A site map is nothing more than a hierarchical representation of sections or pages on your website. It helps with visualizing your website from a high-level and planning content development.
Every site map starts with a homepage and has some number of pages hanging off it. It doesn’t need to be a 100% literal interpretation of every interconnection between pages, but it needs to represent the major sections and pages.
A basic site map for any small business should include the following pages:
- Homepage
- Products or Services
- Testimonials
- About Us
- Contact Us
Each of these pages serves a particular purpose for the website.
Homepage - overview of the problem you are passionate about solving for your customers
Products or Services – describes specifically what you do to solve this problem for your customers
Testimonials – positive statements from delighted customers whose problems you solved
About Us – description of the passionate people involved in solving your customers’ problems
Contact Us – instructs people who think they have a problem you can solve how they can get in touch with you
Types of Site Maps
Site maps can be as simple as lists in an outline format, or they can be created using a graphics program so they appear visually like a map. Lovely Charts is an excellent online drawing program that I like to use to create site maps for clients.
Once your site map is complete, you can begin sketching the layout of the site and thinking about the content that you will need for each section.
Using Your Site Map to Plan for Creating Content
In the simple example above, you will only need a page of content for each topic unless your business provides multiple products or services to your customers. It is then important to be as specific as possible when describing each of the products or services, and I highly recommend using multiple pages to adequately describe what it is you specifically provide or do.
Being as precise as possible will benefit your potential customers when they’re searching for a provider who does what you do, and it will help your website appear at the top of the search engine results page.
Next up: drawing wireframes to help you visual the layout of the different parts of your website.
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