a version of LLBean's extensive site map

Stumbling upon a discussion about Site Map Design Best Practices on IxDA.org’s website, I was encouraged to find Jared Spool’s comments about site maps, user experience and search. Here are the highlights:

• People don’t want site maps – they use site maps when the website have poorly-designed navigation and bad user experience.
• Site map users are really making last-ditch efforts to find what they want.
• Analyzing site map traffic tells you what really isn’t working in your navigation NOT how to make the site map better.
• Really understanding web standards and web accessibility is more beneficial than plunking a site map down and calling it a day.
• Site maps are not SEO – if the website has a well though-out strategy, efficient architecture, proper coding, great content and linking structures, site maps won’t add anything.
• Site maps ARE needed for poorly-designed websites – there is benefit to adding one in this case.

You can read more about why Jared Spool thinks site maps are a design cop-out and some nice case studies by clicking the link above. The biggest point he makes (and I agree) is this, “Users don’t want site maps.” And they don’t. They want engaging experiences. They want tons of great content they can count on from authors they trust. They want easy-to-use architecture and intuitive organization.

They don’t want site maps.