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To see how all these ideas come together in practice, here is an example of good IA from the Adidas home page. There's a visually appealing balance of words and images, with a clear navigation bar at the top with broad categories of different shoes. When these categories are hovered over, it reveals its subcategories to better narrow down a user’s search. Navigation bars are helpful to keep some information hidden so the user isn’t bombarded by too many choices.
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A poorly organized site might prevent people from visiting it again, especially if they never end up finding the information that they need. If you put too much content on a page, how do users know where to look?
The Craigslist home page is is an example of bad IA. The lack of images and white space cause a blur effect on the page.If you're not familiar with the site, you may have to scan the entire page and read all of the links in order to find what you are looking for. There are dozens of links on just one page alone that gives a user too many options to look through all at once, and too many choices can be overwhelming.
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