How to Lay the Foundation for Website Development
A website map (sitemap) is the bare-bones skeleton used to create the pages for a website. A good web developer can take a sitemap and turn it into a fully functioning website with little trouble, unless it is an incredibly elaborate design. You’ll start with your basic “Home, About Us, Services, Contact, etc.
Depending on your business, or brand, a sitemap is incredibly straightforward. Going through the pages of a site can be simple, just write down the titles of pages you think should be present. Hold on now, as you might want to add some severely incongruent pages that seem out of left field, and that might be perfect for what you have to offer. This insight aims to teach you the bare-basic necessities of a website, and how you can hand off a document to a developer who can make our vision a reality.
Understanding a Website Map
A website map is just that, a map. It is meant for a developer to come in and assign the titles of a page to specific URLs (Uniform Resource Locator). If you write out the copy for a home page and want the designation to be “Home”, then the developer will create an infrastructure around that basic concept. Your sitemap should have a bare-bones structure with pages like Home, About Us, Services, Contact, and maybe a blog section.
A blog section requires a lot of upkeep, but will ultimately help with your SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It will have multiple arms reaching, and connecting, different parts of your website. This is a good thing. When a website has multiple hyperlinks pointing to one page it will signal to Google, Bing, and other search engines that the hyperlinked page is an important part of your website. (Click on the orange words right above this for an example.)
Organization is key here, as you want your site to be easy to navigate, present pertinent information, and to guide the user to where you think they want to go. Imagine visiting a website for the first time. You want that experience to be easy and intuitive, right? This will help search engines assign a level of importance to where they display your website as a search result.
Starting your website for your business begins here, assigning different pages with different paths to take around the tour you call your “website”. Keep in mind the path you would want to take, as it may provide insights into how you want a complete stranger to approach your first encounter with your business. A website map will help guide this new audience.
The Sitemap Benefit
We here at Acclaim believe a good infrastructure leads to a good product. Establishing a sitemap provides a web developer the means to imagine a fully completed site. It may seem obvious, but some clients out there have a habit of throwing their arms in the air and saying, “You do it, you’re the developer!” and that will lead to a sloppily cobbled together site.
Take the time to establish how you want your website to look. It’s mostly aesthetic as a general website will have the same tabs to search through. Think of unique names for the tabs and possibilities of a perspective client. You definitely want the most important pages out in front of a customer’s eyes, yes?
A sitemap makes it much easier for a web developer to assign SEO (Search Engine Optimization) keywords to those articles and pages. A common practice nowadays is to leave the description of images and graphics with a bare-bones text block behind them, known as “image alt-text”. You want to think about the types of words people will be searching in order to find your newly created website, and assign those specific words to your images/graphics. This is a low hanging fruit in the SEO world, but it is often overlooked.
Consider using tools like Google Search Engine (GSC) to crawl and read your pages as you create them. Google Search Console is without a doubt one of the most in-depth and accurate tools you can use to gauge your standing on Google. You can boost these metrics by highlighting and hyperlinking to specific pages on your website.
Providing a clear blueprint to your developers can also save you time and money. Waving your arms and telling them to “just do it” might lead to some confusion. Even if you draw out boxes on a scrap piece of paper and take a picture of it, you will be light years ahead of competitors leaving their website’s design to chance.
Constructing a Sitemap
What are your goals? What structure do you want to lead somebody through your website to find what they need? Think about these questions as you title each page and assign links to new pages. If your objective is to lead people to buy a product or service, make sure that every page has a hyperlink to those products or services, it’s that simple.
We have other insights on building copy with AI, you should check it out. Having search engine optimized text has a unique effect on your website’s success. Google or Bing may pick up on the verbiage you use and present your pages to perspective customers while they are searching for a product or service close to yours. Use a wide vocabulary as that may drive unsuspecting traffic to you.
Make sure to visualize your sitemap as well. Do you want a “contact us” section at the bottom of every page? Do you think a pop-up that directs them to a live agent is helpful? Do you want a simple three-page site that emphasizes your strengths, services, and products? Is that the way you envision your website? Think about these things and write them down on a pad of paper.
Regularly updating your site comes later, but it is still a part of the construction of your website. Do not be afraid to create a new sitemap that better aligns with your values to your web developer. If you explore your site and see multiple things that are counterintuitive, then change the sitemap.
Tools and resources for Creating a Sitemap
There are many website map creator out there. Here are a few that we recommend:
Take the time to create some rough drafts on these sites. Like any trade or skill you need to get your hands dirty with some new experiences. Practicing will get you used to seeing how a map expands out into a full website.
We also wanted to share some SEO tools to focus with when building your sitemap:
Learning more about SEO can greatly help the construction of your sitemap. The more you practice and build sitemaps, the more comfortable you will be providing a developer with a PDF or Word document with your ideas, and that can only help you.
Finishing Your Site Map
You have gone from drawing squares on a piece of paper to designing your own professional outline on an application. Congratulations! You are much closer to sending a final product to a developer than most businesses or brands. Creating sitemap can be intimidating, but there is no need for that kind of doubt.
Take your time, develop a few sitemaps, and ask your developer to pick the one they think fits best. Over time your lack of confidence will fade and you will be more prepared to create a website than ever before.
If you have any questions on creating a site map, or website development in general, please reach out to us here at Acclaim.