Ecommerce user journeys contain many phases where retailers can inluence outcomes, corresponding to phases within the purchase decision cycle. The PIEPP purchase decision cycle model is great at helping to explain the complexities of human decision-making when we buy things.

PIEPP stands for:

Problem recognition - Identifying a need, whether “real” or not.

Information search - The more complicated the object, or the higher its ticket price, the more the information is needed to make a purchase.

Evaluation of criteria - Assessing whether the product meets your needs - a conscious and unconscious process.

Purchase decision - Are there any barriers to stop

In Part 2 we discussed optimising navigation and website structure to get the most out of your information architecture. In this part we will discuss issues relating to information retrieval and how computers and humans absorb your messaging and the way you present your data.

Information Architecture & Information Retrieval

Before we start discussing website navigation and structure it is important to touch on information retrieval as a driving force behind good information architecture design.

Information retrieval is the science of searching for documents, for information within documents and for

In part 1 we discussed a rudimentary appraisal of your website’s information architecture so you could gauge whether it met some basic commercial requirements. In this part we will discuss issues relating to navigation and website structure.

What is so important about navigation and structure?

How do I get around?

Navigation - determines how easily people can find things and retrieve data from the website - a vital component of successful task completion activities that drives bottom line. Taking a user perspective - when they hit a page, will they

Why do you need to optimise your website’s information architecture? A simple question that requires some serious thought; this is because IA (information architecture) has a big influence your website’s commercial success or failure because it is at the heart of the user experience (UX).

Who designed your IA?

How does IA design go wrong? The seriousness of some decisions made about IA are often not understood by those making the decisions.

In our experience, whilst many decision makers get many of the issues relating to IA, through common sense, commercial acumen, training and/or an autodidactic interest, they rarely know or appreciate all of the issues.

The factors from whence these issue can derive are generally…

The HTML Title Tag is an important element within your on-page search engine optimisation programme; it has three significant roles:-

1. It lets humans know what the page is about
2. It displays in the search engine results pages (SERP) and affects click-through-rates (CTR)
3. It influences the on-page parts of the search engines’ relevancy algorithms.