Sitemap design: how to design a sitemap for a website easily
Do you need to create the perfect sitemap? You're in the right place. Below is our straightforward roadmap to help you get started.
Why designing a sitemap correctly is important
Sitemap design and planning your site's hierarchy have far reaching effects on everything from search engines to making sure your visitors have a buttery smooth user experience.
Save precious time
A detailed sitemap establishes a clear site structure for developers to follow, a big time saver. Site updates can also be done quicker when you can pinpoint pages on your website to edit.
Reduce mistakes
With your entire site visualized, you can easily identify missing or redundant content. On top of that, navigation errors are much easier to spot and eliminate.
Lower project costs
By providing developers with a clear roadmap, they're able to work more efficiently and, ultimately, a great user experience reduces the need for costly redesigns.
By building an intelligent and thorough UX sitemap in advance, you'll be able to streamline and trim the fat from your site, create a strategic website content plan and tap into another level of SEO while making your site 
user-centric.
Why online website sitemap design is best
App-based visual sitemap planning has clear advantages over paper or whiteboards
Easy collaboration
The internet is the great connector and harnessing it to collaborate with colleagues across the office or the ocean is a no-brainer. An online sitemap creator like ours means easy access for all and intuitive feedback that accelerates your workflow and gets you from website plans to production as quickly as possible.
Everything in one place
Slickplan is the Swiss Army Knife of website planning and design. Everything you need and nothing you don't – all in one place. Are you still going to have 900 tabs open anyhow? Probably, that's life nowadays, but they won't all be related to planning your website, so pop open a few vacation tabs.
Zero maintenance
We do the updating for you so you can stay focused while using the freshest tools possible for your sitemap website design. As soon as we make an upgrade or new feature, you'll have immediate access. No more downloading, installing and getting so annoyed that you stick with an old iteration (we've all been there).
Version control & history
Need to revisit a previous version of your website sitemap design? Revert to an earlier iteration? A/B test one sitemap against another? Sitemapping online lets you do all of those and more with just a few clicks. A valuable asset for maintaining an organized and documented design process.
Refine your UX with superior sitemaps
How to build a sitemap in 6 steps
The only way to create a site that makes sense for a visitor and delivers a friction-free user experience is to plan the website's structure and navigation first. That means you have to know how to design a sitemap and create a solid foundation before you code anything.
Preparation before designing a sitemap
Before you start creating a sitemap, think about the following:
- What info you want to deliver to your website users
- List the goals you want to achieve with your website such as sales, blog readership, trial signups, etc.
These will come together to inform the information architecture that'll shape your sitemap and ultimately the content that leads users where you want them to go – your solutions.
It's also important to consider:
- Who's going to be the sitemap designer, who's contributing to it and who will manage approvals
- Limit input to 1-3 critical team members for the sitemap creation process as you don't want too many cooks in the kitchen
Design sitemap navigation
Add structure to make sure visitors get from page to page without issue.
- Build your sitemap with the home page as the root
- Design sitemap pages that outline the pages that will live directly beneath the home page on the second level. These typically include common topics like “About Us” and “Contact” that are often one click from the home page
Think deeply about every aspect of the user journey:
- Include utility web pages like “Privacy Policy” and "FAQs"
- If content marketing is a big part of your outreach, add your blog to the list of pages
Define parent pages
These major sections are like the chapter headings in a book.
- All related content should be easy to find on child pages that are linked to and from the parent page
- Organize pages on your site from the user's perspective so people don't spend excessive time hunting for relevant info
User friendly website navigation normally includes 5-10 items; for more, consider consolidating content or creating additional website pages.
Expand child pages into your sitemap page design
Picture these pages as the content within a chapter of a book; very specific and related to the theme of the chapter.
- Add third-level pages beneath your parent pages that contain the related content
- In most cases child pages are reached by a link from a parent page only
These pages should be highly specific and focused on one main idea, i.e., a topic likely to appear in search results;
- For the majority of websites, sitemap page structure will only need 3 levels of page hierarchy
- Too many pages can be a problem, so sites with vast amounts of information, like government or education websites for example, may require 4-5 levels
Another way to think of this is as a funnel with the content getting more detailed as you go down, so feel free to continuously add new content that helps site visitors.
Sitemap design for website test scenarios
To find the best sitemap web design for a website, duplicate your sitemap and test a few different scenarios to help you visualize and determine the optimal site structure. The big goals are:
- Balance the need for unique pages and topics
- Maintain a shallow click-depth
Think about other ways to group content; try new ideas like organizing parent and child pages by user persona, product line, industry, company size, etc.
You may find that alternative groupings encourage users to follow paths more relevant to their needs, which leads to a more successful website experience.
Creating scenarios when site planning helps with page layout and silo architecture too, allowing you to pinpoint the most visually appealing and designer friendly website structure.
Incorporate descriptive information into your sitemap designs
Once your website structure is defined, it's time to add descriptive information about your pages to the sitemap.
With Slickplan you can easily:
- Select a page type
- Identify what content you'll need
- Assess the coding needed for your web design sitemap
You can also add notes to each sitemap page, like:
- Summary of the on-page content
- Special instructions
- Attachments
- Development concerns that need to be addressed
Popular sitemap examples & free sitemap templates
Not sure where to start with your UX design sitemap? No problem, we have a full sitemap template library to help you get started.
Banking international website structure template 
Blog sitemap template 
Corporate website structure template 
Ecommerce website structure template 
Mobile website structure template 
Multilingual website structure template 
One page website structure template 
Portfolio website structure template 
Real estate sitemap template 
SaaS website structure template 
University website structure template Create your own site map templatesThe difficulties you may face building a sitemap
Building a sitemap isn't rocket science but there are hurdles that can trip you up. Whether you're starting from scratch or updating an existing website, here's what to look out for.
Missing pages
The bigger the website project, the more chances there are to overlook one page or even an entire section.
How to avoid: Thoroughly check your work as you go and run it past team members or other stakeholders before going into production.
Hierarchy error
Incorrect page order creates confusion, and worse yet, a page in the wrong silo can have visitors missing critical content.
How to avoid: Customize your pages to make them easier to follow, i.e., use different colors or cell sizes for different sections.
Ignoring user behavior
A site should strive to reduce strain and guide users naturally to their destination, doing a poor job can lead to a bounce.
How to avoid: Get user feedback to understand what's most important to them and make those pages the most easily accessible.
Overcomplication
People like easy but as your sitemap grows, it's not uncommon for navigation to get muddy.
How to avoid: Keep your sitemap simple and stick to a clear, logical hierarchy. Users and search engines will appreciate it.
Duplicate content
Having the same content or same page in multiple places around your site is both redundant and potentially detrimental to your SEO.
How to avoid: Your visual site map is really a flowchart of your website, review it consistently to ensure you catch any redundancies.
Irrelevant pages
There's a tendency to cram as much as possible into a site map, even unnecessary web pages, which can overwhelm visitors and affect search engine rank.
How to avoid: Share site maps with stakeholders, focus on website goals and create mind maps for each silo to eliminate irrelevant pages.
Free demo – See how Slickplan works
Let us show you how easy planning websites can be!
Who benefits from using a sitemap?
Whether you're on the sales side, the creative side or bringing the site to life as a developer, website sitemaps allow everyone to work collaboratively from a clear roadmap.
Content strategists
- Gather, organize & create content – plan SEO and identify content gaps
- Import site structures and develop information architecture ideas
- Integrate with your favorite tools and assign tasks to your team
UX/UI designers
- Visualize design solutions and streamline the development process
- Enhance site or app usability and improve information architecture
- Create user flow diagrams, present mockups and see overall UX strategy
Marketing teams
- Diagram customer journey maps to optimize pathways to conversion
- Use separate workspaces to organize and collaborate on projects
- Invite stakeholders, improve marketing plans and track progress
Project managers
- Present client proposals with detailed, visual solutions
- Oversee content production, project progress and your whole team
- Showcase site structure options & user journeys that decrease bounce
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What is a sitemap?
What’s the difference between visual sitemaps, HTML sitemaps, and Google sitemaps? See why they are important in modern web design practices.
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Visual sitemap generator
Visually designing sitemaps is important in properly planning your website. Learn how a visual sitemap generator works.
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We have some very large clients and I was asked to help make an information architecture plan for one of them, Slickplan was much better than a mind map or any other suggested app for this purpose.
David Bennett, Digital Marketing at Surefire Social
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