Walk this Way - Sitemaps important for Websites!
The challenge of enticing customers to visit every part of a shop floor may be the most basic requirement of a retail store design, but it demands a constant turnover of creative ideas. The ways in which a shopper can be tempted into the four corners of a store can make a big difference that is a difference between mere shopping and an indulgent sensory experience. Clever use of lighting, route ways, signage cues, special promotions and even the use of large scale “display objects” can move shoppers to buy more. I often hear from my sister, who is a Category VM in a leading lifestyle store in India, how a good display can make a big difference in the sale. Products which were not moving fast enough, once displayed using proper accessories, used to get sold like hot cake within minutes.So the same thing goes true in Internet Marketing. Providing a good and easy user interface on your website can make a big difference. The whole talk about web usability is nothing but a user’s experience on your website and how easy your site is for the end user to navigate and find what they are looking for.
If a website is difficult to use, people leave and goto your competitors’ site. If the homepage fails to clearly state what you are offering and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website’s information is hard to read(for example using a bright font on a more brighter background :)), they leave.
Sitemaps play a very important role to avoid users getting lost in your website. Also the proper use of menu structure and navigation styles so that it is easy for the user to goto the exact page they are looking for.In my baby photo contest website, when the parents fill up the contest entry form, they have to answer a question, which says “What you like about this website?” and it must be co-incidence, but with many other answers, the common answers from most of the parents have been “ease of use”,”I was able to find what I wanted”,” flow is simple”.
So to summarize, always make sure that you have a good sitemap, and a good user navigation system on your site so that the user does not get lost and they don’t leave your sites out of frustration, but they leave only after clicking some Google Adsense Ads so that you get paid for people leaving your websites also 
2 Comments
- Adam McKerlie replied:
Do you know of any good ways or plugins that parse a XML file? I want to display my sitemap on my site but I just have the raw XML file.
October 19th, 2007 at 6:57 am. Permalink.
- Asha replied:
Hi Adam, Try checking out phpSitemapNG at http://enarion.net/google/phpsitemapng/ and see if this is what you are looking for. I will be checking it later but now too tied up.
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:46 am. Permalink.
