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I am working on the information architecture of an e-commerce content management system. The target users have diverse levels of knowledge of web technologies, which means I have to avoid a software driven approach and also technical terms when possible.

Part of my navigation tree looks like this now:

Web catalogue
> Product descriptions
> Ratings & reviews
> Product list pages

Other content
> General content pages
> News
> FAQ

I know "Other content" is a terrible label. But I cannot really find a proper name for this category, which includes all content except for the product-related content. I believe it is important to keep these two categories separated. They have a different logic: product related content is automatically generated and the other content is not. Therefore the components and functions are different for each case.

What would be an alternative solution to avoid having the "Other content" label? I tested it informally with two users, and it worked. I am now preparing a test with a bigger sample. Do you think I should test the information architecture using this label to see if it works or it does not make sense to try?

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    You are ordering your content based on type. Perhaps an approach that is more story-driven, or task-orientated might work. Try working your IA/UX around accomplishing tasks, rather than just presenting content (that the User must then navigate in order to accomplish a task). Just a suggestion.
    – Richard Das
    Apr 3, 2014 at 13:03
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    To be honest, you might not even have a problem here. If it were just titled 'Other' then maybe, but it's called 'Other Content' so you're giving it a bit more context. If it tests well, explains what the content is within it then you might not need to change it. It's the same as using 'Other Addresses' or 'Other Flavours'; it's not the 'other' word that matters as much as the adjacent term.
    – JonW ♦
    Apr 3, 2014 at 13:03
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    Product Pages (Descriptions / Ratings & reviews / List pages) • Non-Product content (Content pages / Latest News / FAQ )
    – Richard Das
    Apr 3, 2014 at 13:04
  • @Richarddas: do you propose to merge all in one? Then what could be the name of that global category? Consider that "content" is an ambiguous category for my users, since some of them consider "content" as everything they see in the webshop...
    – Carina
    Apr 3, 2014 at 13:10
  • @Carina sorry the comments section didn't allow me to wrap that. What I intended was that your 2 top-level sections be named "Product Pages" and "Non-Product Pages", and then the sub-sections renamed (as per my previous comment)
    – Richard Das
    Apr 3, 2014 at 13:12

4 Answers 4

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In his book Don't make me think!, including its 2013 revisited edition, Steve Krug defines Utilities as:

Links to important elements of the site that aren’t really part of the content hierarchy.

He also offers an example list of them for an eCommerce site which includes News and FAQs.

From that perspective, this could be a solution:

  • Utilities

    • Archive

    • News

    • FAQ

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  • Interesting information... do you find "utilities" and intuitive label? For me, it sounds like "tools" or something like that (just personal opinion).
    – Carina
    Apr 9, 2014 at 8:46
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[I don't have enough rep to comment] In my personal experience, i prefer to see a word 'More' than 'Other', and that would be my suggestion. Remove the word content-as it is redundant for website(a site itself means some form of content - text/audio/video etc) So you can try either of these:

  • More
  • Links
  • More Links

Hope this helps.

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As per my above comments, here is a suggested task-based hierarchy:

 - Product
    - Descriptions
    - Ratings & Reviews
    - List Pages

 - Non-Product
    - General Content

 - Information
    - News
    - FAQ
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You could try the label "Also read" or "Also read about" to replace "Other content" since it gives the idea there is something else to read as well with a subliminal message of being some content different from the product information.

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