The Importance of An Organized Site Structure

Website designers in Orange County know the great importance of proper site structure. But why is it so important, you may ask? Please keep reading to find out!

Why is Having a Proper Site Structure So Important?

Imagine that you’re moving into a new house. In your haste to leave your previous living accommodation, you crammed every clothing item you had into boxes with no thoughts of organizing them whatsoever. You empty your boxes and are now left with a huge pile of clothing that is out of order. Just imagine the grief your parents, partner, or roommate would give you if they saw the mess you’ve made out of your entire wardrobe!

If a viewer hops onto your website and sees content that’s all out of order, then that customer is likely to leave. What is the point of staying on a website that’s so hard to use? If all they wanted was to buy a product from you, why make them jump through many loopholes before they can do so?

So, you need to structure your website cleanly and properly. For this, we highly recommend the pyramid structure, where you start with general things (the top of the pyramid) and then branch off to more specific things (the bottom of the pyramid).

Using the clothes analogy again, you need to put all the summer clothes here and all the winter clothes over there. Then, you need to put all the socks here, the underwear here, the T-shirts there, the skirts there, and so on.

How Do I Arrange Everything Together?

So, you’ve finally sectioned all of your clothes into their corresponding categories. Now, it’s time to put them in a closet! You need to make sure everything’s arranged in a way that makes them easily accessible. You want to put the most-used clothing items in the front and the seasonal ones in the back. You also want to put clothes that match together close to each other so you can just get them at the same time!

For your website, this means designing your landing page for your customer’s user experience. They should be able to access all categories, subcategories, and other related things in an instant. It should also be easy for them to know where they are with a glance.

Here are four things you must have in your site structure:

1. Taxonomy

Taxonomy refers to the process of dividing your content into categories and subcategories. This makes it easier for your customers to find the things they are looking for. For example, if you own a makeup e-commerce website, you want to add categories for foundations, concealers, blushes, eyeshadow palettes, mascaras, lipsticks, and more. You also want to add subcategories for these categories, like adding matte lipsticks, glossy lipsticks, and liquid lipsticks under lipsticks.

2. Menu

When you head into a restaurant, you want to know all the food the restaurant offers before deciding what to eat. In the same way, your customer will want to know what type of products, services, and content your website has so they can quickly find what interests them. You also want to make it easy for them to navigate through your website.

On your menu, you should list your biggest categories before listing subcategories.

3. Breadcrumb Trail

Have you ever rambled on and on about something until you stopped and wondered how you got into that topic? Well, on a web design in Orange County, breadcrumb trails help you remember what brought you to that page in the first place! They also help readers who found that page through search engines or external links find other similar pages.

Breadcrumb trails usually appear on the top of the page as Home > Category > Subcategory > Page (You Are Here).

4. Internal Links

Internal links are a crucial part of your site’s structure. Not only do they link to other useful pages of your website, but they also help improve your ranks on search engines.

To add internal links to a page, start by finding pages that are similar to it. For example, if the blog you want to add internal links to is called “Skincare Tips for the Summer,” and you mention a moisturizer you are selling on your page, then you can link that moisturizer’s product page on the blog.

Conclusion

Knowing website structures is only the tip of the iceberg. You’ll need a lot more than basic knowledge of web development in Orange County to come up with the website your business needs to succeed! Thus, we highly recommend leaving the web design to the experts who can deliver what you need swiftly and effectively.

Drive Traffic Media has got you covered. We are a digital marketing agency in Orange County with years of experience under our belt. Please contact us at (949) 800-6990 or visit our website for a free quote and consultation.