Look, we know it’s a gross metaphor. You’re thinking about toenails now, and we’re sorry. But like that problem, ingrown websites are very common, and if not fixed, they can hurt and cause bigger problems.

I want to acknowledge something: Planning and designing websites is hard and it comes with a lot of anxiety and fears that — to extend the metaphor a little — you tend to pick at and worry: 

• You won’t be able to explain the complex things you do to a complex set of audiences. 
• You have experts internally who are telling you that you have to say things a certain way. 
• The organization grew over time and is structured the way it is for an organic reason that feels right all around.

But none of those things have anything to do with how a good website works. So you end up with an ingrown website, one where the structure, navigation, and language all point inward, back into and at the organization. You know the website should be focused on audience needs, but instead, the org chart becomes the sitemap, and internal vocabulary becomes the nav labels. In a way, the site explains the organization to itself.

This serves the organization's need to be understood rather than the audience's need to find what they're looking for. So let’s take a step back and start with first principles.

The org chart becomes the sitemap, and internal vocabulary becomes the nav labels. In a way, the site explains the organization to itself.

Why Your Website Exists

People come to your website with their own goals. They might want to check out something they heard about. They might want to buy something, if you're selling something. They might want to donate or volunteer or learn something or read. The possibilities are varied, but ultimately knowable.

Every visitor is busy with many other choices about how to invest time and energy. They come to the experience with emotions, lived experience, problems, questions, hopes, needs, and so on. They come wanting to feel good about this choice, to feel certain. Nobody goes to a website wanting to feel frustrated, lost, confused, or unimpressed.

Visitors are the sole reason your website exists. It has no other purpose. This is existential. It's a tree-falling-in-the-forest situation. So it follows that the website should be designed for your visitors.

However, let's not forget that you, as the website owner, have goals as well. You want these visitors to feel good about your organization, to feel aligned and engaged and impressed to act. You are likely investing significant resources in your new website so that visitors do things. You might want them to consume information, donate, learn something. Hopefully your goals and theirs converge.

Your website should be focused on that place where the convergence happens. You can intuit what they want and guide them to that with ease. For those who want to achieve their goals quickly, there should be fast pathways to them. For those who need to linger and learn and soak in it before they act, there should be ways to explore. But of course you also want to move them to a particular action. You do this by satisfying them along the way to that action.

Working from the outside in

A lot of work went into building your successful organization. The structure and org chart makes sense to the operation. But your internal structure or categories don’t necessarily mean anything to visitors to your website. And the language you use internally isn't necessarily how outsiders think. The idea for a great website is that navigation and content architecture maps to how audiences think, not how the organization operates.

Even audiences who might care about your structure — a prospective employee, a funder reviewing your operations — care about it less than you think, and later in their journey than you'd expect. They want to know why they should care about you before they want to understand how you're organized.

The way to achieve this is to listen to people. Do research and figure out what your audiences are concerned about. All of those hopes and fears and experiences they bring to the visit -- what can you learn about their expectations? Learn what you can, and let the site structure emerge from that thinking.

Here are the steps we take:

• First, we ask who is coming to your site, and who do you want to come? Are all visitors equally important to your goals? For each audience, ask yourself, what do we want them to do?
• Next, take a moment and think about your audiences as individuals, not as a means to your ends. Find out what their lives are like. What do they need? What are they concerned or afraid of? How do they self-identify in relation to your organization? Where are they in their lives that are bringing them to this?
• Then you can think about pathways. What are the top-level labels in your navigation that will resonate? What will be there when they land?

You Can Resist

Warning: This shift can spark some internal conflict.

Many times, your colleagues are going to want their own section to reflect their concerns. They’ve built something and they want it reflected accurately (and rightfully so). There's room for all of those needs. It's not about scrubbing the website of the way your organization is successful or effective. It's about making sure you get people to where you want them to go. The website is a strategic communications tool, not a technical brochure. Making that case isn’t easy, but it’s very possible.

The idea for a great website is that navigation and content architecture maps to how audiences think, not how the organization operates.

Making the case requires starting during the discovery phase of the project. Gathering information about audiences means you have evidence and strong warrants for your arguments. When the strategy emerges from the data, it's undeniable. Also, listen to the feedback of your colleagues and show them the process. If they see all along the way that the process is inclusive and that they were listened to and heard, they tend to come around to your expert position.

Sometimes this means dedicated working sessions to workshop the information architecture, user testing to validate it, and building enough trust in the room that people can hear "your department might not have a dedicated nav item" without feeling erased.

For those who argue that you need to show the structure of the org, you can assure them that those who want that information will get it. You can explain why you're set up the way you are, what each part of the organization does, and why it matters. That content has a place on the site. But it's supporting content, not the skeleton. It's something people can find when they want it, not the thing they have to navigate through to get to what they actually came for.

So remember: An ingrown website isn't a sign that anyone did something wrong. It's a natural result of building from the inside out. But it's important to fix the problem before it gets infected (I'm sorry -- I tried to resist). Just start with the people you're trying to reach and let their needs shape the structure. That shift changes the project, produces a site that actually connects, and makes your organization more effective.