Going In-depth On Website Architecture

By Author: Paul Zimmer
Total Articles: 9
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Website architecture, in contrast with web design, is the organization and structure of information within any web content. It is a stage between the planning of the website project and the development of the actual website. If a project had proper planning before the draft of the architecture is being developed, one will already have a comprehensible idea regarding objectives of the website, requirements of the content and user groups. These three core components tell the web architect what is required in order to construct a digital structure that will meet what the client and the targeted web users and visitors.

Objectives of the project helps web architects how to prioritize what information to be organized. These are measurable aims that answer, What will the project accomplish? On other words, these answer what the website will accomplish for the client. Often aims are increase in the percentage in leads, sales, subscriptions, feedbacks, cut costs, etc. these objectives should be clearly defined in a quantifiable and time-conscious statement.

Requirements of the content are detailed statements that tell what ...
... the website will do. This helps the web architect organize the structure of information in such a way that it meets what the client, the targeted web users and the search engines need. It also determines the necessities within a website regarding checkout processes, abandoned order recoveries, order tracking, SSL indexing, secured pages, etc. Requirements of the content are in parallel with the objectives of the website to define this core component. This is the point where the web architect really works out.

User groups are the targeted users of the website. These aid the web architect classify the structure of information in such a way that the targeted users will understand. The website must be user-friendly, depending if they are shoppers, researchers, investors, donors, potential members and subscribers, and/or employees. With time and budget on priority, these user groups can be further developed into individual personas that help the architect website is created by to empathize with the user. This results in a deep concordance of who the users are and what content they want.

The architect website is developed by uses the components gathered to start setting up the website backbone, arranging information structure and weaving up connections. The basic of the phases done is site map creation, which is analogous to a business organizational chart that shows how the website will be organized according to preferred structure. In this step, the website architecture dubs name to the pages and contents, and organizes them in a way that makes utter sense and understandability to the users and sense engines.

Next, a task flow is devised, similar to the site map, but also predicts how the users will navigate within the website and to scan for site dead ends and errors. Then, a wireframe is drafted by the architect website is formed by to help the visualization of the entire project in layout. With these, the passed architecture is tuned over to development.