posted by steve | Category: Random Rants |

Web page design, more specifically, the information architecture of a web site, needs to be planned carefully.  Too often menus and layout are placed on the site based on one person or group’s idea of what visitors want rather than a thoughtful and thorough analysis of what the visitors themselves want and need.

When planning the information architecture I find it helpful to consider the three W’s:  What, Why, and When.

• Why is the visitor coming to your site?
• What is the visitor trying to do?
• When is the visitor looking for the information?

Complex sites frequently don’t consider any of these when designing their menus or the content contained on individual pages.

On complex sites finding out why someone is coming to your site is typically done using analytics.  For example, analysis of logs or web page tracking reveals how visitors are finding your site, sometimes including search terms and the site that referred them to your web site.  If a visitor got to your site by searching for purple iPod covers then hopefully you have purple iPod covers on the page that they hit.

Determining why a visitor is coming to your site helps determine what they’re trying to do on the site.  Is the visitor looking for information about iPod covers or looking to purchase one?

Arguably the most important piece of web information architecture is determining when the visitor is looking for information.  A page with everything the visitor might need is useless if they aren’t ready to consume the information yet.  For example, a calendar application could provide complex scheduling options on its weekly calendar view, but if the visitor is merely looking for an overview of availability for the week then complex scheduling options will be useless.  Worse yet, the visitor might miss those options and click to another area of the site looking for those options.

If a visitor doesn’t think the page they’re on has the necessary information they’ll click away within 2 to 3 seconds (sometimes less) so you don’t have much time to give them what they’re looking for when they’re looking for it.