Editor's note: I’ve been lucky enough to work with Mags on three separate occasions. She is a superb communicator and thinker, having been one of the pioneers of information architecture (IA) and the wider user experience (UX) field. This chapter covers search, metadata and navigation design for e-commerce, an area where taxonomy practitioners can and do make a big difference to the success of websites and apps. Also included is a discussion of different kinds of mental models that customers may have and some crucial Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) basics for taxonomists.

Introduction

Information architecture (IA) is:

IA in e-commerce uses the principles of library and information science to design navigation, search, product pages and data for customers, and perform Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for search engines like Google, Bing and DuckDuckGo.

The definition above says ‘supporting usability and findability’. To this end, the aims of information specialists in e-commerce are threefold:

• 1 Create metadata and controlled vocabularies that describe the products to the right level of detail based on the products’ inherent properties and customers’ mental models.

• 2 Structure the product content to make it usable for customers.

• 3 Design navigation and search systems that increase findability by customers and search engines.

We approach this from a top-down and bottom-up perspective (Figure 12.1).

Top-down is focused on findability: designing as many paths as possible to get the customer to the product. Common paths include search engines such as Google, search and navigation on the website, syndicating the product content on marketplaces, editorial features and social media.

Bottom-up is focused on describing the ‘aboutness’ of a product to be used by these different paths, using structured metadata and controlled vocabularies.

For example, using metadata fields Size, Colour and Product Category for a top means that it can be found via a specific Google query like ‘size 12 blue tops’, via navigation (Tops > Blue > size 12) or via an editorial page showcasing blue as the colour of the season.