UX & IA – Value Of Information Architecture (IA)

“User always visit web for content (not for design), this could be a form of gathering or sharing”

“Content is King for End User”

Ok… let’s start about Information Architecture – IA

Information Architecture – IA is a science about organizing your product/site information, links, button, labeling, navigation, search system, content hierarchy and so on…

Why it is important? Because when things do not match with User Mental Model(according to his cognitive knowledge), user find difficulties in achieving goal and leave your services and move to better one. This causes more Drop-Off Rateon your service, which is total loss on business revenue.

Here I have a story to tell, how user suffer to achieve goals on one of the biggest e-commerce portal in India… (During IA activity and audit of site)

Information Architecture (IA) – Problem in E-commerce Portal:

This e-commerce portal sells all the products (having hundreds of link and category in mega menu…difficult to find) and I asked user to buy Sandwich Maker.

User spends around 10-15 minutes to find out sandwich maker and at last ends up with anger and zero result (user did not use search to find this)… then said it’s better to move on another e-commerce site, where I can easily find this in few seconds.

User faced this problem due to e-commerce site’s links/navigation, which are not aligned with Information Architecture science. Site developers/stakeholders put this sandwich maker link in appliances category far away from kitchen category, where normal user will prefer to go in kitchen category for sandwich maker.

The problem I find here is a big gap in User Understanding and site’s link and navigation system. This can be improved by Information Architectureactivities during the site development, which delight Customer Experience and Bring Revenue.

So this is how Information Architecture drives your services and revenue, keep checking for latest updates, signing off – Sanket