Planning Your Website Structure  

Far too often we hear website developers and business owners channelling all their focus into website content and copy, with no real thought for the structure or navigation of their site. Before we dive into the detail around website structure and what to do when it comes to planning your site, a few reasons why website structure is so important.

Your website content and copy can be of the highest quality possible, but when users and potential customers cannot easily find that content, they will quickly bounce off your website and find a competitor with better structure.

Not only that, but if the foundational structure is not solid, the customer journey will not be clear, and the user experience will be negatively impacted - again meaning that your great content will never be found, and those users will not convert. 

Let’s look more closely at how website structure works and some of the best practice tips for planning and plotting a great user experience.

What Does A Good Website Structure Look Like?

Your website structure is a bit like a map of the ideal customer journey, starting with the landing page and creating a series of clear movements which will guide the user towards conversion or sharing their details (depending on your target action).

Call to action buttons are integral in planning a good website structure, as are clickable links and the navigation menu at the top of the page. From a developer point of view, all this can be plotted and understood on a visual sitemap - presenting an overview of the user journey through your site and helping you to identify any obstacles or sticking points based on the ideal movements of your target user. The ideal structure for a website developer is one which breaks content and webpages down into a hierarchy of importance - starting with the top level page homepage and then working out which pages are of secondary importance, third level importance, etc.

How To Plan Your Website Structure

Working with the hierarchy approach, a good website structure starts with the homepage and works downwards - first creating a five star experience across the entire homepage before moving into the secondary categories. These are what make up the rest of the pages on your website and could consist of an About Us page, a Shop or Products page, a Testimonials page, and a Contact page.

Individual posts and pages fall into these different categories, with some relatively easy to work out while others will require a lot more time and attention - for example the Product page under which various subcategories will be necessary in order to arrange and organise products in a logical and user-friendly way.

The visual sitemap is, for a website developer or designer, a guide to how exactly these pages link with each other. But it’s not just the hierarchical structure which is used by developers. In fact, there are four individual website mapping methods which can be used to great effect:

• Hierarchical model (most popular)
• Sequential model (relying on process flows)
• Matrix model (using search and internal links as part of user navigation)
• Database model (using a bottom-up approach to link individual pages in a systematic way)

When you start to build out your website structure through visual mapping, it is important to understand not only how the different pages link together for the benefit of users, but also how this mapping will benefit your website SEO. When quality content is laid out in a logical way which provides a wealth of value to users, blending both internal and occasional external links to other quality sources, SEO will be high - so avoid duplications and make sure that every link you include works.

Keep reading for our tips on how to get started and what you need to know before defining and laying out your website structure.

Tips For Website Structure And Navigation

Before you can even get started in laying out your website structure, you first need to understand who your target user is and exactly what you want them to do when they arrive on your website. The very best websites are those which not only guide the user but tell them exactly what to do - the more a user has to think and hunt about for the next steps, the more likely they are to drop off the site.

Once you know who your audience is and what steps and actions you want them to take, it’s time to do some competitor analysis - working out what works for your competitors and finding ways to replicate that success on your own site. The more competitors you analyse, the more mistakes you will find and be able to avoid in the build of your own website.

Then it’s time to devise content and an SEO strategy which links your webpages together seamlessly and logically - both for the value of users and for your own search engine optimisation. Know what kind of searches are going to lead your target users towards your site, and make sure that your webpages and structure is set up to give them exactly what they need in terms of information and insight.

Finally, think about the user flow through your website and make sure that your structure marries up to the movements and actions you want them to take. CTA’s are a big part of this, and it is recommended that you consistently perform tests on your site to make sure that every button and clickable link responds quickly and takes the user to the right page. Any obstacles or errors will negatively impact both the user journey and your SEO - so take testing seriously.

In Conclusion…

Building a website without a structural map is like building furniture without the instructions. If you don’t know how everything should look to the end user, you can’t possibly be expected to know how to link pages together and create a cohesive experience. Focus on a structure before you start building your site, and make sure that every design choice you make is targeted at that ideal end goal.