Everything Starts with a Well Structured Website Information Architecture
A website’s information architecture or IA is often overlooked. A better structured website gives you the chance of ranking higher in search engines. When building a fresh new website or rebuilding an existing website, a well-thought-out website information architecture is one of the first steps done in the planning phase.
A successful website information architecture allows your site to be search engine friendly and most importantly, aids your user experience. Helping you write content, have intentional designs, and develop a website that is user centric.
Once your website’s information architecture is complete, you can move on with the content structure. Sounds similar right, but they are different.
Website Content Organization, Another Overlooked Website Build Item
A website content organization is another overlooked step when building a new website or rebuilding an existing website. The website content organization should then be used to write the content.
Your website’s web pages are identified in the information architecture and so the next step is to figure out how the content will be organized on such web pages. This is the difference.
How to Organize Content for Your Web Pages
I always advise my clients to begin with your critical web pages. The ones where you really want your web visitors to convert. For example, if you’re a cosmetic clinic business then your critical web pages should be your treatment pages.
After defining your critical conversion web pages, now you should leverage the extensive keyword research and marketing persona profiles. Your web pages should be data informed. Therefore, using keyword research and marketing persona profiles, should inform the key content sections per web page.
Now that you have your key content sections, think conversion funnels. Now enters the communication matrix. Your websites communication matrix for the purpose of a website content organization, details the following:
- What should each content section talk about? This should answer the question: ‘what are our marketing personas looking for?’
- What are our matching products, services, or offerings? This should answer the question: ‘how can we best serve our web visitors?‘ This practice helps you show only what is relevant.
- What are our related products, services, or offerings? This should answer the question: ‘what are other closely related solutions for our web visitors?’ This practice helps you group related content together.
- How can we provide more information to our website visitors? This should answer the question: ‘what do our marketing personas want from us?‘ At this point, it is important to identify your primary and secondary calls-to-action (CTAs). This practice also helps you identify customized offers. Where your web visitors can decide what they want.
- Is there anything critical in which our web users should know? This should answer the question: ‘how can we make our web visitors trust us?’
Conclusion
Your website information architecture and content organization go hand in hand and require careful thinking to later create intentional designs. If done correctly, the result will be beautiful and you will have a user centric website.
Do you have anything to add when it comes to website content organization?
