Organize content the way customers think

When clients visit a website and have to guess, scanning through each item only to leave, the cause is rarely due to a poor interface or lack of content. The reason is often that the page structure reflects how the business thinks about itself, not how customers think about their needs. This is an information architecture problem (how content is organized, grouped, and named), and it needs to be solved before designing the interface.

The real question is: who is naming the content?

In most website projects that Sinh Vũ has handled, the menu and page structure are built according to how the internal team is accustomed to naming things. The Sales department has one item. The Service department has one item. Team names use terminology that only industry insiders would immediately understand. As a result, customers have to "learn" how the business organizes its structure before they can find what they need.

The mental model is the set of expectations that customers bring when they visit a website: they expect to find "pricing" somewhere, they call that service what, and they think about what the next step is after reading. The correct information architecture aligns with that mental model, not with the internal organizational chart.

Two methods to listen to customer segmentation

There are two highly regarded user research techniques in experience design practice, and they complement each other in order:

• Card sorting: Write each content item on separate cards, then ask a group of real customers to group them into logical categories for themselves and name those groups. The results show how customers categorize and the language they use. Use this technique when unsure about grouping methods or when the content is extensive and overlaps.
• Tree testing: Once the proposed structure is established, ask customers to perform specific search tasks based solely on the text structure, completely detached from the interface. The results measure whether customers find the correct path or not, and where they get stuck. Use this technique to verify before moving into actual design.

Allowing users to group and name content themselves is the fastest way to explore their thought patterns, rather than having the team guess and impose.

Nielsen Norman Group, Card Sorting: Uncover Users' Mental Models

Group by task or by theme?

The answer depends on the main reason customers visit the page:

A website typically contains both types of content. The principle is to identify the primary task for most visitors, then prioritize that structure for the main navigation, while reference content can be organized separately by topic.

Width and depth: how many layers are sufficient?

There is no fixed number, but there is a practical principle: maintain a flat structure when the number of items is small, and divide into tiers when the content volume is large enough that one level cannot contain it. The common issue is not having too many tiers, but having too many items horizontally aligned at one tier, causing customers to scroll too long. When one level has too many options, it is a signal to break into smaller groups, not to cram more in.

With the label for each item, the simple principle is: place the most important keywords at the top and use terms that customers immediately understand, without making them guess the meaning. "Pricing table" is clearer than "Investment solutions." "Contact" is clearer than "Connect with us."

Common mistakes when self-structuring

• Transferring the organizational chart into a menu forces customers to understand the internal structure before they can find what they need.
• Naming a group with a slogan or creative marketing term that clients cannot decipher, such as "Transformation Journey" instead of "Workflow Process."
• Relying entirely on internal opinions and skipping the step of having real customers verify the structure, even if it’s just asking a few acquaintances who are unfamiliar with the business.
• Stuffing everything into one level to "make it look sufficient," forcing clients to skim through fifteen items before finding two that are truly relevant.

The viewpoint of Sinh Vũ

Sinh Vũ builds websites from content strategy and user experience flow before touching the interface. The initial exploration phase of the project is when Sinh Vũ clarifies two things: what you need and what the business wants you to do next after each step. The page structure is built from those two questions, not from a list of content you want to include.

This involves experience design and information architecture, not programming. Getting this right at this stage saves many rounds of revisions after the interface is built, as fixing the structure after design is much more labor-intensive than adjusting it on paper.