How to choose categories for a local business listing website?

Design Thinking
#1

Hi,

Sorry if this is in the wrong section.

I am creating a business directory website for my local town which will also include events and jobs.

However, I am struggling to find the best way to create the categories for each section.

I think I have the business categories ok which I think covers most businesses and services. These are as follows:

  • [myTown] High Street (this will include shops)
  • Business and Office
  • Childcare
  • Clothing
  • Computers and Telecoms
  • Education and Tuition
  • Entertainment
  • Finance and Legal
  • Food and Drink
  • Good Suppliers and Retailers
  • Health and Beauty
  • Motoring
  • Pets
  • Property and Maintenance
  • Tradesmen and Construction
  • Transport
  • Travel and Tourism

However, I am now a bit stuck on the events and job categories.

Should I be keeping these categories similar in each section to keep consistency, or different? I have found I can probably have 6 or 7 categories for the events which are as follows:

  • Corporate
  • Social
  • Virtual and Online
  • Fundraising
  • Festivals
  • Community
  • Events in The Village

The list of categories for the jobs section includes pretty much every business sector which I feel is way too long.

Is there a good way or practice to determine categories for such a website? Should they all be the same across all sections - mainly the business listing and job categories?

Any advice would be great, thank you!

#4

Thanks for the replies.

Yes card sorting sounds like a good exercise, but how would I determine which categories to use in the first place?

Thanks!

#6

Same as the others said, this is the exact use case for a card sort. An open sort is ideal for mapping your information architecture to your users’ mental models and would be my . Closed sorts aren’t very insightful, and overall an open sort will be more powerful and save time/money. I don’t use open sorts in IA projects anymore, just for other special use cases. If you are confident in your existing categories or want to test an existing navigation, a tree sort would be beneficial.

NN/g has some great, short videos on card sorts and methods, and doing remote sessions. Optimal has a good 101 intro to cardsorting. Optimal Workshop can handle larger unmoderated remote sessions and the related analysis well, but it’s spendy for just card sorting when over their free teir (12+ participants?). If you are doing remote moderated sessions you could also use an online whiteboard tool like Miro, Mural or a Google Jamboard.

1 Like