Corporate Website Information Architecture (ia), Usability Studies

In order to attract and detain the intended users to the websites, the efficient information architecture is needed to get the fundmental information about the needs and behaviors of the users, as well as to give the users a good experience and to improve the quality of the websites. Based on the research of the websites of the companies, the characters and properties of the websites of the companies are outlined in the article. To illustrate the necessity and mean of the study of the usability of the information architecture, the example of the information architecture of the websites is presented in the article. The systematic model of evaluating usability of the information architecture is put forward after the introduction of the elementary theories of usability evaluation. Accordingly, the website named dangdang (www.dangdang.com) is studied to testify the correction of the model by the applying usability testing and card sorting methods of it, with the suggestion of improvement raised in the end.