Building and maintaining a site map or site index is, like on-site Search, fixing the symptom and not addressing the true problem,” writes renowned usability guru Jared Spool in his most recent posting, What about Site Maps and Site Indexes? (thanks to James Robertson).
Mr. Spool is a smart guy. A web leader. A true guru. But he’s dead wrong on this issue. Well, partly wrong.
Jared maintains that if the site navigation or ‘scent’ is good, you don’t need a site map. Wrong. Even regular users go the site map once in a while. Yes, navigating the sites navigation tree or categories is preferred, followed by using the search engine, but sometimes users just want a site map to have a bird’s eye view of the entire site... to see how content relates to each other, particularly first time users.
Spool also intimates in his above comment that search is redundant if your navigation is good. Tell that to
“Fix the scent problems and the need for on-site Search diminishes quickly,” says Spool. This is correct. If your navigation is good, then search and site maps become tertiary considerations. But again, you may still have up to 5 or 10% of your first-time users heading to the site map regardless of the quality of your site scent. What is intuitive to one person, is not necessarily intuitive to another. I mean, I voted for George Bush, doesn’t everyone?!?! Just kidding, I’m Canadian and therefore can’t vote for George Bush. *Shudder*
“Investing resources in building an effective site map or site index is taking resources away from fixing scent problems,” says Spool. Dude, man, you couldn’t be more wrong. How many site owners are still custom coding a site map?!?! Very few. Any platform or content management system worth its salt automatically creates and updates your site map. If it’s automatic, then why ditch it?
Spool is write however to intimate that you should never, never rely on a site map as a primary navigation mechanism. First, maximize your navigation. Secondly, maximize the search engine effectiveness and its supporting meta tagging strategy and taxonomy. But don’t do the first two at the expense of a site map. Site maps are still appreciated by some, and expected by many.