Web Design Leeds - Northern Web - Information Architecture

The layout of information can affect user experience

This is a real web-geeky thing that most people don't really consider but it can mean the difference between success and failure. Information Architecture refers to the layout and accessibility of the content held within your pages. The use of colour, the positioning of elements and the actual copy itself all play a part in guiding the user through your website. Take Northern Web for example; upon entering our homepage you are presented immediately with what we do, some informative copy and a quick visual that represents our work.

Flowing down the page is our content in order of (what we deem to be) importance. We need to ensure that our user experience is positive, so we use bold heading fonts and snappy pieces of text covering key pieces of information. We also provide a simple navigation system at the top of the page, present at all times. This way the user can navigate through our main website areas with incredible ease, never getting lost on the way and always able to go back to the homepage. We also include some text links at the bottom of the page linking to key areas of the site, but these also play an important SEO purpose.

Generally, the larger the site the harder information architecture is to handle. Take a travel or comparison website for example, and you'll more often than not find them unbearably difficult to navigate, not least because they pull information from varying sources and articulating this into a manageable piece is far from easy. At Northern Web we love this task, because user experience is one of the most important considerations in web design.

Improving user experience with information architecture

Information architecture should be thought about in the planning stages of your website. You need to consider user paths - not just where you think users will tend to go, but paths designed by yourself that lead to a conversion of some kind. Consider the bottom of your page and where they could go from there. Consider your call to actions and make sure they are visible and not hidden in the text. Think about your link colours, and what illustrates pages they have already visited, and what illustrates a shiny new page they have yet to explore. Use your site map to map your user paths and make sure there is some form of goal at the beginning, middle or end of each; effectively, you need to give your website a narrative.

Good user experience design comprises impressive visual elements, intelligent layout and a frosting of marketing know-how. With these points taken into consideration at every stage of the design process - you have a much improved changed of success!