Information Architecture Articles & Videos

  • Footers 101: Design Patterns and When to Use Each

    Footers can be found at the bottom of almost every web page, and often take many forms, depending on the type of content on a website. Regardless of the form they take, their presence is critical (and highly underrated).

  • Breadcrumbs: 11 Design Guidelines for Desktop and Mobile

    Support wayfinding by including breadcrumbs that reflect your site's information hierarchy. On mobile, avoid using breadcrumbs that are too tiny or wrap.

  • Intranet Design After a Merger or Acquisition

    Building an intranet for a newly expanded organization calls for empathy, balance, and often some resistance toward upper management.

  • UX Guidelines for Ecommerce Homepages, Category Pages, and Product Listing Pages

    Streamline users’ path to products by providing clear, differentiating product information at all levels — from the homepage to product listing pages.

  • Polyhierarchies Improve Findability for Ambiguous IA Categories

    When an item fits in more than one category, your IA structure can include multiple parents for that item to avoid losing users.

  • 5 Information Architecture Warning Signs in Your Analytics Reports

    Analytics metrics such as pageviews, conversions, entrances, bounce rates, and search query frequency can help identify problems in your category structure.

  • The Anatomy of a List Entry

    To support scanning and product comparison, item descriptions on listing pages should have a visual design and layout that preserve content priorities.

  • Navigation: You Are Here

    You-are-here navigation consists of signs that help orient website visitors as they explore the site. Many websites need stronger location indicators.

  • Utility Navigation: What It Is and How to Design It

    Utility navigation consists of secondary actions and tools, such as contact, subscribe, save, sign in, share, change view, print.

  • Audience-Based Navigation: 5 Reasons to Avoid It

    Role-based IAs increase cognitive effort and user anxiety. Clear language and mutually exclusive categories reduce the chance of harming the user experience.

  • Top 3 IA Questions about Navigation Menus

    The number and order of navigation categories, and use of hover menus for touchscreens are frequently asked questions that arise when organizing information on a website or application.

  • Quicklinks: Bad Label or Indicative of Usability Issues

    A Quicklinks UI component often surfaces as a poor fix for addressing findability and discoverability issues on intranets. Acting as a catch-all for different types of links causes a separate set of issues. And Quicklinks is always a vague label.

  • Low Findability and Discoverability: Four Testing Methods to Identify the Causes

    Use IA- and UI-focused user research to determine if low findability and discoverability are caused by site information architecture or navigation design.

  • The Difference Between Information Architecture (IA) and Navigation

    IA is the information backbone of the site; navigation refers to those elements in the UI that allow users to reach specific information on the site.

  • Avoid Format-Based Primary Navigation

    Format-based navigation, such as links to Videos, at the top levels of a website’s information architecture lacks sufficient context and information scent for topic-focused users.

  • Bad Intranet Navigation Labels: 3 Workarounds

    Many intranets are saddled with poorly understood labels. If you can't change them, add context to make these labels more transparent to users.

  • Intranet Information Architecture (IA) Trends

    Intranets are improving findability and discoverability by organizing content by task, using mega-menus, offering wayfinding cues, and providing shortcuts.

  • Infinite Scrolling Is Not for Every Website

    Endless scrolling saves people from having to attend to the mechanics of pagination in browsing tasks, but is not a good choice for websites that support goal-oriented finding tasks.

  • 5 Tips for Avoiding Confusing Category Names

    Category and link labels should tell users what will happen when they click on them.

  • Flat vs. Deep Website Hierarchies

    Information can be organized in either flat or deep hierarchies; both have their advantages and pitfalls.