Taxonomy is a useful way to categorize your content so you can find it, re-use it, and help users browse and search through your content. It also helps with search engine optimization.

1. What Is Taxonomy and Why
Is It Useful?
Theresa Putkey
Information Architect & Taxonomist
Key Pointe Usability Consulting, Inc.
tputkey@keypointe.ca
@tputkey
www.keypointe.ca

2. What Is Taxonomy?
Many libraries organize their books by the Dewey Decimal
System. When you walk into a library, you might see thousands
of books. If it weren’t for the Dewey Decimal System, you
wouldn’t know which books are where. Dewey let’s you find
books based on things like author and subject, without having to
look at every single book.

3. What Is Taxonomy?
Using a taxonomy in a corporate, government, or organizational
environment has the same effect.
A taxonomy is a list of terms you use to categorize and find your
information again, without having to look through every file,
image, document, or web page.

4. Examples of Taxonomy
It’s easiest to understand taxonomy by looking at a few
examples. Here are some projects Key Pointe has
worked on in the past.

5. Example 1
A not-for-profit had a lot of files related
to their product offerings. The files were
a mess across several network drives
and personal hard drives.
They needed to implement a digital
asset management (DAM) system to
keep track of the files and they needed
a taxonomy to help them categorize and
find these files.
While they did use a file structure, not
everyone understood the file naming or
structure and they needed a different
way to find files.

6. Example 2
A technology company was re-doing
their Support website and needed to
categorize their information by subject.
They had different products, services,
and topics and wanted to allow users to
access these topics in different ways.
They also wanted to use taxonomy to
dynamically display content on pages,
so they didn’t have to hand code every
link.

7. Example 3
An investment company was re-doing
their intranet site. Content was created
by different teams about the same
topic. They wanted to make sure the
intranet users could find all content
about the same topic, regardless of
which team created it or where it was
saved on the intranet. They also wanted
to improve their search results page to
allow users to filter their search results
by taxonomy.

8. Why Is Taxonomy Helpful?
Based on the examples, we can create some themes
for how taxonomy helps us on the web.

9. Information Overload
● We have software products that are extremely
information heavy
● Managed with wCMS, eCMS, cCMS, DAM, PIM, MAM
● How do we keep track of all the things in those systems?
● Not everyone understands the logic behind a file system
● Taxonomy gives us another avenue to categorize and find
information

10. It’s Helpful to Content Authors
● Categorize information to find it again
● Can re-use content or link to it more easily
● Dynamically display information on a website instead of
building pages by hand
● Controlling terminology so authors are using consistent
wording

11. It’s Helpful to Users
● Find information outside of a traditional folder structure
● Find via familiar terminology
● Increases accuracy of search results
● Allows the search results to be filtered by taxonomy

12. Taxonomy In Action
Here are some examples of taxonomy in action, to help
you visualize how taxonomy is helpful on the web.

13. Users Can Browse Information by Different
Categories

14. Users Can Filter
by Different
Categories to
Narrow or Broaden
Results

15. Users Can Find
an Item Despite
Idiosyncratic
Naming
I.e. Aubergine=Purple!

16. Users Can Find
an Item Despite
Different (but
correct!)
Naming
I.e. Mark Twain is the same
as Samuel Clemens

17. Summary
Taxonomy is a categorization technique which allows
us to find information without having to remember
exactly where it’s stored.
It helps us with finding content, re-using content,
dynamically creating web pages, filtering search
results, and improving the search results displayed.

18. Learn More
Use Information Architecture and Taxonomy to Improve SEO
The Accidental Taxonomist by Heather Hedden
Making the Case: Explaining Taxonomy to Business People
Everything you ever wanted to know about taxonomies from NISO

19. About Key Pointe Usability
Consulting
Through User Research, Information Architecture, and
Taxonomy, Key Pointe Usability Consulting researches
usability problems, develops website structures, and
creates designs that balance user expectations with
business needs. Key Pointe’s process results in intuitive
content and effective internal and external search
strategies for user-friendly customer experiences.

20. Contact Info
Theresa Putkey
Information Architect & Taxonomist
tputkey@keypointe.ca
www.keypointe.ca
@tputkey
ca.linkedin.com/in/tputkey
604 563 6317