Building great Intranet navigation

While it may seem like a "quick and easy" task, defining thenavigation structure and organization of your intranet site will be oneof the most challenging tasks you will face in the course of yourproject. Doing it well, is also one of the most critical successfactors. The site structure, also referred to as the informationarchitecture or taxonomy, is the foundation of your intranet. Creatingan effective taxonomy is as much an art as it is a science. Use thewrong terms and your users won't be able to navigate by intuition. Makeyour site too deep and they will never find the content they're lookingfor.

One common myth is that if you integrate a search enginewith your site you don't need to focus as much on the taxonomy. This iscompletely false. All web users can be generalized into one of 2buckets; "browsers" or "searchers". Searchers, of course, will firstuse a search engine to locate content while browsers will manually lookfor the desired information by navigating the taxonomy. This is not tosay that browsers never search, or vice versa, it merely suggests thatall users have a preference for one method or the other when attemptingto locate content. The most efficient site will have a well-organizedtaxonomy AS WELL AS a good search engine to satisfy both types of users.

Building your taxonomy

Creatinga taxonomy on your own is arguably the best approach. After all, no oneknows your organization's culture and terminology better than you. Ifyou're short on professional taxonomists here are some tips to keep inmind when defining your taxonomy.

* The overall taxonomy should be wide, not deep
*Use primary terms rather than marketing oriented or slang terms (thegoal is to use language that can be understood by a new employee ontheir first day of work)
* Try to keep some rigidity to thetaxonomy, at least at the top levels -- this promotes familiarity forthe users and enhances usability
* Build two taxonomies; the primarybeing functional-centric and the secondary being organization-centricunderneath the functional-centric
* Try to limit your structure to just 2-7 items under each branch, otherwise consolidate
* Use real content to validate your taxonomy
* Define, validate, re-tool, define, validate, re-tool, and so on -- taxonomy development is an iterative process
* The structure should be very broad on top and narrow at the lowest levels

Rememberthat the taxonomy is a tool to locate content. The best way to verifyyou have a model that works is to use focus groups to test thestructure. Ask the group where they would expect to find a specificexample of content within the structure and see if that maps with whatyou've defined. If they keep missing, you need to go back and re-workthe structure based on their feedback.

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