Information architecture and navigation
The organisation and layout of content, or information architecture, on the your website should be focused on your audience and not reflect your internal organisational structure. You should aim to organise and label information in ways that help web users easily move around your site, understand your content and successfully complete tasks.
Remember, no one is going ever visit your web site to just browse - they will have tasks that they want to complete. Understanding what these tasks are can help you design your site in such a way that people can complete them quickly and with few mistakes.
Resources
- Information architecture for websites - Guidelines written by the Australian Government Information Management Office. Includes a useful list of checkpoints to consider when developing an information architecture.
- Information architecture guidelines - A well written set of steps as used by the University of Sydney.