Summary

This report is based on usability research with real users and the way they use real site maps. It contains 47 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: BMW USA (marketing site for cars), CDNOW (e-commerce), Citysearch Boston (visitor info), Documentum (high-tech product), Harvard Pilgrim (health insurance), Interwoven (high-tech product), iRobot Corporation (high-tech/e-commerce), Marriott (hotels, with online booking), Mercedes Benz USA (marketing site for cars), Museum of Modern Art (non-profit), New Jersey Transit (local transportation), Novell (B2B), Salon (online magazine), Scholastic (children's books), Siemens Medical Solutions (B2B), Texas Roadhouse (restaurant chain), The Knot (wedding information/e-commerce), TiVo (high-tech product), U.S. Administration on Aging (government), and U.S. Treasury Department (government).

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 87 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.

> sample chapter (thumbnail view)
> Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox with a summary of the research

Table of Contents

176-page report with 87 screenshots

1. Executive Summary
2. Two Research Studies
3. Site Maps are Used Rarely
4. Keep It Simple
5. Why Have a Site Map?
6. Research Overview
7. Site Maps Today
8. Site Map Use: Still Rare
9. Hunting Strategies
10. Success Using Site Maps
11. One Column or Multiple Columns?
12. Page Density
13. Attributes of Site Maps That Were Poorly Rated and had Low Task Success
14. Attributes of Site Maps That Were Highly Rated and had High Task Success
15. How Participants Defined Site Maps
16. Design Guidelines
17. Site Map Link: Name and Placement
18. Site Map Navigation
19. Relationship of the Site Map to the Site
20. Design
21. Content
22. Alphabetical Indices
23. Participants' Site Diagrams
24. Other Sites Participants Visited
25. About the Sites Studied
26. Site Selection
27. Sites Studied
28. Site Map Descriptions
29. About Participants
30. Methodology
31. Appendix: Gallery of Sites Tested
    • Thumbnails: Study 1
    • Thumbnails: Study 2
    • Larger Views (Truncated): Study 1
    • Larger Views (Truncated): Study 2

Comparing the Editions

If you already own the 1st edition of this report, should you buy the 2nd edition? Probably not, because all the most important findings were present in the 1st edition.

Comparison of the editions:

What You Get

• Checklist of 47 specific design recommendations: review your website and its site map for these 47 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.
• 87 screenshots of site map designs with descriptions of why they worked well for users or caused them problems in usability testing.
• 6 user-drawn diagrams representing their mental models of sites.
• $120,000 of user research at 0.06% 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 thousands of times higher than the price of this report.

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

Running a similar usability study yourself to collect comparative design lessons from a large number of websites would cost about $120,000.

Please help us continue publishing low-price reports by buying a site license if you have colleagues who will read the report. If you only need it for yourself, then that's obviously what the single-user license is for. If somebody "gives" you a copy, then please buy a download anyway to keep prices down in the future.

Download Report (from eSellerate) $74 for the PDF file (176 pages) with a single-user license $148 for a site license to make multiple copies and place on your intranet.

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