About Navarchiva

What we do

We help organisations decide how their website content should be grouped, named, addressed and linked. That work goes by the name information architecture. It sits between research and design: it turns what you know about your visitors into a structure that designers can draw and developers can build.

The site has three parts:

• Guides explaining the methods, with the official sources behind each recommendation.
• Free tools that help you plan a sitemap, check a taxonomy, draw a hierarchy, write a brief and review internal links. They run in your browser and send nothing to us.
• Services for organisations that want help, from a short audit to an enterprise framework.

Who it is for

The guides and services are written for people who look after content-heavy websites in Australia: councils and government bodies, universities and training providers, associations, health and community services, software companies and publishers. You do not need any training in information architecture to use them.

How we work

Start from tasks. A structure should reflect what visitors come to do, not how the organisation is arranged internally. Every project begins with a list of tasks.

Use plain words. Menus and labels should use the words your visitors use. So should our reports.

Show the reasoning. Every recommendation comes with the reason behind it and, where one exists, the source. You should be able to defend the plan to a colleague without us in the room.

Leave you self-sufficient. Deliverables are in editable formats, with rules for maintaining the structure. We do not hold back knowledge to keep you on a retainer.

Be honest about limits. A structure makes content easier to find. It does not write content, speed up pages or guarantee search rankings.

What we will not claim

You will not find client logos, testimonials, traffic figures or case studies with impressive percentages on this site. We do not publish client work, and we will not invent it. The examples page uses fictional organisations to show how we think through a restructure, and says so on every example.

We also do not claim certifications we do not hold. Our accessibility advice draws on WCAG 2.2, which became a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023, and on the W3C's authoring practices, but we do not certify websites as compliant with any standard.

Why information architecture matters to us

Websites now handle tasks that once needed a counter or a phone call: paying rates, enrolling in courses, finding a clinic, renewing a membership. When the structure of a site gets in the way, the cost falls on the visitor, who may give up or call instead, and on the staff who answer those calls. A clear structure is one of the least visible parts of a website, and in our view it is best settled before a build starts. That is the gap Navarchiva exists to fill.

What a first conversation looks like

You send a short note about your site and what is hard to find. We reply by email with a few questions: how large the site is, who uses it, what is changing and when. If the problem fits one of our services, we send a written quote. If it does not, the reply says so.

The writing

The guides are written and edited under the pen name Natalie Ross. You can read more on the author page. Each guide cites its sources, lists the date they were checked and shows when the guide was last updated. The editorial policy describes how guides are researched, checked and corrected.

We write in Australian English and follow the Australian Government Style Manual on matters such as plain language and structure. Its advice to "keep the hierarchy shallow" applies to our own pages too.

How this site is built

The site is a set of static pages generated from plain-text sources, with a small contact form. It loads no third-party scripts, no advertising and no analytics trackers. The planning tools run entirely in your browser. The privacy notice and cookie notice explain the one cookie the contact form may set.

We have tried to make the site accessible to everyone. The accessibility statement describes how we tested it and what we have not yet tested.

Where we work

Navarchiva works remotely with organisations across Australia, by email and video call, and quotes in Australian dollars. Workshops are run online, which keeps costs down and lets people from different offices take part on equal terms.

How the site is funded

Our funding and commercial interest are described in the site footer.

Get in touch

Questions about a guide, a tool or a project are welcome through the contact page.

Sources checked 4 November 2026 for about

1. SEO Starter Guide, Google
2. WCAG 2.2 changes, W3C
3. Hierarchical structure, Style Manual