Site architecture (information architecture)
A website's architecture is the hierarchical list of its pages and how they all connect to one another. It's decided before design starts: one service page per real offer sold, not per targeted keyword.
Definition
A site's architecture, sometimes called its sitemap in everyday language, is the hierarchical list of its pages and how they connect to one another: which top-level pages, which sub-pages, and the path a visitor follows from one to the next. This is worth distinguishing clearly from the XML sitemap, a technical file submitted to search engines: one is a structure built for visitors, the other a file built for crawlers. Site architecture gets decided before design starts; it's hard to fix once the site is live, because every page you move breaks links and rankings already earned.
How it works
Building a site architecture starts with listing the offers actually sold, not the keywords targeted: one service page per offer, not one page per search query. Pages are then grouped by level, usually no more than two or three clicks between the homepage and any service page, and internal linking connects pages within that hierarchy. A wireframe then details the layout of a specific page, once the architecture is set.
Why it matters for your site
An architecture organized by keyword rather than by offer produces pages that compete with each other for the same queries, and visitors who can't find the offer they're looking for because it's spread across three similar pages. A service page per real offer, by contrast, gives every page a reason to exist and a query of its own.
The We-R perspective
The most common mistake we fix during a redesign is a site architecture copied from the company's internal org chart rather than from what the client is trying to buy. We always start from the list of sellable offers, not the list of existing pages: some merge, others get created, and navigation follows from that, not the other way round.
Learn more
See also: Maillage interne, Wireframe. And to put it into practice: À quoi sert vraiment un site internet B2B aujourd'hui ? or We-R's Webflow redesign method, from site structure to launch.
Sources: We-R, Webflow redesign method. Last updated: November 2026.
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