With anything we do, we need to start with a strong foundation in order to have something strong when we are finished. This in terms of web design means creating a sitemap.
So what the heck is a sitemap you ask? A sitemap in terms of planning a website is the list of pages and hierarchy of the pages to each other to show the overall layout of a website. Not to be confused with the sitemap term now used with SEO which is usually an html visual representation, but not necessarily showing all pages or the hierarchy.
The best way to start is to make a list of all the pages you want on your website, this can also be a brainstorming session between client and designer if the website will be quite complex. Next you need to mark out your top level items, these will generally form your main navigation menu. From there your sub-level pages, and so on and so forth until all pages are accounted for. I would not recommend going further than one dropdown menu option, either you have too much content and need to scale back, or think about combining pages. You also need to note any pages that are to hidden, for example you ‘thank you’ page for your email newsletter signup.
From here we then create a flow chart to demonstrate hierarchy and natural flow of the website.
Here is an example I created.
You can see the importance of such a step in the initial planning stages of a website so that there is a clear understanding of how the website will take shape and is a great way to double check that you have covered everything. Don’t feel that you have to stick to it like glue though, it is an initial plan and as the project develops there may be changes that were not forecast in the beginning.
Have a bodacious day,
and what to do in situations where you have thousands of URLs? for example, a dating website or real estate property website? both of these websites add a new URL each time a new person makes a profile or a new property comes onto the market.
this sitemap file size would be HUGE and very dynamic. how do you handle situations like this
Great question Mike! As this is the planning stage before building a website you definitely have to factor in how content will be dynamically created but its not necessary to show every possible page, as most of the time you won’t actually have this information.
Using your real estate example, you would have your usual home, about, team, contact pages etc then you would essentially have a search results page, and a listings page (showing numerous listings, similar to a blog page), then sitting underneath that would be a single listing page (again similar to a single blog post page). That is as far as you need to go on the sitemap plan even though there maybe 100 listing addresses the formula is the same, multi-listing page goes to single listing page.
In the image example above I have above you can see this on the blog page and single post pages. I haven’t listed every blog post I am going to write, I simply don’t know that information. But am able to list the 2 types of pages how they work in relation to each other. Hopefully that helps you out.