jonrichd - 2:02 am on Mar 2, 2006 (gmt 0)

Darn, PageOne, you're giving away all the secrets!

Seriously, I have used the inverted pyramid, and indeed the whole concept of how a newspaper works in explaining information architecture to clients and potential clients. You can look at the sections of a newspaper as the equivalent of a main menu on a website, with headlines and callouts (read title, description and heading tags) calling the reader's attention to the importance of an individual story.

I ask clients to imagine a newspaper with all the stories and headlines in the same typeface, with box scores mixed in with national news. How hard would it be to figure out what was important and what is not?

By applying both IPW and the natural structure provided by HTML tags, you provide a better experience to both the human and robot users of your site.