Site map
One picture of every page and where it sits. Your team can point at it and agree.
Information architecture · Colorado Springs, CO
Information architecture
Put things where people look for them.
Information architecture means deciding what goes where on your site. The menus, the page names, and how pages link to each other. Get it right and people find what they came for without thinking about it. Search engines understand the site better too.
- 2002
- Building the web since
- HEC
- MicroMaster in UX Design
01 What it is
The plan forwhere things go.
Think of a shop. If the milk is next to the paint, people walk out without the milk. A website works the same way. When pages sit in odd places, or the menu uses words only your team knows, people give up and leave.
Information architecture fixes that. I sort out what you have, group it the way your customers think, and give each page a clear name and a clear place. Then the menus and links follow from that plan.
It matters most when a site has grown over the years, when two sites are being merged into one, or before a new site is built. It costs far less to get right on paper than to fix after launch.
- You need it if
- People call to ask where something is
- Or if
- The menu has grown to fit everything
- Or if
- Two sites are becoming one
- Or if
- A new site is about to be built
02 How I do it
Five steps,in this order.
- 01
List everything
Every page, file and feature you have now, in one list. You cannot sort what you have not counted.
- 02
Watch how people group it
Card sorting: people sort your topics into piles that make sense to them. Their piles become your menu.
- 03
Draw the map
A site map, the menus and the page names, on paper first, where changes are cheap.
- 04
Test it with real tasks
Tree testing: people try to find things using only the menu, with no design in the way. Wrong turns show what to rename or move.
- 05
Build it
I build the pages, menus and links myself, so the plan does not get lost on the way to the browser.
03 What you get
Things you can build from,not a slide deck.
Menus and page names
The top menu, the footer, and a name for each page, in the words your customers use.
Page templates
A simple layout for each kind of page, like a service page or a blog post, so new pages fit without a debate.
Links and URLs
Which pages link to which, and a clean web address for each. This is the part that helps SEO most.
It helps search too
Google reads your site the same way a person does: by following links. A clear structure tells it which pages matter most and how they fit together. That is why I plan the structure and the SEO together.
To see how a site really links up today, I crawl it with CrawlStat, my own site crawler written in Rust. It does the job of Screaming Frog, only faster, and it shows the pages nobody links to and the ones buried too deep to find.
04 Questions
Information architecture,answered plainly.
What is information architecture?
It is deciding what goes where on a website. The menus, the page names, and how pages link to each other, so people find what they want without thinking about it.
What are card sorting and tree testing?
Card sorting: people sort your topics into groups that make sense to them. Tree testing: people try to find things using only a bare menu. One shows how to group things, the other checks that it works.
Does information architecture help SEO?
Yes. Search engines find pages by following links. A clear structure and clean URLs help them see which pages matter and how they fit together.
Can you fix the structure of a site I already have?
Yes. I crawl the site first to see how it really links together, then plan the changes and the redirects so you do not lose the traffic you already have.
Can people find things on your site?
Send me the site and tell me what people come to it for. I will tell you where they are likely getting lost, and what it would take to fix.
Start a project
Tell me what you want to build.
Pick what you need and see the price right here, or just send a few lines. I read every message and reply myself.
What happens next
See all prices and what each includes