Friday 27 November 2009

Information architecture

What is information architecture?
  1. The structural design of shared information environments.
  2. The art and science of organising and labelling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support findability and usability. » More
The information architecture of your website makes it easier for visitors to find information. A typical church website will have times of services, contact details, how to find the church/chapel, sample sermons, profiles of the members and the minister, newsletter articles, and so on.

There are several different models of information architecture.
The information architecture is mainly represented by the navigation (menus).

Here are some examples.
  • New Unity (Newington Green and Islington Unitarians) has a strict hierarchy model.
  • The Bristol Unitarians website has a multi-dimensional hierarchy (you can browse by category or by date). This is mainly due to using a blog with labels to build the site.
  • The York Unitarians website has an index structure.
Which of these models you choose for your website depends on how much content you have or plan to add to your website.

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