Information Architecture
Design the structure that holds the content. Stack-agnostic. Applies to marketing sites, product surfaces, knowledge bases, e-commerce, and editorial content.
A well-designed IA makes the rest of the project easier. A poorly-designed IA forces every downstream decision to fight the structure.
When to use
- Designing a new site or major section from scratch
- Restructuring an existing site
- Adding a new content type or category
- Designing site navigation or menu systems
- Defining URL structure and slug patterns
- Building taxonomies or tag systems
- Auditing an existing IA for problems
When NOT to use
- Single-page design (use )
- Content production (use )
- SEO-driven content planning (use )
- Initial brand and audience discovery (use )
Required inputs
- The site or product scope
- The audience and what they're trying to do
- The content that exists or is planned
- Any constraints (parent IA, regulatory, technical)
If audience is unclear, run
first. If content scope is unclear, run
first.
The framework: 6 layers
Information architecture has six layers. Each builds on the one below.
1. Mental models
Before structure, understand how the audience thinks about the domain.
- What concepts do they group together naturally?
- What words do they use? (Often different from what the company uses.)
- What is the dominant frame of reference? (By task? By role? By topic? By time?)
- What do they expect to find where, based on conventions in similar products?
Methods:
- Card sorting (open or closed): Give the audience the content items, ask them to group them. Open card sorts surface natural groupings. Closed card sorts validate proposed groupings.
- Tree testing: Give a proposed structure, ask users to find specific items. Surfaces where the structure breaks down.
- First-click testing: Given a goal, where do users click first? If first clicks are wrong, the labels and structure are wrong.
2. Sitemap
The map of all pages and how they relate.
Sitemap deliverables:
- A hierarchy diagram showing parent-child relationships
- Indication of page types (static, dynamic, listing, detail)
- Cross-references showing how pages relate beyond the hierarchy
- Sometimes a separate user-flow overlay for key journeys
Sitemap types:
- Hub-and-spoke (cornerstone content + supporting content): Common for content marketing
- Tree (strict hierarchy, every page has one parent): Common for product documentation
- Faceted (content lives in many overlapping categories): Common for e-commerce
- Flat (everything reachable from the home): Common for small sites
Most sites blend types. Pick the dominant pattern and document the exceptions.
3. URL structure
URLs are part of the IA. They are user-facing, indexed by search engines, and shape how content is referenced.
URL principles:
- Reflect the content hierarchy
- Lowercase, hyphen-separated
- Predictable (same pattern across same content type)
- Stable (URLs don't change without redirects)
- Short (under 60 characters where possible)
- Descriptive (slug indicates the content)
- Free of dates unless time-bound
- Free of session IDs and tracking parameters in canonical form
Common patterns:
/ home
/[section] section landing
/[section]/[subsection] subsection landing
/[section]/[subsection]/[item] detail page
/blog blog index
/blog/[slug] blog post
/blog/category/[category] category index
/blog/tag/[tag] tag index
/products product catalog
/products/[category] category page
/products/[category]/[product] product detail
Pick a pattern and stick to it. Inconsistent URL patterns confuse users, crawlers, and analytics.
4. Navigation
The chrome that gets users where they need to go.
Primary navigation:
- The top-level structure of the site
- Should reflect what the audience cares about, not what the org chart looks like
- 5 to 7 items maximum (more becomes cognitively heavy)
- Each label is recognizable in 2 to 3 words
- Order matters (left/first gets the most attention)
Secondary navigation:
- Within-section navigation
- Often shown as sidebars, sub-menus, or in-page tabs
- Supports the primary nav, doesn't duplicate it
Utility navigation:
- Account, search, login, support
- Visually subordinate to primary nav
- Often top-right (LTR languages)
Breadcrumbs:
- For nested hierarchies (3+ levels deep)
- Always linked except the current page
- Match the URL hierarchy or the conceptual hierarchy
- Marked up with BreadcrumbList schema
Footer navigation:
- Comprehensive; sometimes includes everything
- Organized by category for findability
- Includes secondary content (privacy, terms, contact)
5. Taxonomy and metadata
The classification system applied to content.
Categories:
- A small, controlled list (typically 5 to 15)
- Mutually exclusive ideal (one item, one category)
- Used for structural navigation
Tags:
- A larger, often growing list (50+)
- Multi-assignment (one item, many tags)
- Used for cross-cutting connections, related-content, and long-tail discovery
Metadata fields:
- Author, date, content type, audience segment
- Whatever is useful for filtering, sorting, and surfacing
Common failures:
- Categories that overlap (item could go in 3 different categories)
- Tags that are unmaintained (sprawl into thousands, become useless)
- Metadata fields that get filled inconsistently
- Different content types using different taxonomies for the same thing (chaos)
6. Labeling
What you call things.
Label principles:
- Audience language, not internal language
- Specific enough to be useful, short enough to scan
- Consistent across the site (call it "Product" or "Solutions" but not both)
- Tested with real users (closed card sort or tree test surfaces label problems)
Common label problems:
- "Solutions" (vague; usually means "products with marketing copy")
- "Resources" (catch-all; everything ends up there)
- Internal jargon ("PRD," "OKRs") that doesn't match user vocabulary
- Labels that change meaning across the site
Workflow
- Understand the audience and content. Use existing discovery and content strategy if available.
- Card sort or interview to surface mental models.
- Draft the sitemap. Hierarchy, page types, cross-references.
- Define URL patterns. One pattern per content type.
- Design navigation. Primary, secondary, utility, footer, breadcrumbs.
- Build taxonomy. Categories (controlled, small) and tags (open, large).
- Validate labels. Tree test or closed card sort with target users.
- Document. Use the template in
references/ia-document-template.md
- Hand off to design and development. IA decisions inform navigation components, URL routing, and taxonomy implementation.
Failure patterns
- IA designed by org chart. "Engineering" and "Marketing" sections make sense to the company, not to the audience.
- Categories that proliferate. Every team adds a category for their thing. Becomes unscannable. Hold the line at 5 to 15.
- Tags that sprawl. No tag governance. Tags become a junk drawer.
- Inconsistent URL patterns. Some posts at /blog/[slug], some at /[slug], some at /articles/[slug]. Pick one.
- Navigation that hides primary content. The most important pages should be one click from home.
- Search as a substitute for IA. "Just use search" is not a structure. Search supports IA, doesn't replace it.
- No validation. Card sorts, tree tests, and first-click tests are cheap and surface huge problems early.
- Treating IA as a one-time deliverable. IA evolves with content. Plan for evolution.
Output format
Default output is an IA document at
information-architecture.md
plus visual assets:
- Executive summary
- Audience and mental models (synthesized)
- Sitemap (hierarchical diagram)
- URL structure (per content type)
- Navigation specification (primary, secondary, utility, footer, breadcrumbs)
- Taxonomy (categories and tag governance)
- Labels (validated wording for navigation, categories, content types)
- Implementation notes for design and development
Visual deliverables:
- Sitemap diagram (Whimsical, Figma, OmniGraffle, etc.)
- Navigation wireframes for primary surfaces
- Optional: card sort and tree test results
Reference files
references/ia-document-template.md
references/url-pattern-library.md