Sitemap Vs Info Architecture | Differences |How to effectively build using 6 Tools

Normally the confusion happens when it comes to understanding what is information architecture and building sitemaps. If you are a UI UX designer, definitely this podcast is for you. Even if you're already having clarity, I would suggest listen to it one more time to reinforce your learning. Let's take a lot of notes and jump into this podcast. Welcome to Design for Change. Today we are going to discuss a very important topic which is a site map and the difference in information architecture. So let me tell you very clearly guys, sitemap is for helping you navigate inside a website. Information architecture is a whole new level. It's a structuring your whole content and organizing your whole information in a different way, okay? As the name clearly suggests, it's a architecture of your whole information. Same like the building has an architecture like a foundation, like a ceiling, like a rooms, walls and all right? So it's enclosing that particular structure. So information architecture, which is a holistic, broader view to really see the whole product on the website or the app. Site maps are the shorter one. Okay, so site map is predominantly help in establishing a connection between your pages, okay? That's the very first point which you can take and it guides your overall hierarchy. Like where you are first structure should come where your second structure is there and how it is interconnected, how you can able to navigate it. So being a designer, first you're building the concept, you need to be very clear. So that's why it's called a website layout. Kind of a content. It's a very in depth particular information about your website. Like let's say your website has lot of pages. Like let's say in, in your project there are a lot of sub pages. There are pages and in your blog there is a column which you have created. Where is there of sub pages and pages wherein about your work and project structuring, there is pages and sub pages. So what is the relativity between that? So that is giving you a whole site. See the map, the name suggests very clearly it's a site map, okay? But the information architecture, as I told you, it's very broader, right? It organizes your whole content, it structures your entire thing and particularly it labels you. Like, let's say this is a page, what is that page name? What is the sub page name? What is a underlying established content which is there inside it? So people get to know the thumbnails, we will get to know the understanding of it. In fact, information architecture, if you create it in a better way, it enhances your user experience. It is more useful for Finding out information and understandability of an information. So that's what is the two words I can say. Findability and understandability will be only clear once. If your information architecture is pretty worked out properly with lot of good concepts. Particularly if you take developers, they also have a sitemap which we'll talk about a little later. First understand on a design perspective. Contenting, organizing and structuring the overall information is the big, big difference between an information architecture and compared to a localized sitemap. So there is something called XML sitemap which developers used to find crawl information in the search engines. Okay, so in UX it is predominantly called UX sitemap. It gives you user guide in terms of finding out a proper information for that. Okay. And so having understood these differences, let me also cover in this podcast how to exactly effectively build a very good information architecture or a site map. Okay, so you need to get that clarity as well. First let me tell you guys, find your needs properly of your customer. Certainly write your goals, your sub goals and what you wanted to really achieve through this project. Okay, so the second information is mind map it. Try to create more informational points, research it out, create some thought process connections, neural connections, sub connections before, before building your website it is very vital to do that. Third is find a reward and a punishment system. See, everybody needs to have a reward or a punishment in order to work on something, right? So same like when you're building a product or a service, you need to create that what are the reward for the people to go into this particular sites and what is a punishment? Let's say what is the kind of loss they will have? So what is the kind of reward which they will get? So you'll have to plan it Reward in the sense you can create as simple. When they go and click this page, you will be surprising the customer with a very good offer. Or maybe if you're opening this page, you are rewarding with the customer saying you are the 1 lakh or maybe the 1 lakh 31st user who's going to use who's going to open this particular website. So we are giving you a free PDF as a learning material. So something like that you can give a surprise. Okay. And after doing all these three things, the fourth step is create optimal way. See, once if you're able to mind map it through what you wanted to really make your customer do, then you can optimize that way. Let's say if your customer needs to go and purchase a product in your website, let's say A customer needs to go and purchase a subscription in your website. How fast he can able to go and do it. The better optimized way you are doing, the better customer experience you will get. That's why in information architecture and sitemap it is very vital to work in detail so that the customer gets the maximum benefit out of it. Okay, so let me repeat you shortly guys. Finding out the needs properly, the goals and sub goals, doing a rough mind mapping. And you can use paper, pencil, sketch method, you can use Miro, that's totally fine. And third is find a reward and punishment. And fourth is create a optimal way. After doing this, go for the fifth step, business approval with your clients or your customer. Do not do your own and take an action and build a product or prototype. That's a waste of time if any iteration or change comes. Okay, the sixth important thing is do a sub and a main and a hierarchy level of structuring in a more detailed way. You would have done in a very surface level in the step one, but right now you need to create a main page, a sub page, a kind of very clear architecture. How you want to really navigate your site, your entire pages and sub pages and all. Okay, after doing that, do a very good use cases and analyzer. What kind of use cases your customer will face? Let's say there is somebody who is going through my product in the Amazon will come to my website. That's one use case. There are some customers who are going through a Facebook ad, they'll click my website, they'll come into my product or service to buy. That's one use case. So try to find out what is the possible use cases. It could be hundreds of use cases as well. That's okay. And based on this use case, after you build the product, go and test it out with the sample users. This is a sixth important way you need to get this clarity. Okay, after doing this now you can build in a more producible way, in a more scalable way, in a more robust way. Because now you are more clear on the whole concept and idea behind what you are going to build and offer for your customer. Having done this now, your scalability will be much faster. Now your reproducibility will be much easier so that the deployment happens. See, now you're involving everybody. You're involving management, you're involving your cross functional team for testing. You're involving your customer team for testing. So you're going to get all the issues sorted. After doing this there is no problem guys smoothly you will Be able to launch a product. That's why it is very important to understand the sitemap information architecture. How it's vital. Okay. To cut short, find the needs properly, do a rough mind mapping, find reward and punishment, create an optimal way, get the approval of business, create a hierarchy of main subpage and all and analyze it using use cases and test it out with your customer and cross functional team and then build as a robust product for scalability. Okay. So having said that, one more thing I'm going to add in this podcast. What are the effective tools which you can use? Right. A lot of people need this information as well. Please make a very careful note of it. There is a first tool which is called LucidChart. It's a beautiful tool. You can work on it. It's an interface, simple to learn on your own. The second is Miro. Miro is a very, very good user friendly software. And Figma is a third one. I would say these will help you build a use information architecture in an easier way. Particularly Miro has a readymade templates which you can start building on it. Same for site maps also you can build on top of it. Okay. Fourth is Dyno Mapper. D Y N O M A P P E R. It is a very good tool for analyzing your Google Analytics, for content management, for tracking your contents and link tracking and website accessibility testing and legal zoom. So all these possibilities can be done in an extensive way using Dyno Mapper. Particularly if you're working in an industry, startup or enterprise, they use it in an extensive way. Fifth important thing is Power Mapper. IBM, NASA, they use this method to test it out their websites and create thumbnails and metadata in order to visualize their whole website and content and structure it and restructure it in a different way. Okay. Power Mapper is a beautiful tool. The ninth important tool is pen and paper. Guys, that's more than enough. That's the best of my best, I would say. Okay, so tool is not the big issue, but how you are thinking and how you're able to approach it and how clear you're able to understand your customer in order to bring a very simple, smoother user experience is what will make your sitemap more optimal. Your product also will be optimal for that. Okay. I hope you would have got a clarity in this podcast. Thank you so much guys. If you need my mentorship support in learning so much of content depth like this, particularly I take three to four hours of masterclass in information architecture and I give lot of activities and assignments in order to students to build and people who don't know what has been. My information architecture also will be able to learn it in just half an hour after attending my classes. Okay, so if you need my mentorship support, you can write to this email dfcdesignforchangemail.com My team will help you out if you find this valuable podcast, give me a best start rating in Apple and Spotify. Guys, take care. All the best. Bye bye.