University of New Hampshire

Benefits of Information Architecture

by Charlie Bischoff

Main Goals of Information Architecture

• User-Centered Organization: IA is crafted around user needs, goals, and mental models, aligning structure with user expectations. These methodologies are based upon statistics and analytics that observe what a user is looking for and where they are looking for it. Then, architecture is constructed with the intentions of the user in mind.
• Findability: With the frameworks and principles in this tutorial, users should be able to easily locate information through clear pathways, avoiding any frustration and seeking efficiency. Findability is an important consideration when building a web interface because at the end of the day, users want to find what they're looking for ASAP.
• Scalability: A flexible IA grows with the product, allowing new content and features without disruption. This is why we have specific guidelines for the way information is presented in a way that does not overwhelm a user, like we discussed with pattern recognition.
• Consistency: Predictable patterns in labeling, navigation, and layout make a website usable and comprehensible. Consistency is key, and can be modeled easily after major leaders in web design. Walmart and Amazon have virtually perfect architecture for shopping, Nike is very straightforward as well. If your web application offers different utilities it is easy to take some advice from the leaders in such field by just browsing through their site. This is how you create your application with the principle of consistency, users know how the important apps and sites work and expect others to work similarly.
• Efficiency: Users complete tasks quickly when content is logically grouped and easy to access. As we have learned in the Krug reading, users are often on a mission to find something specific. Information architecture should not halt or slow this effort, in fact it should be designed under this assumption. A user's experience will be efficient if we provide the correct architectural mechanisms for a mission complete. We certainly do not want a mission impossible situation.

Business Benefits

• Reduced Frustration: Eliminating confusion and friction improves client satisfaction and helps retain users for the next occasion.
• Better Brand Perception: A swift and seamless experience reinforces the brand as professional and trustworthy.
• Lifetime Customers: Satisfied users are more likely to return, creating revenue.

SEO and Technical Benefits

• Improved Crawlability: Clear IA helps search engines better index content, improving their rankings in the 'crawl' also known as how soon their site appears on a search (better crawlability means your site may appear at the top of search results).
• Better Engagement Metrics: Good IA increases time on site and reduces bounce rates (users leaving the page from dissatisfaction or losing interest).
• Targeted Content Delivery: Organizing content strategically improves its relevance to search queries.

Development and Maintenance Advantages

• Preventive Design: A strong IA avoids costly redesigns.
• Content Management: Well organized information structures make updates easy and reduce the need for long-term maintenance.
• Future-Proofing: A scalable IA makes a site that can grow without full structural overhauls.

Competitive Advantage

• Differentiation: Intuitive IA sets your product apart from the competition.
• Market Growth: Intuitive IA attracts future users and retains current ones, growing and sharing and loyalty to your application.

Real-World Examples

Netflix

• Smart search by title, actor, or genre: Netflix uses an intuitive search system that allows users to query in many ways (e.g., by actor, director, genre, or even mood). This flexibility appeals to different mental models we have covered and helps users find content using the terms they’re most familiar with.
• Content sorted by genres, subgenres, and personalization: Content is neatly organized into recognizable genres like “Action,” “Romantic Comedies,” or “Documentaries,” and even personalized subgenres like “Gritty Crime Thrillers.” This supports multiple classification, a key IA principle, allowing for diverse exploration paths.
• Recommendation engine powered by user history: Netflix’s interface adapts to each user by analyzing their watch history and offering targeted suggestions. This not only increases engagement, but reduces cognitive effort by surfacing relevant content without requiring active search.

Amazon

• Multifaceted navigation with filters: Amazon uses powerful filters that help users narrow down product searches by brand, price, review rating, size, color, etc. They have excellent progressive disclosure — users aren’t overwhelmed at first but can access advanced filtering when they'd like.
• Related product suggestions and customer reviews aid discovery: When they are viewing an item, users see sections like “Frequently bought together,” “Customers also viewed,” and “Similar items.” These suggestions create logical content relationships and reduce the need to start new searches while also likely contributing to revenue gains. User-generated content like reviews and star ratings helps them consider their purchasing decisions. This adds clarity and transparency, giving users a sense of confidence and control with their choices on Amazon's website.

Google Search

• Highly relevant results: Google’s algorithms provide links that most closely match user intent, even if the phrasing is sub par. It uses natural language processing and other context (like location or previous searches) to find relevant results.
• Autocomplete and "People Also Ask" aid navigation: These features help users refine their questions, reducing their typing effort, and helping them find adjacent information. This exemplifies recognition over recall, a successful strategy to lower the cognitive load that could be used as a model to base your design on.
• Knowledge Graphs provide content context: The results from many searches on Google displays summary panels (Knowledge Graphs) with images, definitions, and key facts. These show high-priority information at a glance, essentially a visual application to pique the interest of the reader.

IA Gone Wrong

• Cluttered Homepages: Overwhelming users with too much info at once is discouraging. As you can imagine, and have likely experienced a cluttered homepage is an immediate deterrent from continuing your venture on this platform. It is easiest to leave a page after the first click, the first thing a user sees, as Krug mentions in the readings, is the most important. 'Keep it simple, stupid' is the first phrase that comes to mind anytime I consider what to put on a homepage of a web application.
• Hidden Menus: Obscure navigation frustrates users. A concise and clear homepage is a great start, but don't discount the purpose of your site just to have a pretty design. If you look at the bottom of the Amazon logo on this page there is a company credited to the design. Take a moment and travel to this site Turner Duckworth, you may notice it is a masterpiece, but where is the menu to find News and Careers? Its on the bottom, not at all where you would expect it, a great example of a hidden menu with a distracting home page flaunting their achievements. Though this site is well done, I believe the menu does not adhere to the user's intuition for where it should be.

Best Practices

Best practices are something that we have covered thoroughly, and it is clear, I am sure, that they are not someting to be ignored. Information architecture has a plethora of best practices. One of them is to keep it simple and intuitive. 'It' being everything under the sun in IA, navigation, labels, imaging, directions, descriptions, and more. Another best practice is the usage of consistent labeling and structure. Further, web designers should always highlight priority content so that the user can be on the same page as the designer at all times. Designers should prioritize mobile-first navigation, but in our case that is not going to be something considerable for our group project, yet is important to mention for future ventures. Ensuring accessibility is another best practice when managing your information architecture, you do not want to disable someone from accessing your content, that would be counterintuitive. A final best practice is to Include strong search functionality so that users on a mission will find what they are looking for.

Information Architecture is foundational to great user experiences. Like good design, IA often goes unnoticed, but when it's bad, users notice and leave. Investing in IA isn’t just a design decision—it’s a business one.