ArticleBase Presents: Why is a Sitemap important for your Website Design?

Sitemap of a website contains details of all the website pages arranged in a hierarchical fashion. It is a crucial element of website design as it forms the basic information architecture of the entire website.

However, web designers continue to undermine their importance and take it into consideration only as a peripheral task. But the benefits of having a sitemap illustrates just how critical it can be for the performance of the website

Benefits of sitemaps

Retain Visitors
All the visitors who get lost within a website or are just plain frustrated figuring out where to head next rely on the sitemaps to show them way. Were it not for the sitemap, visitors would have found it easier to navigate to another website, which may be of your competitors, to search what they desire.

Giving directions
More than the homepage, visitors find it easier to look at the sitemap to get to the page they want. This is because the homepage only has main links to the various pages but the sitemap also lists the sub-pages that lie deeper.

Search engine friendly
The sitemap is favored more by the search engine as they provide quick access to all the important sections of the website.

How to make a good sitemap
To extract all these benefits of having a sitemap, it is also important you have a good one. Here are some tips for the same:

Make it noticeable
Having a sitemap that no one can see is as good as having nothing at all. Many websites, even if they have a sitemap, have it so vaguely that visitors seldom know they exist. You can only profit from the sitemap if it fulfils its purposes to help users.
Make sure the sitemap is clearly marked and easily visible to visitors and is not hidden in the footer links.

Keep it clean
Unlike other pages of the website, you don’t really need to exhibit your creative caliber here. A sitemap is not an example of your designing talents but a page that defines the structure of your website.
Make sure you keep it as clean and simple as can be and navigating it shouldn’t be an add-on hassle.

Don’t use JavaScript
Designers often use JavaScript to make the sitemap expand and contract like the windows explorer. But this ruins the essential purpose of the sitemap which is to provide an overview of the whole website.

Have effective links
The sitemap of the website should not prompt confusions in itself. For all the links on it, those already visited by visitors should be indicated in a different color.
If they are searching for some specific content in the various pages, it will certainly help then to know what all have been checked and what are left.

Dont go overboard
Like stated earlier, the sitemap shouldn’t be a complication in itself.
It’s good to list all the pages and sub pages of a website that is relatively small in size. But for sites that are bigger, make sure to restrict the sitemap to less than a couple of screens. Any thin more would just take back the visitor to square one.

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