Trends in sitemap designs: a taxonomy and survey

One of the challenges confronting website designers is to provide effective navigational support. Supplemental navigation tools such as search, indexes and sitemaps are frequently included on web sites. However, due to a lack of guidance for designers a proliferation of designs has evolved over time. Trends in design don’t appear to be underpinned by any empirically sound and theoretically based user-focused research, instead design has been led by technological innovation rather than user needs. This paper investigates the key factors in the design of sitemaps. A taxonomy that provides a segregation of design issues into major components is proposed. The paper applies the taxonomy in a longitudinal survey of commercial sitemaps exposing several trends in design practice. The intention of this taxonomy and survey is to provide a sounder basis for future research and development of sitemap tools by clarifying existing research and identifying important issues for future investigation.