Purpose – The purpose of this report is to increase understanding of the importance of good

information architecture on e-commerce sites and to evaluate how far one overlooks poor

information architecture as acceptable if one finds the product they intend to buy attractive.

The aim has resulted in two questions that read:

What are the rules and the framework for good information architecture?

How will people's purchasing behavior be affected of the information architecture of

an e-commerce website, if it is designed based on the rules and frameworks available?

 Method – The methods used have been literature studies, a comparison of the two ecommerce

sites, and user tests and interviews. The methods have been used to find literature

in the area and to give substance to this investigation. The empirical intends to answer further

questions and provide a greater depth to the report.

 Findings – The most important parameter of the result has been that you have to give

navigations systems your number one priority when it comes to developing e-commerce

websites. Without satisfactory navigation for the visitor he or she will choose to cancel a

planned purchase and leave the website. If the navigation, and in this case, the information

architecture is not satisfactory for the visitor, then the design of the website will play a very

small role if the visitor chooses to stay or not. A good design cannot compensate for poor

information architecture but good information architecture will make the visitor accept an

inferior design.

 Implications – The implications of the report could be that, by the result you can see that

the navigation is more important than the design. This would in turn lead to that developers

should spend more time on designing a good navigation system rather than on the actual

design it self.

 Limitations – The report has only taken into account two e-commerce sites selling

menswear clothes. This means that the study is limited to just these two websites, and is not

applicable to others. Had there been a bigger financial budget for the study and if the survey

had been widened and a greater number of people interviewed the credibility of the report

would have been greater. Furthermore, the credibility would have been greater by the

possibility of using a tool for analyzing how visitors use websites.