When you are building or updating your website, you need to think about what your target audience will expect to see.
There are various ways to find out what they will expect; you can ask a group of people who are likely to use your site what they would expect to see; you can look at other websites offering a similar product or service; or you can experiment with different ways of presenting your information and see which is the most effective.
Facebook Pages for businesses now have the option to carry out A/B testing, where you assign half your audience to one version of your content, and the other half to a different version.
The easiest way to decide how you are going to structure your content is to look at other similar businesses. Most websites have a home page with a general overview of what they do; an about page with more in-depth information; and a contact page.
Artists and architects usually have a gallery page where they show their paintings, and they may also have an online shop.
Authors usually have a list of their books, with details of what the book is about and where interested readers can buy it.
Website developers usually have a portfolio of sites they have developed, a testimonials page, and a pricing page.
If you have a lot of information on your website, with many sub-pages, it is a good idea to carry out a card-sorting exercise. You can do this with sticky notes on a window or whiteboard.
Here’s an example of a card-sorting exercise.
Sometimes it is best to start with a list of all your existing pages and try to sort them into categories, rather than deciding on a category beforehand and then trying to fit the content into the category.
In the example above, the subcategories could be further subdivided into different types of clothing for each category.
There is no perfect way to organize content on a website, but it is a good idea to follow existing patterns from similar websites.
Wire-framing
Before building a website or application, a designer or developer usually creates a wireframe with an outline of the user’s journey through the application or site. This can be a simple diagram of what will be on the page, or it can be a full-colour mockup of the pages, probably using a tool like Figma.
Transactional and content websites
A transactional website is one where the user wants to complete a task, such as purchasing train tickets or booking a hotel. These websites typically have a linear workflow, with options to go back and change the details.
A content website is one where a large amount of information is being presented (such as a news website). In this type of website, taxonomies become important. A taxonomy is how you organize articles with categories and tags.
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