Card Sorting: Everything You Need to Know to Make Informed UX Decisions

Red Shark Digital | Webflow SEO Experts
Guest Post: Author, Nadica Metuleva

Card sorting is a trending tool for data collection. It helps researchers understand how the targeted audience perceives the information, uses the products or services offered, or what opinion they have about something.

Based on the data collected via UX card sorting, designers and developers can make smarter, more promising UX decisions. For example, they’ll create a site that is simple to navigate by removing the barriers that visitors point to. They’ll focus on the content that doesn’t work to meet the expectations of those it is aimed for. The list goes on and on.

The process of card sorting is not very simple. With that in mind, we’ve created this short UX card sorting guide that will help you make this easier and more effective.

But First, What is UX Card Sorting?

UX card sorting is a research technique that UX designers use to discover how people categorize information and how well they understand it. There are two general situations in which card sorting is most useful. Firstly, you should use it if you want to learn how people group and understand different concepts. Secondly, you should use it when you want to test a new design or improve the existing design. Knowing this, let’s take a look at the top two tips for better card sorting.

UX Card Sorting Tips

1. Smart UX card sorting: go digital and use software to optimize the process

Card sorting is not an easy task. You need to create the process, gather the research participants, implement your card sorting, and organize and evaluate the results. This can take a lot of time and, unless you are experienced at doing it, you can easily make tons of mistakes in the process.

Today, there’s no need to do this alone - or manually, especially since digital card sorting can give you a much wider reach.

The smartest move for effective card sorting today is to use a tool that facilitates and automates the entire process. Maze, a leader in testing today, will help you run card sorting tasks to improve IA and define navigation and naming. Thanks to the automated analytics feature of Maze, you can map mental models in half the time.

The ready card sorting tasks on the website can be customized to your taste. In Maze, users can create unique instructions, edit the task settings, and add descriptions and images to boost the tester experience.

2. It’s all about using the right type of UX card sorting

Depending on what you want to discover, you’ll need to choose the card sorting technique to use. There are three main types:Open card sorting

  • Closed card sorting
  • Hybrid card sorting

Maze has these explained in detail below:

Red Shark Digital | UX Card Sorting Categories

Extra Tip: Hire a Digital Expert To Help You! | UX Card Sorting

You could definitely use some help in gathering this data and turning it into a smart strategy for your brand. At Red Shark Digital, you get the opportunity to hire Webflow SEO experts that will optimize your design’s ranking and help you attract more people to your brand with UX card sorting in mind.

Research is a great part of SEO. In order to boost the ranking of a page, experts use techniques like card sorting to tailor the content and design to meet the expectations of the target audience. If you hire such an expert, you can enjoy a higher ranking on search engines, better reach on social channels, and get top results without having to do everything on your own.

There you have it - the top three tips for UX card sorting that will help you optimize the user experience. Good luck!

About the Author: Nadica Metuleva

Nadica Metuleva is a freelance writer who’s passionate about creating quality, original content. She holds a Master’s degree in English teaching and a Bachelor’s degree in translation. With 8 years of experience in the freelance writing industry, Nadica has become proficient in creating content that captivates the audience, drives growth, and educates. You can find her on LinkedIn.