How to organize content
- I have a website that is packed with content. Unfortunately it is unorganized and hard for my users to find what they are looking for. What is the best way to organize the content on my site so the users can easily find what they are looking for?
That’s a good sign that you have developed a website with too much content. This can be a great asset for gaining visitors to your site and giving them the information they need to become customers. However, as you noted, if it's not well organized and visitors can’t find what they are looking for, all of that information can actually be a deterrent to conversions.
What we suggest is putting together a few high level categories that will contain additional sub-categories for your information. Normally we don’t recommend going more than 2 levels deep but sometimes the volume of information necessitates it. Try to use a consistent sub-category structure throughout the site. For instance, in our site within each section we have an overview page, Q&A, video vault, etc. This allows the user to become familiar with what they can expect to find in each section.
There are differing views on whether long pages of content are good or bad on websites. Generally web visitors have a short attention span so it's best to capture their attention with something punchy to engage them to go deeper and read more content within your site. This is an effective strategy but long pages of content should still be broken up by highlighting key information and use images where possible to illustrate a point or to add some interest.
- April 14, 2009