Posted on 15 November 2007 by Hurol No Comments

How to Use Web Analytics in Designing Web Information Architecture

An information architecture project will uncover the very heart of internal politics in any organisation. In most cases, content owners, department heads and product managers all fight for prime “real estate” and prominence within the website structure – resulting in a site design that looks like a “truce” rather than an effective solution.

Too often misrepresented (or under represented) are the users who the website is in fact built for!

Web analytics is essentially the voice of the user, the balance of power.

If you have been given the responsibility of with redesigning your company’s website, and you want to avoid an internal political minefield, I urge you to read on…

Web analytics will help you understand the needs, preferences and behaviors of your website users.

More specifically, it will show you who is using the website, what content and functional elements they are favouring, how well the taxonomy or content categories are performing, which site navigation represents a high degree of conversion propensity, how much affinity exists between different content categories, what role the site search function plays, and much more.

Answers to each of these questions will help you balance your web projects and get a more realistic alignment between the user and your business goals.

People respond well to research and analysis based justifications to recommendations. For instance, making a claim such as: “we believe ‘X’ should be on the primary navigation because ‘Y’ percentage of users are looking for content from this category” is a much stronger and compelling proposition than: “we think it should be there because I think, or ‘someone’ says it’s important.”

How can you make web analytics a part of your project?

Involve a Web Analyst! This person should be sufficiently briefed about the new vision for your website and the possible challenges that your organisation is facing before they perform the analysis. It’s important to think about your business model and decide on the main thing you want people to do at your website.

This briefing should also include a high level discussion on primary and secondary target audience segments. If you have developed a profile or persona for your website audience, make sure you provide a copy of this to your Web Analyst.

The Web Analyst should primarily look at:

• Website usage by content category
• Popular and not-so-popular elements of each content category
• Affinity between content categories
• Major tasks and possible frustration points
• On-site search usage, including where users revert to searching

A discussion on the outcomes of this analysis, with the ultimate owner and approver of your website architecture, should then follow.

This analysis should be conducted early on in the project, before a blueprint for the website is decided.

In many aspects, web analysts are also information architects. As the primary goal of web analysts is website optimisation, we are constantly seeking to identify frustration points on a website, and formulate architectural concepts to improve site, page and form structure. Combined, web analytics and information architecture provide a crucial foundation for a successful website. This combined approach will also help you understand where your project succeeds and where it fails over time, as your user’s needs evolve.

Sadly, most companies today are still not using this information to its full potential. Don’t let your company be one of them!

If you want to design the best website for your business, and for your users, and if you want a smooth project with reduced internal politics, speak to your web analyst or seek a good one now!