Information Architecture  is the cohesive structure that brings all of a website’s pieces together in a uniform manner. After the strategic plan, Information Architecture  is the single most important element driving website success.  Many web organizations do not have the  expertise or time to undertake a full-blown Information Architecture development phase and often combine it with navigation and interface design.

In the context of information systems design, information architecture refers to the analysis and design of the data stored by information systems, concentrating on entities, their attributes, and their interrelationships. It refers to the modeling of data for an individual database and to the corporate data models an enterprise uses to coordinate the definition of data in several (perhaps scores or hundreds) of distinct databases. The “canonical data model” is applied to integration technologies as a definition for specific data passed between the systems of an enterprise. At a higher level of abstraction it may also refer to the definition of data stores.