Welcome back.
So you may be asking yourself, well, how do I create a site map?
Well, let's jump in.
The first step is anatomy.
Let's learn about the anatomy of a sign that so essentially sign will consist of all these linked pages.
So we have this as our page.
I mean, they don't need to necessarily look like this.
Like I said before, with other things, it's all about what works for you, what best represents what
you're trying to get across.
So right now, I'm just kind of using a little card.
I don't necessarily use this when I'm creating the same map.
So this is the main card.
And within the anatomy, you have a reference number.
Some people like to use reference numbers.
They really kind of help when you're creating an actual wire frames afterwards, you can use that same
reference number.
You don't necessarily need to.
I know a lot of people that like to, but it's a preference.
But one thing that is definitely needed is a label.
So this label over here is definitely going to be needed because they'll let us understand what the
page name is.
That is what we really want to know.
So what you want to do is you want to start with your homepage always.
The roads that follow afterwards are by the highest priority, so I say Rose, because typically people
when they build a sign that they're building it from the top to the bottom, you can build it from left
to right.
Like I said before, it's all preference.
So I'm going left to right right now.
So the next step of the same map would be like your primary, secondary and tertiary pages and so on.
So right now we have a primary page.
So if we were to think about our current client, we have our home page and you could access a category
on that page and that would be our primary level.
And then afterwards you may be able to select a subcategory and that would be our secondary level and
it could go on and on.
I wouldn't advise doing that, but you get the gist.
So this is our primary and secondary and this is ground zero.
Now, you could use a legend if you like.
It's totally up to you.
That's another preference.
If you're sharing it with a lot of people, it may help if you have a lot of symbols in there.
If you have colors, I like to use colors because it helps to signify whether like a page is public
or a member only.
So totally up to you if it really helps to get through what you're trying to say with your product and
your sitemap use a legend.
So there are two types of site maps.
This is a flat site map and this is better suited for smaller to medium sized products.
I'm thinking maybe like ten to a hundred pages, maybe even less.
To be honest, there are four or less vertical levels.
You'll notice that there's only two vertical levels here and that's probably what we'll be using when
we create our site map.
But there are far less vertical levels, and they all help enhance discoverability of content because
there are fewer levels to click through.
So you're going to use this for smaller products.
You don't want people to be going too deep unless it's absolutely necessary.
The next step of setting up is a deep segment.
So these are better suited for larger sized sites and they help house a lot of information.
So we're talking like hundreds and hundreds of pages.
We're talking maybe pages for like a government website, maybe like a huge e-commerce website.
They can get around to five vertical levels, which is huge.
I mean, for here.
And you can imagine the amount of pages that you can get into.
This ultimately makes it harder to discover content.
So you'll need to think about the different ways for users to get to places like menu shortcuts.
But yeah, so deep site maps use them for larger products, don't use them for a product like we're
building.
So why are they so valuable?
Well, they help you plan for usability and it provides a full overview which can really help team simplify
and trim unnecessary pages.
But really, when you build a site map, you can also strategically place content where users can find
it.
It results in the creation of navigation hierarchies and categorizations of your product.
You get a good understanding of your navigation.
You can calculate the amount of content you need and it gives you a good understanding of your scope.
So same apps are incredibly useful.
You may not create like a final site map and that shouldn't be a bottleneck.
You in terms of starting wire frames or even like sketching and user flows.
But you should really start one to get a sense of what your entire navigation scheme is going to look
like.
Let's jump right into figglehorn.
Let's start building our own.