Usability Report > A Sitemap on Every Page

A Sitemap on Every Page

Usability Report by Peter Van Dijck of poorbuthappy.com (Guide to Columbia)

Foreword

Peter Van Dijck wrote me about how he uses a sitemap on all of his web pages. He threw me some statistics, that you will see below, that really made me think about navigation on small web sites. A sitemap on every page is an interesting idea. I've only seen this done in a few cases, and usually it is not done well. However, Peter obviously spent some time working on his and he solicited feedback form users. I hope you find Peter's report interesting. If you have similar usability stories, please tell me about them. There's a good chance that we can take your story and turn it into a report. -- John S. Rhodes

The Report

After testing several different sitemap designs on users, I decided to try putting one on every page of my small Columbian web site. I then decided to track how often it was used for navigation. It turns out the sitemap is used for over 65% of all navigation done on the site. That was a bit of a surprise, especially because the sitemap is at the bottom of the page, not at the top. I had expected it to be used for 15 to 30% of all navigation, not 65%. (You can see the current results here; they are updated dynamically.)

Here's what I learned:

It's pretty easy to automate some usability testing with interesting results. For example, I had more navigation on the site, but took it off because the stats showed it wasn't being used often.
Putting general navigation at the top of the page and specific navigation at the bottom seems to work well.
Putting a complete sitemap on every page can be very effective, especially on a small site.

The sitemap is in a table-of-contents style, and has elements of an index since some pages are listed more than once. My testing with users showed this was the most efficient form. The only hard part was to find the right categories. I had users divide a list of pages on the site in categories of their own, and then chose the best categories from those.

After watching a few users use the site, it turned out they would start using the sitemap intensely after discovering it. They also used the links in the body of the text a lot, which aren't being tracked so far, so I don't have statistics on those yet.

In an email, I asked John Rhodes what he thought about this. He had some good points:

First, it doesn't really surprise me. Navigation is so very important. Good navigation is often much better for users than using a search mechanism. This is true for just about any size site.
Second, since the site is relative small, this is an effective method of navigation. However, I should note that this style would probably only work on small to medium sized sites.
Third, it doesn't matter that the sitemap is at the bottom of the page, particularly if you have repeat visitors. People learn very fast to use navigation if they can find it. Quality is easy to spot; people gravitate to it.

So there you go, I implemented some simple automated testing and navigation was improved for my users. By keeping track of the links on my site, I found out that a persistent sitemap is of key importance on my web site. My users can quickly find what they need and their habits determine how I design and update my site. Follow the links below to discover more.

Live statistics are here: (about 250 pageviews a day)
http://poorbuthappy.com/usability/colombianavigation/index.php3

The website is here:
http://poorbuthappy.com/colombia/

An article I wrote on the functions of sitemaps, search engines and navigational elements:
http://evolt.org/index.cfm?menu=8&cid=713&catid=20