Nothing drives me (or your users) more crazy than a crappy navigation. A good navigation, or information architecture, can definitely make or break any site or online business. A bad one will result in a high bounce rate and horrible conversions. A good one will keep your competitors scratching their heads.
I borrowed our approach from Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville in their book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and it is about striking a balance between the context, content, and users (I don't believe in user-centric design, I think it can be too compromising).
- Context: By context, I am usually referring to the business context. What are the goals and objectives of the website. Is it suppose to merely promote yourself and your product or actually get someone to buy something? How is the site's performance going to be measured? Does it needs to be indexable by search engines and support bookmarking?
- Content: Content refers to the information, functionality, documents, meta-data, etc. the site needs to deliver. Notice this is not just the static copy, but the graphics, forms, and unseen meta-tags.
- Users: Finally, you must understand the mind set of your target audience. What is their level of sophistication with technology and the web. What need is your site fulfilling for them (this is ultimately a question of what value you are providing)? What is their need-state? What vocabulary do they use for your product or services? How important is access from mobile devises?
Ultimately, information architecture is about understanding what content and functionality needs to be delivered and then delivering it in the most consumable way possible to your users.
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