What are the Difference Between information architecture vs sitemap?

What Are the Difference Between information architecture vs sitemap?

People always get confused about three major concepts, i.e., Information Architecture, Sitemap, and Navigation. All three are concepts related to the website development project.

Website developers or website development practitioners sometimes tries to merge the concepts of IA - information architecture (IA), Website site mapping, and navigation designing.

Though these concepts share some relation between them, they actually not the same!

Here in this PDF, we have tried our best to classify the information architecture vs sitemap.

What Is Information Architecture?

A website information architecture is built around two main components:

• The first is identifying and defining website content and its functionality • The second is the organization, structuring, and establishing the relationships of

The information architecture (IA) though is not a part of the UI onscreen, it still informs UI. Also, manage the information architecture UX. Information architecture documents in the spreadsheets, diagrams, layouts, comps, and prototypes.

Example 1: A retailer has websites for Australia and New Zealand, a blog, a community, and a few social media channels. The AU website offers products/services for professionals and consumers, the NZ website only for consumers.

Example 2: A globally operating company employs a corporate intranet and several country intranets in multiple languages. Some content is produced centralized and shared with countries (e.g. news, jobs, events).

All of these entities can operate or exist individually, but it’s the job of the IA to show how they can/should interact with each other, how content can be shared and how people will navigate from one entity to the other, i.e. how the anticipated user flow will work

There are 5 activities that are undertaken while a website developer defines an information architecture. These are:

“Content Inventory, Content Audit, Information Grouping, Taxonomy Development, Descriptive Information Creation.�

Only the best web development services in USA can provide all these 5 activities at a time on their website.

What Is Sitemap?

Based on the needs of business requirements and user demands, and with the help of the backed research the sitemap is created and enhanced. For a new sitemap creation, the old site map is taken as the starting point.

And it is simply enhanced by developing and adding more analytics and user values.

The sitemap is able to list all the web pages of the website as a part of the new web solution, with better functionalities, content, and ideal page goals. Not only this, but the sitemap also defines the information hierarchy of the content within the page.

This means a website’s navigation simply is able to collect the HTML sitemap generator user interface components. This way the Navigation is able to help users easily find the information and encourages them to take desirable actions for using your business products and services.

“Navigation components are breadcrumbs, filters, facets, related links, footers, fat footers, and so on.�

A sitemap is able to show particular pages which are at a defined location, while the navigation offers you many alternative pathways to visit that page.

In comparison to Sitemap, the Navigation basically can take the shape or form, but it must always be user-centric, any device friendly, and task-oriented.

Conclusion The information architecture (IA) defines the overarching structure and relationship between all areas of a site (or multiple sites) and informs the sitemap.

The sitemap lists all the (labelled) pages in entirety and shows hierarchy, structure and often page goals and content/functionality that happens to be on that particular page

Finally, the navigation guides users via links to all areas of a website!

Contact the web development company of USA to create the best website of your business!