Information Architecture describes the overall conceptual models and general designs to plan, structure, and assemble a website. Information architects, technical designers, user interface constructors, and graphic designers must collaborate to research, plan, and design readable, understandable, and accessible information architecture. This requires the basic planning and modeling of a site before actual HTML and CSS construction begins. Similar to when building a house or skyscraper, by planning before constructing a designer can create functional systems for the building; a web designer plans ahead for titles, navigation, page layout, and content.

The five basic steps to organizing information on a website begin with making and inventory of content. Next, a designer must establish a hierarchy of this information and create an outline of the site. With an outline, a designer may chunk information and group it into a logical structure. Diagrams and rough drawings of the site are then created to organize each page. Lastly, a website must be tested and revised to ensure that it is both functional and understandable.

There are three perspectives and techniques used by information architects to design a website: site-view, page-view, and user-view. Site-view is based on sitemapping, organization, and grouping information through hierarchies. Page-view is wireframing, designing a site through storyboards and basic, unadorned page models. User-view is a technique that maps out all the pages of the site, all working together.

Information architecture is important to web design because it organizes and controls the data of a site. By creating a functional and logical hierarchy of information within a site, a designer aids a user's ability to search, navigate, locate, and understand the information desired. This design includes fundamental design of a page, placing the content, navigation, titles, and all other aspects of a web page in understandable ways, such as content and interface elements in commonly accepted places of a page. By planning before constructing and designing, a site will contain a hierarchy of information, clear and concise navigation, titles and logos identifying a page, links that move smoothly from page to page without confusing a viewer, and a clear cooperation between information architects, designers, and interface constructors; it will be a thought out, well-constructed website.