| Adding a Site Map
If you have a small website, your
navigation bar should get most
people where they want to go. When your site gets large,
it becomes more difficult for visitors to find what they're
looking for. If you can't fit all your major pages on your
navigation bar, a site map is a good way to list the pages on
your site in one place for visitors' ease in finding what
they're looking for. If people have to go hunting around
your site to find what they're looking for, they may cancel out
and move on to another site - and you've lost a potential
contact!. If someone is visiting your
site, they are probably looking for something in particular.
Make it easy for them to get there. Nothing is more
frustrating than spending five minutes searching for something
you think should be there. Site maps are similar to a road
map or book index. A good site map should show visitors how to
get to the general vicinity of what they're looking for - if not
directly there. Having a good site map can benefit you in
another way. When a search engine finds a site map, they can use
it to get to pages buried under several layers on your site, so
they find those pages much faster and index most of your
site more quickly. To develop your site map, you might want
to start with your original
flowchart/outline.
However, anyone can create a page that just includes a link to
every page in your site, but a good site map is more than that.
- When developing a good site map, you need to list your
items in a logical, ordered setup. Put yourself in your
visitor's shoes and pretend you're looking for something on
your site. What kind of listing would be the easiest for
you to find what you're looking for?
- You don't need to really list EVERY page in your site.
In fact, for a site that is really huge, listing every page
would overwhelm the visitors and defeat the purpose. A
good site map should list the major sections and pages on your
site.
- Consider grouping your links. As an example, look at the
navigation bar at left on this page. My site is not so
large yet that I feel the need for a site map because I can
get a good site map into my navigation bar using
Server Side Includes (SSI).
Grouping topics
and then listing main pages on each topic is a nice, clean way
to organize it. The same
concept would work well for a real site map.
Go to major sites and look for their site maps.
You'll see all kinds. There's really no one way to do a
site map, just make it easy for your visitors to navigate
around your site.
Some designers use a real graphic for a site map with
links on various parts of the graphic. However, keep
in mind those individuals who have non-graphical browsers
and can't see the graphic. If you do a graphical site
map, consider also listing text links somewhere on the page.
If you do create a site map, don't forget to put a link
on every page so that your visitors can access it!
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