Bigger organisations have long since taken the job of designing websites away from technical staff, but smaller ones still have a tendency to lump all the ‘computer related’ tasks onto whatever technical people they might have.

Here are a few classic excuses for not putting effort into building an information architecture for a small company website.

1: We don’t have time

So do you have time to build a web site at all? You need to ask yourself what exactly the goal of building the website is, and hopefully come up with an answer which is centred around the expected end users. Unless you have time to build what these users want, then there’s really no point in building anything at all.

If you don’t have time to work out what to build, you certainly don’t have time to build it.

2: We can just evolve the site - It’s small enough

A big advantage of having a well thought out information architecture is that it gives a more objective basis for future site enhancements. Plenty of brilliant programmers have squandered their time trying to understand a design they should have documented the first time, and it’s just as easy to do with a web site.

The other problem here is that you’re not likely to get the kind of feedback necessary to evolve the site. If users came to the site, failed to find what they wanted, then told you so, then you might have a chance, but as a rule, the users will just leave (to your competition). Structured user testing would probably help to some degree, but requires much of the same work as building an information architecture.

3: We can get away without it, we’re smart guys

Even if you could keep everything straight while designing the site the first time, you’re unlikely to remember the reasoning behind every decision in a years time.

If you’re smart enough to get away without it, you’re smart enough to know that you shouldn’t.

4: We’ve only got a couple of classes of users anyway

Let me guess, your classes are ‘prospective customers’ and ‘current customers’. It’s easy to break users down into these big classes but it’s not very helpful. Current customers, for example, might have a support question, or want to order more of your product, or find your postal address to send you a Christmas card. Prospective customers often have bosses who’ll need to sign off and will be looking for different information from someone who’s just opened 6 tabs with your website alongside all your competitors.

5: We can’t justify the cost

I guess this is similar to the ‘we don’t have the time’ excuse, but given the traditional scope vs schedule vs budget balancing act, it somehow seems separate.

If you can’t justify the cost of building a site which fits your user’s needs, then how can you possibly justify the cost of building a site which probably doesn’t?

6: We just want a site structured like competitor X

There is certainly something to be learnt by looking at the structure of sites in a similar space to the one you’re designing, but simply copying another site’s structure means putting far too much faith in it’s design. You probably wouldn’t be planning to restructure your site to match every time competitor X restructures theirs, but without a documented information architecture to back you up, that’s probably the only justifiable approach.

Even if you and competitor X are almost identical, it’s very likely that you have some competitive differences you want to draw attention to, which is exactly what the architecture of your site should be doing.

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