Often, the sense of lostness inside a website is because the Internet involves a non-linear network of links.
Other websites do not always link to a homepage, creating a large number of undefined paths to specific information. When a user clicks a link into the middle of a site, it can cause disorientation. A well-designed site map may help to ease these situations when it is designed to reflect the needs of the user.
If site maps are to reduce the sense of lostness on a website by providing greater organization, then their use should produce a clearer understanding of the structure and purpose of the site. This should in turn reduce the frequency of incorrect choices for finding specific information. It should also produce lower level of confusion and greater levels of satisfaction.
In this article we identify the basic purposes of site maps, compare them to systems used by print books and finally review a popular website’s site map to determine good features and suggestions.
Basic Purpose of Site Maps
A site map visually summarizes a Web site’s features. It should also provide the user the ability to identify where they are on the website.
To achieve these minimum goals, information on a site map must reflect the needs of the users, not the organization of the company or other criteria. For example, the General Electric website serves first to identify its businesses:
http://www.ge.com/sitemap.htm
While this may be effective for a user researching the company, a user looking for information about an obscure item such as Quartz Rods will be helped very little by the outline of this page.
User should be able to look at the map and quickly decide which areas are of interest, usually a very specific piece of information. In usability testing, when a search returns no results or a site map does not display a topic of interest, with good reason, it becomes assumed that it does not exist on the site and the session is abandoned.
On the NASA website (http://www.nasa.gov/siteindex.html), things that users are interested in have more emphasis. I decided to ask a question of the website and look at the site map for an answer. The question was, “How do I get in to see a launch?” I opened the site map and surveyed the headings, I chose first to read the topics under “News and Information” without luck. Then I tried “More About NASA” and found what I needed, succinctly labeled “See a Launch”. This is a good example of a site map that is user centered.
The Site map In Comparison to a Book
In print we see a detailed table of contents and at the back of the book an alphabetical index.
If you’re looking for a summary of the book, you look at the introduction and at the table of contents. If you’re looking for information on something specific, you use the alphabetical index, which gives you a list of pages where that word is mentioned. The combination is simple and effective.
An “about us” page or homepage introduction can satisfy a web users need for scope. Site search is generally the tool of choice for a specific need but when that falls short, or there is a need for context, a site map can likely save an abandoned session. Like a good book index, an organized site map can allow fast and easy access to information when proper attention is paid to its design. Many users see a site map as a last resort, and it should be a priority to offer a well-organized site map in hopes of continuing the session.
An example that hurts usability by being modeled too closely to a book is the ESPN website:
http://espn.go.com/sitetools/s/sitemap/
Here, ESPN chooses to have an alphabetical index of its site map. Granted, this is a large website, but this format is difficult to use. Immediately it divides users into two categories, only one of which will receive help: “I know what I want by name” and “hmm, I don’t know where I am, let me find out”.
On ESPN the user that wants to alleviate the sense of lostness has no course of action because the site makes no effort to address this need. My suggestion would be to rename this section as a “Site Index”.
Critique of the Apple.com Site Map
Let’s consider an example site map in detail and see where it does well and could use improvement:
http://www.apple.com/find/sitemap.html
Good features:
One useful feature of the Apple site map is that it displays visited links. User testing shows how frustrating it can be to survey the site map and click on a page to discover and say “I have already been to this page, two times!” -now a third visit and the frustration mounts.
Graphical site maps have the disadvantage of loading too slow. Apple’s site map is text based and loads quickly. Users tend to be frustrated and resort to the site map like a driver resorts to rolling the window down for directions. Site maps should be text biased. They are not for show, and should avoid any thick graphic representation.
Another intuitive piece that Apple scores points for is having a search box at the bottom of the page. In Apple’s case there page is quite long, on my monitor, taking up approximately 2 screens. The logic is that if a user reaches the bottom of the site map, likely they have not found there topic addressed. Offering an extra lifeline, like a search, is a smart way to help.
Suggestions:
If we analyze this site map with the question “What will help a user decide which page to choose?” We are immediately struck that there is no differentiation between what is popular on the site and what is not. Non-critical features should not be ignored; in fact they are often the reason for a visit to a site map. But common pages should get priority, this could have been done by color coding (for example, red is critical info, gray is non-critical), drawing lines between/around related pages, or grouping related information.
I find the red circle at the top of each heading is also confusing. Is this a link? In this case it is not, but the triangle (fashioned like a play button) is a common metaphor for a link and should not be used on a website unless it is a link.
A suggestion I would also make at the bottom of a site map is a prominently placed piece of contact information. Offering users the ability to ask a question is a message to the user that the company truly cares about the experience and is willing to do whatever it takes to help. Along this same vein of thought, if through analyzing site statistics it becomes clear that users are coming to your site for something completely different than you offer, placing a link to that resource is a thoughtful gesture that will likely be remembered. Our company is called “Transmissions” – and we find many people searching our site for things like “1993 Ford Ranger” and “Overhauls”. Not everyone notices we are a website development company. Therefore we spot these keywords in our search and offer a link to Google’s earch results that may be more useful.
In summary an effective site map should:
- Answer the question “Where am I?”
- Contain its purpose similar to a books: a site map, like an index is a reference
- Offer differentiation between what is popular on the site and what is not
- Graphical site maps loading too slow, the site map should be text based
- Avoid common navigation metaphors unless it is truly navigation
- Be brief and stick to fact
- Offer outlets such as search or email contact when the site map fails to provide help
If we think of the Internet as a community when developing a site map it tends to free your thoughts about organizing the website outline perfectly and allows development to focus on how this page can help other users find what they need.
Article by Isaac Ferreira, visit http://www.onlinetransmissions.com for related articles.