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INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE · 情報アーキテクチャ
Ignited Nepal structures the page hierarchy, navigation, and content organisation of Japanese websites with the specific intent of balancing information density with findability. We map both Japanese-primary and English-secondary content streams into a single coherent architecture, built before design begins.
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/ This is for you if
Your site was built for a Japanese-speaking audience and it works for them. Now you are pursuing international clients and you need an English version that is a genuine parallel structure, not a machine-translated subset of your Japanese pages. You want both versions to feel native to their audiences and connected to each other with clear signals about which version a visitor is on.
You are localising an existing website for Japan. You know that a Western navigation structure with minimal items and flat hierarchy can feel sparse and low-information to a Japanese audience accustomed to comprehensive navigation and dense page content. You need an IA that meets Japanese user expectations without abandoning the clarity that serves your existing global audience.
Your Japanese website started with a clear structure and has accumulated content over years of operation. Deep sub-pages that should be primary navigation items, news sections that have become the most-visited part of the site, and service pages buried three levels down from the homepage. The structure no longer reflects what the site actually is or what your visitors need to find.
/ What's broken
Japanese corporate sites frequently have navigation that mirrors the internal department structure of the organisation: divisions, business units, and function groups mapped directly to menu items. This is legible to employees and to long-term clients who know the business. It is not legible to a new visitor trying to understand what the company does and whether it can help them.
When a bilingual site is built with the Japanese version as primary and the English version added later, the English pages rarely match the Japanese hierarchy. The English site has fewer pages, different section names, and a navigation that does not correspond to the Japanese one. Visitors switching languages lose their position in the site. Search engines see two disconnected content structures and cannot reconcile them.
The expectation of comprehensive navigation in Japan is real and well-documented. However, density without architecture is not the same as density with architecture. A navigation with forty-five visible links across two rows is not inherently more useful than one with twelve. Usefulness depends on whether the groupings, labels, and hierarchy reflect the decisions a visitor is trying to make. Many Japanese sites are dense in quantity but underpowered in logic.
Bilingual URL structures are handled inconsistently on many Japanese websites: some using subdirectories (/ja/ and /en/), some using subdomains, some using query parameters, and some using completely separate domains. Each approach has implications for search visibility, user orientation, and content management overhead. The choice made at launch is often the one that creates the most problems three years later.
/ What we engineer
Each workstream is built by the team that audits it, and wired into the rest of your growth system.
We run a structured workshop in Japanese and English with your key stakeholders. We establish the primary audiences for each language version, the tasks those audiences come to complete, and the business objectives each version needs to serve. The workshop produces a shared brief that both language streams are built against.
We catalogue every page in both language versions of your current site. We document the URL, the Japanese title, the English title where one exists, the page purpose, and the structural relationship between corresponding pages. We flag pages that exist in Japanese but not in English, pages where the English version does not correspond structurally to the Japanese version, and pages that are duplicating content within a single language version.
We map the primary user journeys for Japanese-speaking visitors and for English-speaking visitors separately, then identify where the journeys cross. For each journey we document the pages required, the content each page needs, and the navigation paths between them. The Japanese and English journeys are designed in parallel, not sequentially.
We produce a sitemap that treats Japanese as the primary language and English as the parallel structure. Each page is listed with its Japanese title, its English title, its URL in both language versions, its position in the hierarchy, and its content type. The sitemap is the structural document from which both language versions are built.
We write and test navigation labels in Japanese and English. Japanese labels are not simply translated from English originals. They are written for the expectations and reading patterns of Japanese audiences first, then their English equivalents are written to serve English-speaking visitors. Labels are tested against clarity, common search language, and consistency across both navigations.
We produce structural outlines for each content type in both language versions. Japanese page templates account for the expectation of greater information density: longer text blocks, more supporting detail in secondary sections, and more visible related content. English page templates are structured for scanning behaviour typical of Western visitors without being sparse by Japanese standards.
We document the URL architecture for both language versions including the approach to language segmentation, slug format in Japanese and English, handling of hreflang tags, and treatment of legacy URLs requiring redirects. The URL structure document is the technical instruction set for the development team.
We map the internal linking architecture for both language versions and the cross-language links where relevant, such as a language switcher that maintains context, links from Japanese pages to English resources, and vice versa. Internal linking is documented in a format implementable by the development team.
We package all deliverables into a bilingual design handover document. The design team receives structural briefs for both language versions with enough detail to design distinct but structurally coherent experiences for Japanese and English audiences.
/ What changes
/ How it works
We assess both language versions of your current site against five criteria: navigation logic, content parity between language versions, page hierarchy, URL structure, and internal linking. We identify the specific structural problems in each version and the inconsistencies between them. This takes five working days.
We run a structured workshop with stakeholders from the Japanese-speaking and English-speaking sides of the organisation. We establish the brief for both language versions in a single session, so the architecture is aligned from the start rather than reconciled at the end.
We catalogue content in both language versions, map user journeys for each audience, and document the gaps. The content audit spreadsheet covers both versions in parallel columns so structural inconsistencies are visible at a glance.
We produce the parallel sitemap, test navigation labels in both languages, and present for stakeholder review. Both versions are reviewed together so that structural decisions about one version are made with awareness of their implications for the other.
We produce template outlines calibrated to the content density expectations of each audience and the URL architecture for both language versions including hreflang mapping.
We map internal links for both language versions and document cross-language linking strategy including language switcher behaviour and hreflang implementation instructions.
We deliver the bilingual design handover package and brief the design team on the structural requirements of each language version.
/ Common questions
Straight answers on scope, timelines and cost. Anything else, ask us directly.
Ask us directlyThe IA process is conducted bilingually. Workshop facilitation, sitemap documentation, and navigation label review are all conducted with Japanese-language accuracy. We do not produce a Japanese IA by translating an English one.
They should have the same structural hierarchy, but not necessarily identical page counts. Some content is relevant only to one audience. The rule is that the hierarchy should be parallel even when the specific pages within it differ. A visitor switching languages should land on the corresponding page in the other version, not on a homepage.
We treat information density as a template-level decision rather than a language-level one. Japanese page templates are structured to accommodate greater content depth. English page templates are structured for a different reading pattern. Both templates serve the same page in the hierarchy. The structure is the same; the content volume and layout logic differ.
For most organisations, subdirectory-based language segmentation using /ja/ and /en/ prefixes is the most manageable approach from both a technical and a content management perspective. Subdomains add DNS and crawl complexity without meaningful benefit for most site structures. We document the tradeoffs specific to your organisation's situation during the IA process.
Yes. The IA document we produce is CMS-agnostic. It specifies the structure, hierarchy, URLs, and templates. The CMS implementation is the development team's responsibility. We produce the brief that tells them what to build.
Start here
A bilingual website built without a bilingual information architecture will produce two structurally inconsistent sites that neither audience experiences as complete. The IA Diagnostic is the starting point: a five-day assessment of both language versions that identifies the specific structural problems and gives you a clear picture of what the fix involves.
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