I find myself getting lost in sites with confusing navigation structures and poorly organized content. I define confusing as any time I have to look twice for the main navigation or when pages within the site have extremely differing structures and layout from the home page for no apparent reason. As for the content: Anything I may come to a site looking for should be logically categorized and organized.
Content overload
This is a common case on sites with a vast range and amount of content. News media websites can fall victim to this type of disorganization. It is usually obvious when a site is experiencing “content overload.”
Symptoms include:
- Content has started to bleed into a disorganized mess of horribly labeled links
- Content is unsearchable because it is poorly labeled and/or categorized
- Navigation menus change depending on what page a user is viewing
Fixing these common issues can include the following steps:
- Create a content inventory
- Audit the content inventory
- Diagnose category issues as part of the content audit, then fix the issues
- Diagnose navigation issues and fix
Diagnosing these issues will require some user research and possibly usability testing. A lot of issues usually are apparent in site analytics reports. User behavior can be tracked by studying metrics including sessions, time on page and even bounce rate.
I have conducted many site content audits which can really lift a heavy load off of such an endeavor. In my experience, usability issues can be uncovered just by taking a deeper, closer look at how the site content is categorized and where it lives on the site. A lot of it gets the axe, too, once it is dug up and analyzed. And that’s always fun, like cleaning out a messy garage or attic.
Content producers can be responsible for a lot of the information architecture on a site, whether he or she is aware of it or not. Being aware of it is usually the first step in the right direction.
Leave a Reply