What is a site map?
A sitemap is a roadmap to follow during the development of a website.
Describes the goals and purposes of a site, such as attracting new leads or making online sales, to optimize the web project. It also helps provide visitors with an optimized user experience, such as easy navigation within the site, by establishing the hierarchy of website pages at an early stage.
A sitemap is a resource that the client and the web development team can refer to throughout the project. It is a useful tool that shows the relationships between the site's pages and its various content elements.
Ultimately, building a website without a sitemap is like building a house without a blueprint.
Why is a sitemap built before the web design begins?
Example of a sitemap:
Four reasons why it's important to know what a sitemap is and what it achieves
1) Puts all participants in the web project on the same channel
A web development project involves the participation of many different people, including project leaders, business owners, web designers, and account managers.
By outlining a solid, agreed-upon plan at the beginning of a project, the entire process tends to flow better.
2) Establishes the goals and purpose of the website
Too many websites today provide a poor user experience.
These hard-to-navigate sites generally lack a sitemap that describes their goals and purposes. Once a sitemap is created, the parts of a website are more easily connected in place.
3) Avoids creating duplicate content
Duplicate content is another avoidable web design mistake that can hurt search rankings. By mapping out your site beforehand, you can avoid redundancy by determining from the start where all content should be placed.
4) Establish a clear conversion funnel route
If you want to generate leads - prospects - with digital marketing, you must have a clear conversion path. To achieve the best results, this process should start at the sitemap phase.
Then, you can make sure that visitors are correctly directed from your calls to action on each web page.
Conclusion
Now that you know what a sitemap is and what its purpose is, you're better equipped to fully participate in your company's exciting new web design project.
Note: We at istratega use sitemaps as a first step, before starting the web prototyping and finally the development of the website.
