And don’t even think about looking for it in your corporate mission statement.

There’s only one way to get these answers right: thorough user research.  

What do you need to do user research?

• An open mind.
• The strength to put your ego aside.
• Basic knowledge of a few key techniques that have proven their merit. Techniques that aren’t all that complicated but nevertheless need to be used correctly.
• The power of persuasion to convince your co-workers and bosses that their gut feeling isn’t necessarily right. Armed with the results from  the user research that shouldn’t be too hard. Facts trump opinions every time.  

Need some help to improve your information architecture?

Have a look at our information architecture service.