Site Structure

Website structure is a crucial factor that determines the success of a website. If you want to have a website to achieve certain goals, such as selling products, communicating information to people, or appearing at the top of search engine results, understanding and designing the website structure correctly is essential. The website structure is something that must be understood and designed correctly.

This article will explain what a website structure is, how many types there are, and the methods of designing it from scratch.

What is website structure?

Website structure is a diagram or map of the website that displays two types of information as follows.

1. What is it about? | Tell me what content, topics, or issues each webpage offers.
2. How are they linked? | This means that each webpage has links to show how viewers can navigate from one webpage to another.

Website structure | Example

Example structure of a dog food sales website, showing what the webpage content is like and how it is interconnected.

Why is website structure important?

1. Create a good experience

A good website structure will allow visitors to find the information they need completely, conveniently, and quickly. They will surely feel satisfied and have a good experience using the website.

Abroad, research has shown that websites that create a good experience can increase Conversion by Rate 400% When users feel good about a website, they are likely to recommend it to friends or even consider purchasing something. Therefore, a well-structured website is another factor that increases the chances of the website’s success.

2. Easy data management

Website structure will help web creators work systematically and efficiently, with the following benefits:

• Help visualize how website visitors navigate through different web pages, so we can imagine whether they will easily find the information they need.
• Knowing that each webpage has a main topic and subtopics, I can categorize the content correctly.
• When expanding the website, it’s easy and systematic because we already know what the existing content is and where to link the new content on the web pages.

3. Good for SEO

The website structure is something that affects SEO results because the first step in the Search Engine’s process is for the Bot (data collection program) to crawl the website to explore what the website is about and what it contains. The website structure acts like a tour guide for the Bot to navigate and view various elements within the website.

If the website has a good structure, bots can easily crawl and gather information, making it more likely to achieve a good ranking because search engines will easily understand what the website is about.

How many types of website structures are there? What are they?

Get to know the four types of website structures as follows.

1. Linear Structure
2. Hierarchical Structure
3. Web Linked Structure
4. Hybrid Structure

1. Linear Structure

Linear Structure is a website structure that presents content in a sequential order, topic by topic, which is sometimes referred to as Sequential Structure or a sequential structure.

The design process will start from the Main Page or Home page, which is the first page the website owner wants people to encounter. Then, the main menu of the website, the Navigator, will guide users through the various web pages in order.

This type of website structure is suitable for products or services that are presented in a sequential order, such as an online course that progresses through content chapters 1, 2, 3, and so on, or an e-book, etc.

2. Hierarchical Structure

Hierarchical Structure is a commonly used website structure, such as If we create a website using a Web Builder tool, such as building a website with WordPress, we will get a site structure like this. Moreover, from its shape, it looks like a tree diagram, so it can also be called a Tree Structure.

The reason this type of website structure is popular is because it has advantages: it is suitable for both small websites with fewer than 10 pages and large websites like E-commerce with more than 100 product pages. It often organizes different pages into categories, making it easy to understand. Additionally, Google Crawler also finds it easy to see the relationships between each page clearly.

3. Web linked Structure

Web Linked Structure is a website structure based on the principle that “every webpage must be accessible from every other webpage.” The goal is that no matter which webpage a visitor accesses first, they should be able to reach every other webpage on the site.

The design of this web structure does not have a fixed pattern. The website owner can connect each page in any way they want using internal links, as long as every webpage is accessible.

This website is suitable for small websites with fewer than 10 pages and focuses on encouraging users to navigate back and forth within the site. However, if there are more pages than this, it will make the website difficult to understand, both from the user’s perspective and for Google, which may not grasp what the website is actually about.

4. Hybrid Structure

The final website structure is a Hybrid Structure, which is a mixed format. Generally, it primarily adheres to a Hierarchical Structure as the main framework and connects various web pages using other website structure formats according to their purposes.

From the example, it will be a combination of Hierarchical and Linear models.

How to design it? It should be remembered that pages higher up have a greater chance of being accessed, and pages that are frequently linked to are also likely to receive more traffic.

Website structure design

Website structure design is the process of determining the topics and content to be presented on web pages, followed by drafting a map to link each web page together.

The goal of the design is to create a website structure that makes it easy for visitors to find the information they need, organizes content systematically, provides a positive experience for website visitors, and also benefits SEO.

Website structure design process

The initial website structure design process consists of three main steps as follows.

1. Set a goal

The first step is to identify your goals. What do you want to achieve by creating a website?

Generally, the goals of a website are usually one of three things as follows.

1. Selling products/services
2. Communicate “something” to the target audience.
3. Share stories/experiences (blog)

The goal helps identify the “topics/issues” of the website content accurately, understand the “scope of information to be searched,” such as what products, their strengths and weaknesses, and what stories need to be told, without getting lost in things that do not align with the set objectives.

2. Know the website visitors

The second step is to get to know the website visitors, with the basic information we need to know being

• Who are the visitors or target audience?
• What are their problems or needs?
• Why does he need certain products or information from our website?
• What other products or services do they use?

All the above information will allow us to appropriately and consistently define the “content details” of each webpage according to the target audience. For example, when we know what the target audience’s problems are, we can present information on how our product solves their problems and how it is better than other service providers.

When you know the visitors and identify the website’s goals, you will be able to determine what each webpage’s topic is and what content it contains.

3. 3. Link web pages

The next step is to draft a diagram linking each webpage, also known as an internal link.

The linking diagram will provide a visual representation of how website visitors navigate to view information within the site and whether they can access the desired information quickly.

According to the basic principles of internal link design, they are as follows.

Easy to access

An important principle of website design is that it should be designed so that visitors can access important web pages quickly and conveniently.

The important webpage is the one that helps you achieve your goals. For example, if it is an e-commerce website. Important web pages are the pages for best-selling products or new flagship products that you want to showcase specifically.

When access is convenient, the number of visitors to important web pages will increase, and the chances of achieving your goals will naturally rise.

So what should we do?? The answer is: From the homepage of the website, link directly to important web pages, minimizing the use of other web pages. According to statistics, the homepage is often one of the most visited pages. Therefore, linking directly from the homepage allows most website visitors to quickly access important web pages.

Group the content

Content should be grouped into categories and the content within the same category should be linked together, which is referred to as creating a “Category.”

Category will help website visitors know what content the website has and easily access information in that category.

Just think about it: if an e-commerce website with more than 1,000 products has no categorization, how discouraged would visitors be when searching for what they need?

In addition, creating categories is also good for SEO because it acts like a “main route” that helps search engines quickly and thoroughly collect data from various web pages. This makes it easier for search engines to understand what our website is about.

By following the above design principles, you will achieve a well-structured website that is easy to navigate and search for information, similar to the image below.