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By Stephanie Bach
Site taxonomy is important – but since the term itself is a bit nebulous, you may find yourself talking ‘oranges’ while your project team is talking ‘apples’.
Our partners at Drupal say this:
‘Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification according to natural relationships. (This) is one method administrators use to organize content in a web site. Taxonomy is created from ‘Vocabularies’ that contain related ‘Terms’.’
OK – so what does this mean for creating effective taxonomy for web sites and why is it important? For one, creating a solid site taxonomy enables better search effectiveness – users can return more relevant results for their searches, based on the relationship between vocuabluary terms. If a user searches for ‘Sneakers’ on a site, a good taxonomy will help relate that term to ‘Tennis Shoes’ ‘Footwear’ ‘Athletic Wear’ and other terms to allow users see and benefit from a wider range of search results.
Two, good taxonomy helps to ensure good site classification and hierarchies – which help users find information while browsing site content – even without using the Search functions. And that means happier users, longer site sessions and greater returns on site investment.
Learn how to create great taxonomies for your site:
http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/taxonomy/
And tell us about it.
Learn more about how Flair helps clients use Drupal (Lisa, can we link to our landing page here?)
Stephanie Bach
UX lead
Flair Interactive Services
