Sophisticated site architecture

Sophisticated Site Architecture

This exercise will help you develop architecture for a site that needs more than one level of navigation. For example, you may have seven main sections across the top and multiple pages or subjects within those main sections. In that case, you’d create a second level of navigation (“Level 2 navigation”) to help users get right to the pages they need.

If you’re hiring a firm to develop your site, you could give them a list of the content you want to include.

However, even though it can be very challenging to define your architecture, it may help you develop a stronger, more sales-­‐oriented site – after all, you know your prospects and sales process best.

Your goal is to help users quickly find what they’re looking for. You also want to make your site as attractive as possible to search engine spiders and identify pages that could generate strong search traffic for particular subjects.

Here’s the process to use to create your architecture:

WORKSHEET YOU’LL STEP TASK STATUS USE 1 Enter the master list of content you created in 307 – 311-­‐A Complete Develop your content.

2 Create a list of primary “Level 1” sections that you 311-­‐B Complete think your site should contain.

3 Assign the content to the Level 1 sections you’ve 311-­‐D Complete created.

If you have trouble during the process, look at your competitors’ sites and how they’re organized.

4

Look at each Level 1 section and the content it contains, then break it into “Level 2” sections.

Some people like to create a “visual storyboard” at this point. You can use the site page template called Visual Storyboard after this table – print a number of copies, then sketch out what could go on the top, side, body and bottom of each individual page.

5

Identify each of the individual pages for each Level 2 section.

311-­‐I

Print 311-­‐J, and include it in the requirements for your site

Complete

Enter your pages in 311-­‐L

Complete

Same note as in #4 – use the Visual Storyboard template to sketch each page if you’re stuck. You can also use 311-­‐

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STEP

TASK

WORKSHEET YOU’LL USE

STATUS

K– it puts your Level 1 and 2 sections into a map-­‐like format that can help.

6

Identify the pages that have special design requirements or functionality.

Enter your notes in 311-­‐M

Complete

311-­‐J; 311-­‐K; 311-­‐L; 311-­‐M

Complete

311-­‐N. You can do this after you’ve provided the requirements to your team, but it may help you refine your architecture; the sooner it’s done, the better.

Complete

Use the Visual Storyboard template – it can help you visualize whether there’s anything special happening on the page.

7

8

Provide the navigation section lists, page lists and map (if you created one) to your copywriter, designer, programmer, etc.

Identify which keywords will be used on which pages (if you’re optimizing for search).

If you don’t already have a list of keywords, use 471

If search traffic is important to you, the sheets will encourage you to use keywords in the section and page names whenever possible. The URL string is important to search engine rankings, and a generic URL such as www.yoururl.com/services means nothing to a spider. However, if “tax software” is a keyword, www.yoururl.com/tax_software is a great URL that can help your SEO efforts.

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