A Sitemap is a representation that consists of a structured list of pages in a website organized in a hierarchical order to better understand the website and index the pages of the website. User Flow is a visual representation that is designed to represent all the interactions that users should have on a website. In this article, we will be discussing these two important concepts and learn about how to create Sitemap and User Flow along with some best practices.
Sitemap
A Sitemap is a representation that consists of a structured list of pages in a website organized in a hierarchical order to better understand the website and index the pages of the website. It is a structured list of pages that a user would have access to when they visit our website. If you want your content to be searched, graphed, and indexed, having a Sitemap file on your website will be the best choice.
Site mapping is a crucial step of web design since it helps in the improvement of the website’s navigation, it also helps in understanding the scope of the work and making sure that any critical part of the website’s architecture is not missed. The aim of creating a Sitemap is to provide better User Experience to the users by ensuring simple navigation among pages of the website.
Sitemap
User Flow
User Flow is a visual representation that is designed to represent all the interactions that users should have on a website. User Flow includes all the actions and pages that the user explores on the website from browsing to checking out and the user flow ends when the user leaves the website.
The User Flow also includes all the logical and computational conditions that a user may encounter in our website. This means that we not just design the Pages of the website, but also the actions and how would the website respond to those actions. User Flow includes everything from user’s emotions and thoughts to actions taken on the site.
User-flow
Sitemap and User Flow Creation
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Sitemap planning: Step one is to ask yourself what are the goals for your website? This will influence the experience of your website to help you achieve those goals. You goals must be defined and not vague. Here’s an example of goals for a Portfolio website:
- Portfolio and Contact details.
- A Learn more page to learn more about the person, projects, etc.
- A Blog about projects, new technologies etc.
- Email sign up to keep in touch.
- Research: The second step is to Dive into the the goals and research about the best ways to implement it. For example, for our first goal that is Portfolio and contact details, we can work on researching how can we implement that and we may find that having a Home page as portfolio could be an idea. we can have resume and a cover letter link as well, and much more.
- Wireframing: Third step is to design wireframes, wireframes are detailed structural sketches that illustrate a concept. A wireframe for a digital product is similar to a blueprint for a house. Wireframe clearly illustrates how the product functions and the core elements of its design.
- Build final design: And the final step is to build the design. We finalize all the actions and pages that the user would explore on the website and create a final design of the website. This design may be iterated based on the feedback by the user later on but we must have a working Sitemap and User Flow at the final step.
Best Practices
- Never Confuse User Flow with User Journey: User Flow is often confused with User Journey while they are completely different. A user flow is just part of the user Journey the user Journey looks at the entire journey of the user from start to end even if the start is outside of your site and the end is outside of your site. the user Journey could include the user’s emotions and thoughts whereas for user flow it’s more of the actions taken on the site itself
- Focus on Research and ideation: One important principle about User Flow and UI/UX design in general is that the more research and the more concrete and clear things are at the start especially in the initial phases of ideating and Gathering requirements and understanding the project, the less headache the designer has later on when designing User Flow.
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Asking the right questions: One of the best practices in Sitemap and User Flow Creation is to gather all these stakeholders of the project. If other people are involved in the project make sure you set up a meeting ahead of time and in the meeting, you can work on brainstorming ideas and asking questions like
- Which content should be labeled as absolutely crucial for the website?
- Which content is labeled “nice to have”?
- Which actions would you like the website visitors to perform?
Conclusion
User Flow is a visual representation that is designed for representing all the interactions that users should have on a website. Concepts like Sitemap and User Flow are crucial in web design because it helps in improvement of the website’s navigation, it also help in understanding the scope of the work and making sure that any critical part of the website’s architecture is not missed out upon. Make sure to follow all the points we discussed in this article when you design your next web application.