How do you avoid overly complex or bloated site structures?

Bloated structures are prevented by organizing content around pillars and clusters, enforcing consistent labeling, limiting top-level navigation items, and eliminating orphan pages. Information architecture should be designed to accommodate growth without requiring a full redesign every time new content is added.

Content pillars cover broad topics while clusters group subtopics beneath them, creating natural boundaries that prevent sprawl. Categories and tags must follow strict naming conventions so new content has a defined home rather than spawning new sections. Limiting choices at each navigation level reduces cognitive load (a principle rooted in Hick's Law: decision time increases with the number of options). Dropdown menus should be avoided when possible because they are harder for search engines to crawl and discourage visits to top-level pages. Regular audits catch orphan pages that have accumulated without internal links, and cross-linking between related clusters keeps the structure connected without creating a tangled web. The growth principle means building IA that can absorb new pages into existing categories rather than requiring structural overhauls.