Card sorting, or the activity of putting a bunch of terms in front of users and getting them to sort them into groups, has long been a favourite information architecture activity. As a practitioner, I've had more or less success with it over the years. Recently, it's become a tool in the arsenal for stakeholder and employee engagement.
Content types and taxonomy are all part of a site's content model. A content model defines all the content types, metadata, and relationships between different content on a site.
Metadata are the workhorses of a content management system. Simply put, metadata tell your CMS platform what your content is about and let you do things with your content.
On projects, we're often asked, "What's the difference between a site map and taxonomy?" This article explains their differences.
Search is a ubiquitous term we use freely and imprecisely. By understanding the different types of search and user behaviours around search, we can design better content structure to support better search.
Using search terms as part of a content audit can give insight into the structure of your site. You can analyze these search terms to inform your taxonomy and future content efforts, and to evaluate the findability of content on your site.
Structural content strategy supports content goals through the appropriate use of structure to improve the user and authoring experience, and to support business goals.
Structural content strategy and taxonomy can support, and are impacted by, voice search.
While doing a content audit, analytics are a great way to dig into what's happening with content on your site.
The user experience for content authors is critical to the successful adoption of content management systems.
A unified approach to metadata and taxonomy enabled this client to set up a standardized onboarding process and handle enterprise-wide taxonomy requests.
Defining a patient-centred model propels content strategy solutions.
A website content audit gives you a both a great overview and in-depth knowledge of the current state of your website content.
Learn of some challenges we faced on a large website overhaul.
More and more of my work has moved from straightforward information architecture and taxonomy work and more into the "why" behind information architecture and taxonomy. For me, the answer to this "why" became content strategy.
One thing that's been around for a while but is rarely taken advantage of but can be liberating. When we explain the concept to clients, they typically respond with, "Yes, that's what we need. That's what we've been waiting for. Where have you been all my life? You had me at hello!!"
Once you understand what information architecture (IA) is, you may wonder why exactly it is that you need it, in order to have a successful site.
Common website usability problems are symptoms and signs of poor information architecture. Information architecture (IA) aims to connect users with the content that they are looking for, in a seamless and intuitive manner.
When looking to improve the searchability on your website or intranet or in your CMS or DAM, there are a few areas where you can look to solve searchability problems. This second part in a two-part series focuses on solving searchability problems.
We frequently hear clients say, "Our website search is terrible. People tell us it sucks. We need to fix it." There are a few areas where we can look to fix search problems.
Combining multiple taxonomies can be a contentious issue: each taxonomy belongs to a team who has put a lot of thought into their taxonomy and may not easily let go of certain terms or features. However, sometimes taxonomies do need to be combined, and here are some tips on how to go through the process.
While you recognize that your company needs a website taxonomy or intranet taxonomy, you may not be sure how to convince management to provide resources to create, implement, and maintain a taxonomy. Here are some tips.
If you’re working on a taxonomy that doesn’t have the resources (right now) to do a lot of research and engagement with subject matter experts, there are still some actionable steps you can take to improve your taxonomy.
When building a taxonomy, there are 9 steps to a best practice approach.
After going through numerous taxonomy projects, I've learned a few things about how to work with stakeholders and subject matter experts to build a website taxonomy. Here is a presentation with a few tips for making the taxonomy development process smoother.