[Sigia-l] Site Map/Index - as Site Element

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Heather Hedden
> Sent: 15 March 2005 13:55
> To: sigia-l at asis.org
> Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Site Map/Index - as Site Element
> 
> Katie wrote
> 
> that her client felt that site maps "are only necessary when 
> the navigation is otherwise bad."
> 
> Lyle wrote:
> 
> >My observations of users tell me that they usually only  
> resort to the 
> >site map if the navigation labels make no sense to  them...
> 
> ---------
> 
> Even if usability tests show that user's go to the site map 
> after poking around in the navigation menus, this does not 
> prove that the navigation design was faulty. On a large, 
> complicated site, even well-designed navigation menus and 
> labels may not adequately cover the overall layout of a site 
> sufficiently from a user's point of view.
> 
> --Heather


Ritual posting of relevant research in this area:

http://www.stanford.edu/~davidd/iwc2002.pdf 

"This study examines user movement through hierarchically structured Web
sites
and the behavioural effects of a constantly visible, textual contents
list... 
Users ... dig deeper into the site structure, make less use of the
browser's Back 
button, and frequently make navigational movements of great hierarchical

distances."


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