When a redesign doesn't fix the navigation
A team spends six months redesigning their website. New fonts, new colors, a slicker mega menu, better mobile responsiveness. They launch and the feedback is positive. Three months later, user research sessions reveal that people still can't find the things they came for. The navigation is beautiful and it still doesn't work.
This is one of the most common disappointments in digital project planning. The team redesigned the navigation. They didn't redesign the information architecture. And those are two different things.
What information architecture actually is
Information architecture (IA) is the organizational structure of your content: what groups things belong to, what the relationships are between those groups, what things are called, and how deep the hierarchy goes.
It's conceptual. It lives in a spreadsheet or a content model or a whiteboard before it lives in any interface. Good IA answers questions like:
IA decisions shape what users can find. Navigation design shapes how they look for it.
What navigation design actually is
Navigation design is the visible, interactive layer that exposes your IA to users. It includes your top-level menu, dropdown panels, breadcrumbs, sidebar navigation, footer links, in-page navigation, and search.
Navigation design answers questions like:
These are legitimate design questions. But they're downstream from IA decisions. If the underlying structure groups things incorrectly, no amount of navigation design will fix the findability problem.
The problem with redesigning navigation when IA is broken
When users can't find something, the instinct is often to make the navigation more prominent, add more links, or reorganize the visual structure. This is treating the symptom.
If a user searches for "snow removal complaint" and your site has a page for it buried under "Public Works → Winter Maintenance → Service Requests → Submit a Report," the navigation isn't the problem. The hierarchy is too deep, the language doesn't match user expectations, and the path requires knowing your organizational structure before you can use it.
Adding a shortcut link to the homepage solves a narrow version of the problem. Restructuring the IA solves the underlying one.
Signs your problem is actually an IA problem
Signs your problem is actually a navigation design problem
The right sequence: IA first, then navigation design
Changes to navigation work best when they're guided by a stable IA. Here's how to approach them in order:
Step 1: Audit your current IA
Before touching the design, document your current site structure: all categories, all sub-categories, all content types, and how they relate. You're looking for:
Step 2: Map user tasks to the current structure
List the top 10-15 tasks users come to your site to complete (use GA4 page traffic, internal site search data, and any existing user research). For each task, trace the current path. How many clicks? How clear is the language at each step? Where do users end up using search instead of navigation?
Step 3: Restructure the IA
Group content by user task and mental model, not by department or content type. Validate your proposed structure with a card sort or tree test (both can be run with tools like Optimal Workshop or Maze at relatively low cost), or run a UX walkthrough to observe how users navigate the existing structure. Test before you build.
Step 4: Redesign the navigation to reflect the new IA
Once the structure is right, design the navigation to expose it clearly. This is where visual hierarchy, label clarity, interaction design, and responsive behavior come in.
This sequence takes longer upfront but produces navigation that actually works — because it's solving the right problem first.
If you want help auditing your site's information architecture and building a structure that reflects how your users think, get in touch and we can start with the highest-impact pages.