It’s not in the design, it’s in the structure

When people start a web project, they usually ask the same questions. What should it look like? Can you make it pop? Can we add some movement? What CMS should we use? How fast can we get it done? All good questions, no doubt. But the thing that makes or breaks most projects isn’t visual or technical. It’s structure.

Content structure sounds boring, but it’s the backbone of a good website. It’s how information is grouped, labelled, and connected. It decides whether people can find what they’re looking for or get lost after two clicks. And it’s the part that a lot of people leave for the end, right when everyone’s already tired and the deadline is close.

A depressingly large number of institutional websites fail not because they’re ugly, but because they’re organised around internal logic instead of user logic. Sections named after committees. News mixed with publications. Menus that read like org charts. For visitors who don’t know your structure, it’s confusing. They come looking for a report, or a position paper, or an event. Instead, they get a maze.

Good structure always starts with asking the right questions. Who are your audiences? What do they need to find most often? What do you want them to understand about you, even if they only spend a minute on your site? When you build around those answers, everything else becomes easier.

Design looks so much better when the content is clear. Development goes faster when page types are defined. Editing and translation become simpler. And your visitors, whether they’re policymakers, members, journalists, and even your own staff, actually find what they came for.

If you’re planning a new website, spend as much time on content structure as you do on design. It’s the quiet part of the process that makes everything else work.