Jakob Nielsen – Site Map Usability

Site Map Usability:

28 design guidelines based on usability studies with people using site maps

Users go to site maps if they are lost, frustrated, or looking for specific details on a crowded site. A site map’s main benefit is to give users an overview of the site’s areas in a single glance by dedicating an entire page to a visualization of the information architecture. If designed well, this overview can include several levels of hierarchy, and yet not get so big that users lose their ability to grasp the map as a whole.

This report is based on usability research with real users and the way they use real site maps. It contains 28 design guidelines that will make site maps easier to use and make websites and intranets easier to navigate.

The guidelines are based on usability tests of the following sites and their site maps: CDNOW, Documentum, Interwoven, Mercedes Benz USA, Museum of Modern Art, New Jersey Transit, Novell, Salon, Siemens Medical Solutions Health Services Corporation, and the United States Treasury Department.

The report also contains examples, screenshots, and user comments for 13 additional site maps that the test participants encountered in their own web browsing, but which were not studied as systematically as the sites listed above.

Richly illustrated with 56 color screenshots of site maps and design elements that worked and didn’t work. The report also contains drawings made by the test users to visualize their understanding of the information architectures after using the site maps.

Table of Contents

105-page report by Amy Stover Schade, Kara Pernice Coyne, and Jakob Nielsen

1. Executive Summary
2. Current State of Affairs
3. Recommendations: Site Specific Examples
4. Design Guidelines
5. Site Map Link: Name and Placement
   • 6 design guidelines
6. Site Map Navigation
   • 6 design guidelines
7. Relationship of the Site Map to the Site
   • 4 design guidelines
8. Design
   • 7 design guidelines
9. Content
   • 2 design guidelines
10. Alphabetical Indices
    • 3 design guidelines
11. How People Say They Use Site Maps
    • Why people use site maps
    • Why people don’t use site maps
    • Participants’ definitions of site maps
12. Participants’ Site Diagrams
13. Other Sites Participants Visited
14. About the Sites Studied
15. About Participants
16. Methodology
17. About Using This Methodology

What You Get

• Checklist of 28 specific design recommendations: review your website and its site map for these 28 items, and you will discover several things that need improvement.
  • The average website typically violates about half of our usability guidelines. You might have the one perfect site in the world that does everything right, but the odds are against you. It is safest to score your design against a checklist of usability guidelines to make sure you don’t do anything wrong.
• Description of how users behave when using a wide variety of site maps. Learn from their comments and their reactions to common design mistakes on the sites we tested.
• 56 screenshots of site map designs with descriptions of why they worked well for users or caused them problems in usability testing.
• 7 user-drawn diagrams representing their mental models of sites.
• $70,000 of user research at 0.08% of the cost.
• Test methodology description, allowing you to run your own user tests of your own site map.
• Knowledge to make your site map easier to use; and thus your website easier to navigate. The business value of helping users find things depends on the site, but is usually substantial.

Who Should Read This Report?

• Anybody who is responsible for the design or implementation of websites or intranets, especially if they are big or have complex navigation and information architecture

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