Table of contents material

A site map's main benefit is to give users an overview of the site's areas in a single glance by dedicating an entire page to a visualization of the information architecture. If designed well, this overview can include several levels of hierarchy, and yet not be so big that users lose their ability to grasp the map as a whole. Some of the site maps we studied stretched over six screens on a standard 800x600 monitor. This is much too much. We recommend keeping the site map short; it should be no more than two-and-a-half times the window size most common among your users.

The greatest failures in our study came from site maps that attempted to lure the user into a dynamically twisting and expanding view, rather than presenting a simple, static representation of the information architecture. The site map's goal is to give users a single overview of the information space. If users have to work to reveal different parts of the map, that benefit is lost.

Dynamic site maps are basically an alternative way of navigating through the information space using a set of non-standard interaction techniques. For example, one site used a hyperbolic tree, where users had to click and drag clusters of links around the screen to expand areas of interest. Nobody could do this well.

A site map should not be a navigational challenge of its own. It should be a map.