One of the most famous examples is the Winchester House in California. Built continuously over the course of 38 years, the house was constructed and renovated one room at a time without consideration for the other rooms surrounding it.
This lead to some very unique features:
• stairways to nowhere
• doors opening onto brick walls
• second story doors exiting the
house without deck or stairs
• doors opening onto brick walls
• second story doors exiting the
house without deck or stairs
You would be hard-pressed to find someone desiring to take on a construction project like the Winchester House today. Yet I work with clients regularly that have websites originally constructed over 15 years ago which have just evolved, new sections being added, sections being removed from site navigation but still linked to from internal pages, etc.
A scan of a current client revealed their website had over 500 pages, while they were sure it contained less than 30. Ten years of organic growth and design led to a complex site with many hidden pages and more than a few broken internal links.
This is where the value of a sitemap comes into play. While many may have utilized a sitemap as a wayfinding tool on a website, their primary use is in organizing a web design project. Kim Baer, author of Information Design Workbook writes:
Sitemaps are foundational tools of information architecture, related to the master planning documents that architects have traditionally used when designing extremely complex building projects such as hospitals or university campuses.
They are also an excellent tool to ensure consensus among the various stakeholders in a project. Detailed sitemaps, such as those built by a graphics tool like Visio are excellent reference documents, both during the construction of a website and afterwards for planning future renovations.
I use these regularly, but find using a mind-mapping tool in brainstorming sessions with a client to be far more fluid to the dynamic nature of the meeting. Once consensus is reached in the meeting, I produce a detailed map for the client to review and ultimately sign off on. This then becomes our jointly agreed upon plan.
Don't let your company's web presence become the next Winchester House. Take the time to complete a site map before beginning page construction.
Resources Cited:
Baer, Kim, and Jill Vacarra. Information Design Workbook: Graphic Approaches, Solutions, and Inspiration+ 30 Case Studies. Rockport Pub, 2008.
