Website hierarchy and the interaction between content organization, webpage and navigation design: A systemic functional hypermedia discourse analysis perspective

Djonov, Emilia

doi:10.1075/idj.15.2.07djo

Article published In: Information Design Journal
Vol. 15:2 (2007) ► pp.144–162

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Website hierarchy and the interaction between content organization, webpage and navigation design: A systemic functional hypermedia discourse analysis perspective

Emilia Djonov | University of Wollongong, Australia

Published online: 16 October 2007

https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.15.2.07djo

Website hierarchy is a central principle for organizing information in websites with implications for user orientation on the Web. Employing websites for children as case studies, this paper proposes a conceptualization of website hierarchy developed by adapting a tool from systemic functional linguistics to the analysis of websites. This new conceptualization draws on the strengths and reconciles the differences of existing ones in order to reflect the fluidity of websites as hypermedia texts on the WWW and the role that the interaction between content organization, webpage and navigation design plays in revealing a website's hierarchical organization and thereby orienting users within it.

Keywords: user orientation, hypermedia discourse, social semiotics, information architecture, website hierarchy, systemic functional theory, website usability, children's websites

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