Websites grow to keep up with the needs of the business but often don’t focus as much on the needs of the website users. Before you know it, they’ve blown up with so many pages, sub-sections, inconsistent navigation, and random CTAs that users don’t know how to find what they want or where to turn.

Houses need “good bones.” So do websites.

Enter Information architecture (IA), an often overlooked web discipline that receives little fanfare. 

We sat down with Gabe Brown, WordPress VIP’s UX consultant and veteran IA expert, to learn the intricacies of IA and why it’s foundational for site (and business) success. 

Gabe Brown is a customer-obsessed Web User Experience expert with over 15 years experience in crafting exceptional digital experiences that connect with diverse audiences.

Information architecture defined by an expert

What is IA, and why does it matter for a business and its audiences?

Gabe: Information architecture refers to organizing, structuring, and labeling content to enable users to navigate and find information quickly and efficiently within a website. It involves the strategic design of information systems to facilitate intuitive UX.

As experts in website experiences, we must make sure our WordPress VIP site provides a best-in-class experience for our prospects and customers, doubling as a conversion machine for us. After all, we have the tools, the team, and the platform. 

Over the years, we’ve collected tons of data to give users a clear idea of how to accomplish what they want on our website. We also have tons of great content! That’s why it’s vital to understand our audience, segment them appropriately, and create user journeys that resonate with those audience segments. 

Information should be systematically arranged and categorized, allowing users to find what they need quickly. This involves creating a clear information hierarchy and defining the relationships among various website sections. 

Where and how does the IA process begin?

First, know that users come to a website for two reasons: 1) to answer a question, or 2) to complete a task. As such, you need a strategy for both, answering users’ questions with minimal confusion. 

Here, the structure of a company’s website is crucial for engagement. If it isn’t intuitive for new and returning visitors, they’ll go in circles and eventually bounce. 

I often start by focusing on key products and solutions “pillar pages,” from which related content branches out to the rest of the site. Each serves as the starting point for everything underneath it. A products pillar page, for example, also helps Google organize search results. If its schema is set up right, you’ll often see a list of those subpages in the search results under the pillar page.

Are there any other navigation caveats here?

Websites often have a top-level nav item for, say, products, with each product under it, yet that top-level nav doesn’t link to a page. Not good. This increases the “cognitive load” for users. They must know which product they need instead of being able to see a page that summarizes each. So, make sure you link to one that does. 

To make this more complicated, IA isn’t strictly linear—there are intersections where industry-specific content meets various personas. At those points, a well-tagged content library is a must. It can help multiple persona types find their way to more content related to the information they’re after.

That said, effective and easy navigation includes more than menus and search. It should make the user experience seamless and consistent across the site.

How do you accomplish that?

Think discoverability—street signs, simplification, and context. Precise and uniform labels, page titles, headings, breadcrumbs, and terminology help users maintain their sense of orientation: “How did I get here?” Technical jargon can alienate average users. The more we can simplify language, particularly in headings and navigation, the easier it will be for users to find their way around. 

The big hurt: understanding the audience and their pain points

What part does user research, demographics, competitive research, and behavior play?

I collect data on users’ age, gender, location, education, personas (e.g., technical or marketing buyers), industry (e.g., media or public sector), and other relevant demographics and psychographics. 

Knowing the pain points your audience personas experience will drive website conversions. Address the pain, not the need. That helps answer a question like: “How do I spend less time thinking about website security and more time publishing the content that matters to my audience?” 

Especially for B2B sites, user pain points and behavior play a huge role in crafting the ideal user journeys. 

Yes. As part of my research, I like to examine user behavior patterns, motivations, and goals when they interact with comparable websites. Understanding their primary tasks, pain points, and desired outcomes is key to identifying effective user journeys.

What techniques do you use?

I create scenarios that depict how different user personas might engage with a website in real-life situations. This helps align the IA with the specific user needs. I interview users to collect qualitative insights about their expectations, challenges, and goals, using open-ended questions to encourage in-depth responses. Distributing surveys or questionnaires to a broader audience can help gather quantitative data, uncovering common trends, preferences, and priorities among users.

And the competition?

Compare your competitors’ websites to understand how they might be meeting user needs and the features they provide. Identify opportunities for enhancement and innovation in your own website’s information architecture.

Analytics platforms like Parse.ly can help with all this, including understanding your site and user behaviors. 

Yes, they help you study how visitors use your site, giving you intel on popular pages, user flows, and challenges they may encounter. As an aside, our Content API can also help you surface relevant site content that resonates with a specific industry or addresses a particular pain point for a target persona. 

Get SMART: defining website goals, objectives, and user journeys

What’s a classic IA approach to establishing or validating a site’s business goals and KPIs?

Be detailed. I like the Adopting a Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART) approach. Document specific website outcomes that can be validated by metrics such as conversion rates, leads, engagement time, and referrals. Defining these will guide the IA and align with the business’s overall goals.

What KPIs, for example, conversion rates, align with the website’s goals and objectives and the specific user journeys we’ve mapped? Are we tracking the correct conversion events? Do these events align with the conversion goals of our buyer journeys? 

User interactions and conversion events are critical for evaluating the effectiveness of the IA. Tracked events could include form submissions, button clicks, search queries, and other events that we can link to specific user interactions as they apply to our goals.

What else?

Determine your site’s core offering and what the target audience needs. Are you a platform for ecommerce, a resource for information, a hub for support and documentation, or a combination? Gain insight into the specific challenges or pain points your website aims to address for its target audience. Understanding this will help shape the information architecture to meet their needs effectively.

Then the content fun begins. 

Now, you can begin to clarify the website’s key messages and value propositions for visitors. This will ensure consistent messaging across all website sections and guide the IA structure and organization.

What advice do you have for measuring success?

Be conversion-oriented and metric-driven. Specify desired outcomes: “We want to increase demo requests from landing pages by 10% to support sales.” Determine the primary conversion goals or actions you want users to take on your website. This may include signing up for a webinar or event, downloading gated content, submitting a contact form—or any other conversion event aligned with the website’s goals.

Use quantitative metrics like website traffic, bounce rate, engaged time, form submissions, and recirculation rate to measure progress toward goals.

For example, a B2B SaaS company with optimized acquisition channels and messaging should expect 10-20% of visitors to express signup intent. If the percentage falls below this range, it may indicate a need to adjust messaging or our acquisition channel strategy.

Talk about focusing on funnel stage awareness and the user journey.

Users should have different conversion goals based on their funnel stage. For example, top-of-funnel (TOFU) goals may include generating awareness through blog content, signing up for notifications of new posts, or providing an email address for gated content. 

Additionally, consider what actions visitors want to take while navigating the website. Outline the pathways users will take to achieve the desired actions. Define the steps that guide users from their initial entry points to the conversion goals, ensuring a clear and logical journey.

Developing a CTA hierarchy: user flows, entry points, navigation

How do you determine a call-to-action hierarchy within the IA?

CTAs should be easily recognized, engaging, and aligned with your objectives for your audiences. For example, in WordPress VIP’s own page hero section, we have the primary CTA—Get a demo—for users ready to take action. The next CTA, further down the page, should be a little less committal, like a subscription or an event registration. Then another CTA for a case study or other social proof. Finally, at the bottom of the page, if users have made it that far, add another strong CTA that matches the one in the hero.

User journeys illustrate users’ routes from their initial entry point to accomplishing their goals. At the same time, task flows detail the steps required to complete particular tasks on the website. This process is essential for effective information architecture. 

User journeys can vary in complexity. Streamline them by identifying the various entry points users can use to reach the website, such as landing pages, search results, or specific calls to action. We document all our touchpoints to understand users’ expectations and motivations when arriving at each entry point.

How do you connect the steps?

Define the main objectives or tasks users want to achieve on the website. These could include research, signing up for services, exploring features, or troubleshooting issues. Create a flow diagram of the steps users must take to reach their goals. Consider the content, features, and navigation elements that should be present at each stage to ensure a seamless user experience.

A well-executed IA will establish clear pathways for users to meet their objectives. 

On brand: optimizing navigation and maintaining a consistent design system

How do you ensure a website’s navigation is logical and user-friendly?

Group similar content and features together. Make sure the main navigation is easy to access from any page. And use visual cues. 

I’m a massive fan of breadcrumbs—they give users a sense of their location within the website’s structure and keep them from bouncing all over the site. Once they find what interests them, they’ll stay within that topic or section until we’ve answered all their questions.

What else helps along their journey?

Provide clear signs and progressive feedback. Incorporate visual cues, such as highlighted buttons, to signal users about their progress or the completion of specific actions. This clarity enables users to understand their current status and the next steps they should take. 

Minimize the choices and decision points users encounter on their journey. Streamlining pathways prevents users from being overwhelmed with too many options, making decisions easier. That way, you’ll help users understand their stage and how to progress.

Talk about the importance of prototyping a site. 

Creating a recognizable, uniform design system with elements such as colors, typography, and button styles facilitates smooth transitions between different pages and sections, ensuring your brand identity remains cohesive sitewide.

Once we define the IA, we must translate it into a visual representation. The wireframing and prototyping process ensures that the conceptual information hierarchy is translated into the visual design language.

Going mobile

And then there’s how things look on handheld devices.

It’s crucial to ensure your website’s IA is adaptable and optimized for mobile. That means tailoring layout, navigation, and content presentation to provide a seamless user experience across various screen sizes and orientations. For WordPress VIP, it’s also a chance to show our enterprise, media, and public sector prospects what’s possible on that channel. 

Where do you start?

Prioritize content, simplify navigation, and use tap-friendly components, considering the constraints of smaller displays. For example, implement collapsible menus, off-canvas navigation, and other mobile-optimized patterns. 

Enhance interactive components like buttons and links for touch interaction. Provide adequate spacing between elements to avoid unintentional taps. Select suitable sizes for touch targets to improve usability and reduce the likelihood of user mistakes.

What about forms and input fields? They can look troublesome on mobile for users trying to fill in information. 

Reduce the number of mandatory fields. Incorporate auto-fill and input validation features where suitable. Consider using progressive forms so users can engage only with one field at a time. Leverage mobile-specific input types like date selectors or numeric keypads to improve the experience.

Survey says: testing, incorporating user feedback 

The testing begins to validate your assumptions or find issues, right?

Create realistic scenarios or tasks that reflect the target audience’s expectations. These should cover various aspects of the IA, enabling users to explore multiple sections and features effectively.

To collect a wide range of feedback, select a diverse cross-section of your target audience, a mix of users with different experience levels, skill sets, and backgrounds. Testers should be as similar to prospects and customers as possible; otherwise, their feedback won’t be relevant to your business. 

Record the testing sessions to ensure that all actions are captured and documented. The more test data recorded, the more useful the test results. Take notes. Ask for verbal feedback, documenting and categorizing it for future reference.

Outline some best practices here.

Distribute surveys to test participants after they’ve completed testing. Interview them, too. Ask open-ended questions so they don’t feel like there is one correct answer. This way, they’ll provide additional thoughts on the experience that aren’t limited to specific answers you might expect. Record and review everything. 

Look for signs of frustration, confusion, and challenges during the testing process. Pay attention to which actions trigger these feelings. These feelings will inform improvements to the IA.

Combine the qualitative data collected in session recordings and surveys with quantitative data based on testing criteria: task completion rate, task time to completion, and task errors. Both types of data give you a user-centric picture of testing groups’ challenges and patterns, helping you prioritize improvements

Ongoing optimization, always

Your work isn’t done once your site is live, right? 

Yes, I never stop reviewing metrics and the user journey. Regularly analyzing the data we collect to understand how the IA influences conversion goals and overall website performance is key to validating success and adjusting things when needed. 

Doing reviews on a regular cadence lets us identify any significant deviations or patterns that highlight areas to improve and strategies we should lean into. For example, checking flow reports to examine users’ paths through our website helps identify where they drop off or take a wrong turn. These data points help us continually optimize IA.

Because “good bones” can’t be taken for granted.