What is information architecture?

1. The structural design of shared information environments.
2. The art and science of organising and labelling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support findability and usability. » More

The information architecture of your website makes it easier for visitors to find information. A typical church website will have times of services, contact details, how to find the church/chapel, sample sermons, profiles of the members and the minister, newsletter articles, and so on.

There are several different models of information architecture.

• All-in-one - all the information on one page
• Flat - all pages are arranged as peers
• Index - like the flat structure, but with a table of contents
• Hub-and-spoke / Daisy - usually used for web applications
• Strict hierarchy - a system where you can only access a lower-level page via its parent
• Multi-dimensional hierarchy - more than one way of browsing to the same content
• Search - for websites with a lot of content

The information architecture is mainly represented by the navigation (menus).