Sitemaps are essential tools for ensuring that your digital presence is well-organized and functions at its best.
The various sitemaps found in web design
There are many types of sitemaps that web design refers to, each serving a different purpose and audience.
- An XML Sitemap is a powerful tool to improve search engine visibility and SEO. It includes a list of URLs that search engines can crawl and index.
- A HTML sitemap file is less common than larger websites. It acts as a digital outline for a site’s URL structure and visitors. These static navigation tools are a quick way to find different pages.
- Visual sitemaps are a way to define the scope and structure of a website. They are widely accepted and effective methods of web planning between design firms. Visual sitemaps are similar to a flowchart and provide insight into the structure of a website.
The Key Factors That Will Make Your Visual Sitemap Sell Best
Your visual sitemap is an essential part of your B2B strategy. It must be built on solid foundations. If you start too quickly or don’t have the right preparation, your visual sitemap could lead to an incorrect direction for your website’s content. You can ensure that your structure supports your strategy and provides a simple and intuitive experience for customers by putting in the effort ahead.
Start on the Right Track: Website Objectives & Content Strategy
Before you rush to create a customer experience or interface design, it is important that you understand the role of your website. Also, evaluate how your website can best serve your B2B business goals.
This understanding can sometimes be used to prioritize key performance indicators. A website that generates leads and creates the most value will have content and navigation that is focused on that goal. If website value can be measured in product download, demo views, form completion, and other metrics, you and your team can match content and campaign that targets those areas.
Once your B2B goals have been identified and articulated you can start to create content and an experience that helps them achieve their goals.
To Keep Your Primary Audience Focused, Leverage Buyer Personas
Your website redesign or refresh should be successful if you and your team keep your customers at the center of your work. B2B tech companies should assess three buyer personas in order to assist the project team with defining its direction and considering key customer perspectives. These B2B buyer persons can be summarized in the following:
- Primary user: Typically, analysts, marketers and engineers will be the customers end users for the product or marketing services in Phoenix.
- Decision MakerExecutive level stakeholders who decide whether a product is purchased for their customer organization.
- Recommender These managers connect the two groups by driving the need narrative for the Primary User, and using it to combine with their insight and expertise to influence Decision Makers.
Your content must target each of these important roles in the B2B purchasing journey. Smart overlaps should be made at different points to maximize value for both parties. If time or budget constraints are a factor in your analysis, make sure you include the Primary User and Decision Making Personas in your content planning. You run the risk of creating a website that fails to deliver for both your company and customers.
To connect where you are with where you’re going, use a Content Inventory
Once you have identified your objectives and personas, it is time to dig into your content and evaluate how they support them. You can evaluate your content assets in relation to your personas and objectives. Keep the ones that are most useful, keep those that can be kept, and rewrite, refresh, or archive what is not of value to your company or your prospects.
Although it’s not always easy or simple, the benefits are far greater than simplifying the picture of your B2B customers and business. Neglecting or outdated content can hurt your SEO rankings and draw in the wrong audience. It is important to focus on the content inventory and then triage it. This will make it easier to implement the site redesign.
You won’t have to migrate product pages that you don’t use. If you can reduce the content on your website you won’t be using before, it will save you money. You won’t have to pay the ongoing operating costs of managing and serving those pages long after your redesign is complete.
Important for reaching your prospects: Content structure and labeling
Connecting content to customers is more than just creating it and placing it on your B2B website. It is important to think deeply about how prospects will find and navigate the content that you have worked so hard to optimize.
As with content triage, it is the details that matter here. Your information architecture and supporting content labeling will make it easier for customers to find the right information quickly.
Avoid generalized headings like “blogs” and instead, break down your website’s content into relevant categories and traits. This includes white papers, podcasts and infographics. This content breakdown will allow you to present relevant and timely content to your audience. It also allows flexibility to appeal to both the B2B primary personsas and emerging opportunities.
Design with your Content Management System in mind
When creating a visual sitemap that is effective, make sure you consider the capabilities of your CMS as well as how it can organize the content types that you wish to deliver. Modern CMS platforms are capable of delivering customizable menus and the tagging or taxonomy necessary to support your website’s new content structure. There are still potential workflow and governance implications so make sure you understand the capabilities of your CMS.
A website redesign is usually a structural change in how information is organized and presented. However, your CMS tool may be limited. A visual sitemap can help you create a strategy for your B2B company’s website content. However, your CMS tool should be able to support the execution of this strategy.
