Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes
Summary: Structure and navigation must support each other and integrate with search and across subsites. Complexity, inconsistency, hidden options, and clumsy UI mechanics prevent users from finding what they need.
Introduction
Bad information architecture causes the majority of outright user failures and isn't improving at the rate of other Web usability issues. To determine why, I've identified 10 long-term sore thumbs that together cost websites billions of dollars each year.
I divided the following list of worst IA mistakes into two parts, structure and navigation. ...The invisible way the site is structured and the visible way users understand and manage that structure.
Structure Mistakes
1. No Structure
...common on news sites and catalog-based e-commerce sites, where each item (articles and products, respectively) is treated as a stand-alone unit without connections to related items. No wonder users leave those sites so quickly.
2. Search and Structure Not Integrated
We've long known that users often exhibit search-dominant behaviors.
SERP (search engine results page) usability increases when each search hit exposes its location within the site structure. External search engines like Google can't always do this because they don't know the site's structure or which navigational dimensions are most relevant to common site tasks. But you do know your site's structure and should therefore include the info on your own SERPs.
Sadly, search and navigation fail to support each other on many sites. This problem is exacerbated by another common mistake: navigation designs that don't indicate the user's current location. That is, after users click a search result, they can't determine where they are in the site — as when you're searching for pants and click on a pair, but then have no way to see more pants.
3. Missing Category Landing Pages
We recommend that sites have a series of categories that each link to their own landing page that gives users a section overview. Sometimes, sites forego the overview page and simply offer links directly to individual pages within a section. This might reduce the number of site pages, but when no page is clearly identified as a sub-topic page, users can misunderstand the site's scope and miss important details, products, and services.
Category pages also help SEO because they're the most prominent landing place when people search for a type of product, service, or information. (Breadcrumbs facilitate users' ability to easily move up the levels.)
4. Extreme Polyhierarchy
...polyhierarchy can easily become a crutch. Rather than spend time upfront to develop several intuitive and logical top-level categories, teams rush through this important process, creating numerous weak categories and listing products multiple times within them. The usability impact? Users spend too much time agonizing over top-level categories and then get confused when they see items showing up in multiple places ("are these the same thing?").
With too many classification options and too many structured dimensions, users are forced to think harder to move forward.
5. Subsites/Microsites Poorly Integrated with Main Site
It's typically best to forego independent microsites and place new information on subsites within the main site. But you still need to integrate these subsites within the overall site structure.
For example, on both microsites and subsites, we often see product-specific pages that fail to link to information about the company or organization behind the offering. Further, many sites poorly represent their subsites in the main site search — which often ignores microsites altogether.
Navigation Mistakes
6. Invisible Navigation Options
The very worst mistake might be to have no navigation, but that's so rare that I'm not going to discuss it. Still, any feature that users can't see might as well not exist; invisible navigation is thus nearly as bad as no navigation.
Uncovering navigation shouldn't be a major task: Make it permanently visible on the page. Small children like minesweeping (passing the mouse around the screen to see what's hidden), but teenagers don't like it, and adults hate it.
7. Uncontrollable Navigation Elements
Two common offenders here are overly sensitive rollovers that launch and block content, and elements that move, spin, or rotate of their own accord. Users routinely complain about these types of elements. Designers and programmers who include them in websites severely underestimate the business impact of user frustration.
8. Inconsistent Navigation
Navigation exists to help users, not to be a puzzle in its own right. Users should be able to understand it immediately, and apply that understanding throughout the site. Sadly, lots of sites change their navigation features as users move around. Options come and go, making users feel a loss of control. How do I get that menu choice back? I saw it just a few pages ago.
9. Too Many Navigation Techniques
Our full-day seminar on navigation design covers 25 different website navigation techniques. Each approach has its own usability advantages and potential downsides, leading to the seminar's focus on design trade-offs — that is, when to use what form of navigation.
One thing is clear: each navigation technique has its place on certain types of websites and intranets. But, if you use them all, you don't get the sum of each technique's benefits. You get a mess.
10. Made-Up Menu Options
...made-up navigation terms also hurt search; users can't find something if they don't know what it's called.
Old words are better. When users understand their choices, they're more likely to pick the right one. Speak plainly and speak simply. If users don't understand a menu item, they're less likely to click on it. Paradoxically, companies are particularly prone to making up fancy terms for their newest and most important offerings, thus shooting themselves in the foot with a double-barreled rifle.
source:
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, May 11, 2009:
Top 10 Information Architecture Mistakes
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ia-mistakes.html
Top-10 Information Architecture (IA) Mistakes (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox)
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