Design
Information Architecture and User Interface
Design supports your Web site goals through “look and feel.” Information Architecture (IA) supports your goals through organization and structure. Adhering to the Site Map established for your site, IA controls what information is on the site and the way that information is organized. Bear Creek Web has a variety of tools and tips to help us harness IA to achieve results.
Paradigm Shift
We constantly study changes in user’s behavior and have recently witnessed a new paradigm: Users are now frequently entering sites in places other than the main page. They are going to search engines such as Google and typing in topics or keywords they are interested in finding. They then click on whatever link most appeals to them, and increasingly often, that link is to a page one or two levels deep inside a Web site.
Then when they reach that page, they remain highly goal-driven and tend to ignore navigation tools. Instead, they focus on the central text area, looking for one of their keywords or another highly related word. If they find the word, they click on it. If it’s not found, they hit the back button and try another site.
This shift makes three things critical:
- The main navigation must be a prominent part of each page of the Web site so the user can continue to flow through the site no matter where they enter it
- The navigation must do a good job of letting the user know exactly where they are in the site
- Keywords must be integrated and linked throughout the site to allow the user to find what they are looking for and to remove any reason for clicking back to their search engine results