michael owen hill

Organizing a Site Map for Usability

A Practice Areas button with 15 diverse pages under it no longer serves the purpose of helping a site visitor find what they are looking for. There are two easy ways to organize pages in a Web site to make navigation easier:

·         Multiple overview pages

·         Topic headings

Background: A Web site consists of parent pages and child pages.  The parent pages are used to create the top row of navigation buttons on a web site.  We have room for seven or eight buttons (or a total of 85 characters of text) on a typical navigation bar.  A standard site map—Home, Firm Overview, Attorneys, Practice Areas, Resources, Contact Us— uses 56 characters, so we can add a few more parent pages as long as we keep their names succinct.

Even in a large site, we should try to keep site navigation to two levels: parent pages (represented in bold text) and child pages (in regular text).  In other words, child pages shouldn’t have children.  Adding a third level of navigation makes it harder for a site visitor to find a page of interest.  Third-level pages also have less SEM mojo.

Multiple Overview Pages

If a law firm handles different types of cases (such as personal injury and criminal defense), it may work to create multiple practice area overview pages.  Even if a lawyer focuses on a single area of law, multiple overview pages can also be used to organize pages by case type (such as Accidents and Medical Malpractice).

Overview pages will show up as buttons on the top navigation bar, so you will need to keep their names brief.  One way you can save space is by using the Resources page to hold odds and ends.

Process: Overview pages are numbered on the site map and count as custom pages.

Alternative to multiple overview pages: If the site has drop-drop menus you can use button pages.  The advantage of button pages is that they help organize site content without using custom pages.

Topic Headings

Topic headings appear in the sidebar area, where they are used to organize practice area pages in a way that makes sense for the site visitor.  They are not made into buttons on the top navigation bar.  In fact, they are not even pages.  The designer will simply use these to create headings for the side bar navigation.