Your website - now be honest, is it rubbish?

Your website is not a toy or a novelty. It is a viable aspect of your business. Large plc's use it to reduce customer service calls, rock stars use it to sell gig tickets, and the best retail outlets know that they can shift just as much product, and more variety, to more people through mail order of their online stores.
So if you are in business it is no longer a question of "Shall we build a web site?" or even "When are we getting out web site up?", it is actually:-

"Why isn't my website helping my business?"

Your disorganised intranet will eat up your employees time while they try to look for things, and a disorganised company website will prevent your customers from buying what they want.

But you already know that.

Just how expensive is it?

• Appearing amateurish, so making people not trust you, so they don't spend.
• Annoying customers, when they can't find things, pushing them away to your competitors.
• When potential customers can't find you in the first place.
  

Well designed Information Architecture will improve:-

• Findability - Giving customers easy access to the things they are looking for.
• Usability - Give your customers the easy way to accomplish what they want, whether it be getting your address or buying from you.

And this is all about:-

• Understandability - Good Information Architecture will provide the infrastructure needed to help people turn Information they find into Knowledge.

Unless something is done about it now, the people you want to influence the most will get lost in a sea of information that it getting deeper and wider every day.
Stand out, and make what they want easy to acheive.