Sitemaps 'should be easy to use'

03/09/2008

Website design projects must include the creation of a simple, user-focused sitemap, an expert has said.

New research has shown that sitemaps continue to be an important point of reference for web users and as a result they must be easy to use and adequately laid out, usability guru Jakob Nielsen explained in his latest Alertbox column.

He recommended that web design specialists refrain from making sitemaps too interactive, as a sitemap that makes people work to find links is not fulfilling its true purpose.

Furthermore, a multi-column layout can help to improve the usability of the sitemap, Mr Nielsen said, explaining: "Multi-column sitemaps worked better [in the research] because users needed less scrolling to get an overview of the site's structure," he explained.

"People were more likely to become lost within long, scrolling sitemaps."

Websites where visitors tend to go straight to the sitemap rather than using the normal navigation system may be suffering from significant usability issues overall, Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering, a consulting organisation, recently claimed.