Don't Make These Common Sitemap Mistakes

Deciding what pages to have on your site can be hard. To hopefully save you some hassle, here's 5 common mistakes we see frequently.

1. Not taking your website goals into account

If your main goal is to establish credibility, for example, but you don't have a work page to display examples of your awesome work or a blog to educate visitors, then it's likely your sitemap isn't going to help you reach your goals. Be sure to consider how your pages will serve your website goals. 

2. Having too many navigation items

If you have more than 6 or 7 navigation items, chances are visitors on your site are overwhelmed by options and will have difficulty finding what they're looking. Your navigation should feel easy to digest and intuitive. Keep in mind you only have a few seconds to capture people's attention so it's best to keep things concise and organized.

3. Getting too creative with page names

We often tell clients "don't make people think" when it comes to your navigation, which is a principle we took from the book Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug. If you get too creative or specific with your page names, you'll confuse visitors and they'll probably give up. An example of this is naming your service page "Hypersonic Tech Accelerated". As cool as it sounds, most people have no idea what you're talking about. Better to keep it simple and name it "Services". In this case, boring is better.

4. Ignoring SEO

Search engine optimization are fancy words for helping your website get found. If that's a goal, you want to think strategically about your sitemap and better yet, get an experts advice. A common recommendation we have when it comes to setting up your site for SEO is to break out your services into individual pages. That way you can put effort into optimizing and ranking for more specific words for each page.

5. Not having a call-to-action button

Consider what step you want visitors to take and make it obvious by putting it in your main navigation and styling it as a button. Here's a few examples of specific CTA buttons: Schedule a Call, Book a Demo, Buy the Course, Donate.