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the180 - Card Sorting
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Card Sorting - How to Build Great Navigation and Organization for Your Web Site

Part I


The point of most web sites is to find things.

The people that need to find things are not those that create the site.

They are your customers and prospects.

Get them to show you, not tell you, how they would find the things on your web site.

Best way - "card sorting".

Take 3 x 5 index cards.

On each index card, write down an example topic, fact, or function on your site.

Example cards for a public web site:

  • "Latest press release"
  • "Office locations"
  • "Products and services"
  • "Customer support phone number"
  • "Interview with CEO in Wall Street Journal"

Invite three to five customers and prospects for card sorting.

Each person will work one at a time.

Schedule about 90 minutes for each session.

If you cannot get customers or prospects, try getting friends or family.

Shuffle the index cards ahead of time.

Put them in a stack.

Instructions to the user in the card sorting session

Take one card off of the stack.

Place the card near another card on the table that seems similar.

Continue through the stack until all cards are grouped with other cards.

Feel free to move cards around, change card groupings until they seem right.

When done grouping all cards, break up groups that seem 'too big.'

Take cards from groups that seem 'too small' and combine with others.

Take post-its, and label each group.

Don't worry about coming up with the perfect name, just a few words that come to mind to describe this group.

When done with labeling the groups, associate groups into high-level groupings.

Take post-its, and label each high-level group.

For example, "HR" might be the high-level grouping for the low-level groups of:

  • "Benefits"
  • "Tax Forms"
  • "Career Growth"

This completes each user session.

After user is gone, record what happened.


At least write down the names of higher-level groups, and names of low-level groups.

Draw it as a rough map on paper so you can see where the user positioned the groups relative to each other.


Next the180: What to do with the card sorting data


Posted December 18, 2001
By Joe Grant

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