Tips for site maps

Making effective site maps

A site map is a tool for explaining the organizational structure of the information on a website at a level higher than the single page.

Tips

• The basic elements of a site map are sections, sub-sections, and pages.
• Show units of information, not user actions.
• Starting out, aim to depict information at the level of an entire section, sub-section, or page.
• Consider what you call things. Titles matter.
• The site map talks about relationships between pieces of information. It does not tell you how the website looks.
• Usually, site maps are tree structures.
• Almost every site map needs a “Home” page.

Aside: please call the major areas of a website sections. It’s fine for a non-professional user to talk about “tabs,” but you should aim for more precision.

Examples

All of these are slightly too simple for the Publishing systems project. GGWash needs a larger list of subsections/topics.