Worked examples
Illustrative restructure examples
These three examples are invented. Each describes a website with a structural problem, shows its outline before and after a restructure, and explains the reasoning. They show how we think through a plan; they are not client projects and they contain no results.
Example 1: A software company's navigation
The situation
An Australian software company sells three products to small businesses. Its main menu has nine items: Products, Features, Solutions, Industries, Pricing, Resources, Partners, Company and Support. Product pages repeat feature descriptions found under Features, and Solutions and Industries cover overlapping ground. Visitors who know which product they want can find it. Visitors who know only their problem cannot.
Before
Home
Products
Product A / Product B / Product C
Features
Invoicing / Scheduling / Reporting / Integrations
Solutions
For retailers / For tradespeople / For clinics
Industries
Retail / Trades / Health
Pricing
Resources
Blog / Webinars / Ebooks / Help centre
Partners
Company
Support
After
Home
Products
Product A / Product B / Product C
Compare products
Who it is for
Retailers / Tradespeople / Clinics
Pricing
Learn
Guides / Webinars / Help centre
Company
About / Partners / Contact
Reasoning
- Features folded into products. Each product page now describes its own features, so visitors do not cross between sections to understand one product.
- Solutions and Industries merged. Both answered "is this for someone like me?" One section, named in plain words, does the job.
- Resources renamed. "Learn" says what the section is for. Ebooks were few and dated, so they were merged into guides.
- Partners moved under Company. Partners are a small audience who know to look there.
- Pricing kept at the top level and linked from every product page, because pricing is a task every buyer has.
- Redirects planned for every Features, Solutions and Industries address, each to the closest new page.
What the plan could not fix
The product pages need rewriting to absorb the feature content. The plan states what each page must cover, but the writing is a separate job.
Example 2: A training provider's course catalogue
The situation
A registered training provider lists courses by internal department: Health Faculty, Business Faculty, Community Services Faculty. Each course has three pages, covering overview, fees and dates, which drift out of step. Guides for students sit in a separate "Student Hub" with no links to the courses they relate to.
Before
Home
Faculties
Health Faculty / Business Faculty / Community Services Faculty
[each course: overview page, fees page, dates page]
Student Hub
Guides / Support / Forms
News
About
After
Home
Courses
By career stage: Starting out / Building skills / Leading teams
By field: Health / Business / Community services
[each course: one page with overview, fees and dates]
Studying with us
Enrolment / Fees and payment / Support / Guides
News
About
Reasoning
- One page per course. Fees and dates sit with the overview, so they are updated together.
- Two ways into the catalogue. Career stage and field are both offered, using facets rather than duplicate pages, which gives visitors more than one way to reach a course.
- "Studying with us" replaces "Student Hub". Prospective students also need enrolment and fees information, and the old label suggested it was for current students only.
- Guides tagged by course. Each course page shows related guides, drawn from a shared topic vocabulary.
What the plan could not fix
Merging three pages into one per course means deciding which version of conflicting information is right. Course coordinators have to make those calls.
Example 3: A state association's two websites
The situation
A state professional association runs a public website and a separate members' site. Both carry news, events and policy statements, with different versions of some documents. Members cannot tell which site holds the current version.
Before
Public site Members' site
Home Home
About My account
News News
Events Events
Policy statements Policies
Join Resources
Contact Contact
After (one site)
Home
About the association
News and statements
Events
Policy and advocacy
Membership
Join / Renew / Member benefits
Member area (signed in)
My account / Member resources
Contact
Reasoning
- One version of each public document. News, events and policy statements live once, on the public pages.
- A small signed-in area holds only what genuinely needs a login.
- Membership tasks grouped, so joining and renewing sit side by side.
- Navigation kept consistent inside and outside the member area, in line with WCAG 2.2 success criterion 3.2.3.
- A redirect map sends every address on the old members' site to its new equivalent, following Google's advice to map each old address to its best new destination.
What the plan could not fix
Some members bookmarked documents on the old site that have been merged. Redirects send them to the right page, but the association still needs to tell members about the change.
What the three examples share
Each restructure starts from the same questions: what do visitors come to do, and does the current grouping help or hinder them? In each case the biggest gains come from removing duplication and renaming sections in visitors' words, rather than from adding anything new. Each also leaves work the structure cannot do by itself, such as rewriting merged pages or telling members about a change. A plan that names those limits is more useful than one that hides them.
How to read your own site the same way
- Write out your current main menu and its second level as an outline.
- Mark sections that overlap or answer the same visitor question.
- Mark labels that use internal names or vague words.
- Ask which visitor tasks are hard to complete from the menu alone.
- Sketch an alternative outline and compare the two side by side.
Try it on your own site
Paste your current outline into the hierarchy visualiser to see its shape, or read planning a sitemap for the full method.
Sources checked 4 November 2026 for illustrative examples
- Hierarchical structure, Style Manual
- Site moves, Google
- Consistent Navigation (3.2.3), W3C
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