It is the visual representation of the organization, structure, and labelling of the information in the digital product. The main goal of IA is to offer a delightful user experience facilitating the user-centred design with a good navigation system. This enables users to easily find what they are looking for.
3. Have you ever wondered, why some websites seem to be so appealing to your
eyes? The secret behind this is the melding of information architecture along
with design. The better the organization of information, that includes structure,
label and design across all your digital products, the better will be the user
experience.
Findability, usability, and discoverability are the three main aspects of
information architecture in UX. Want to know how? Stick till the end to discover
everything about it.
What is information architecture (IA) in UX and why is it important?
It is the visual representation of the organization, structure, and labelling of the
information in the digital product. The main goal of IA is to offer a delightful user
4. This enables users to easily find what they are looking for. Here are the 4 main
features of information structure in UX:
● SEARCH: Helps users in findability and discoverability to locate features
and functionalities.
● LABELLING: Helps users to easily differentiate between the intuitive labels
with different meanings, be it a button, an option, or a feature.
● NAVIGATION: Helps users in moving from one page to the other for
completing the desired action.
● ORGANIZATION: Helps users in the easy usage of the digital product by
distributing the information in different categories, hierarchies, or
sequences.
5. Why do you need it?
We all know that better the user experience of our digital product, the more
they will want to visit us. This is very helpful in user retention especially in the
era with lots of distracting information where people lose interest quickly. Thus,
is it very effective and efficient.
Here are some benefits which will convince you of the need for good IA in UX:
Brand impression: As we say “the first impression is the last impression”,
which is followed here.
More number of visitors: Good information always attracts more.
More click-through rates: The more enhanced the labels are, the better will
6. More potential customers: Great user experience will nurture your visitors
into leads.
More lead conversions and revenues: Once users are satisfied with your
product, there are no boundaries for the revenue they can offer you.
Know the important components of information architecture
The goal of providing customers with utmost satisfaction, these 3 are essential
components of IA:
● Ontology(meaning): It refers to the labelling of specific categories to
make it easier for customers to home in on what they are looking for.
● Taxonomy(categorization): It is a hierarchical classification of the
products where similar products are grouped.
7. ● Choreography: It is a mixture of ontology and taxonomy. It explains the
user flow: the most expected path that customer follows to perform a
specific task on the website.
Best ways to practice information architecture in UX
● Research and analyse targeted users: The best way to practice this is to
put yourself in the customers’ shoes and analyse how they want the
interface to be and how can you create an interactive design based on it.
● Analyse buyer personas and user scenarios: This will help you in the
proper implementation of information architecture by understanding who
your customers are, their mindset, what they think, what problems they are
facing, and how to overcome them?
8. You can focus on points regarding your customers like aspirations, language,
daily routines, pain points, preferences, and keywords or phrases.
● Organization: Now display your information in such a way that users can
easily navigate through it. You can follow any of the hierarchical,
sequential, or matrix structures.
● Labelling: It is the process of naming different pages by prioritizing the
user’s intuitiveness. Ex: home, about us, blog.
● Offering satisfying user experience: It involves maintaining and
connecting the website content right from visiting the website, locating
features, performing any intended task, etc.
9. Conclusion
The best result of using information architecture in UX is simplifying the
complexity. With more digital transformation, you can only see data to be rising
in the coming years, and investing in good UX designers and architects will
simplify your task. So, to reap the benefits mentioned above, it’s high time to
start following the IA practices.