Getting back To Basics - Sitemap & Search

Are we getting too blown away with Web 2.0, social networking and the funky things we can do to our web site whilst the basics slip through the cracks?

I’ve recently finished quite a significant amount of consulting with 2 of our major clients. The consulting was based around Intranet development planning and multiple web site revamping.  Two core fundamentals of web design and development were revisited during the workshops, sitemap and search! The sort of sitemap and search we were discussing in the 90’s still really isn’t solved for businesses and organisations.

Let’s examine why this was important. Both organisations have plenty of information they publish to their respective web sites. Even though the web sites have different audience types (Internal Vs External) the audiences are using the sites for the same purpose, to find useful and relevant information. The rest of the applications that have been built to interact with the organisations were defined as secondary. Users simply were not going to interact without relevant supporting information that was clear and simple to find.

Information Architecture is a complicated way to look at how to create a web site with relevant and useful information that users can identify with and find. Often this can be solved by having an internal workshop that defines the audience / customer and then reflects on information categories and reasons a customer would be visiting your web site.

Search however, is far more complicated. Not only does search make up a component of your CMS (it can also be an independent application integrated with your site) the elements that we allow to be searched and the way in which results are shown is a job in itself. Once the search results are rendered however can be the key to giving a better suer experience. Google and other searched determine the results and how they are ordered on our behalf. That has its limits.

Giving users the ability to sort their search with relevant and meaningful sorting columns can make or break a web site search. I mean let’s look at this, “I am looking for a PDF document that was created in March 2009. I know the keyword and author however I am only provided a one word / phrase search box. So I type in the keyword ‘chemistry’ and I am returned 250 results. If I was then supplied the ability to sort by search by relevance, date published, file type or whatever I would have a more meaningful experience.

The real point of this article is not to carry on about the 3 click rule or even search. The point being that your web site planning should involve the basic planning steps before getting carried away with functions and features that may mean nothing.