Clicks & Notes

26 January 2005

Thinking Differently About Site Mapping and Navigation

Asterisk - Thinking Differently About Site Mapping and Navigation:

I’m really questioning the traditional “home down” way a site map is presented and how that hierarchical visualization (and often times the groupings themselves) drives our design, content and navigation. The concept of “home” is a valid one, although the idea that it’s first, or “at the top” isn’t really accurate in many cases. It make more sense to visualize it at the center, as kind of a “hub”.

Alternatives to a “traditional” site map and navigation include:

  • proper meta data (particularly labels and page titles) for search relevancy
  • related item grouping and linking
  • Indexes
  • links within content
  • faceted classification and corresponding navigation
  • folksonomies
  • personalized taxonomies
  • a homepage that acts less like a landing page and more like an information hub (or site map - oh the irony)
⇒ Filed under:  by jen @ 3:53 pm

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© Jennifer Vetterli, 2005