Site Map vs User Navigation

Objective: To gain an understanding of the differences between a sitemap and the user navigation on a web site.

Site Map

A site map is a list of pages accessible to users. As shown in the image below, it can be a Web page that lists all of the pages on the web site, and is generally in a hierarchal order. Another type of site map can be accessible to crawlers, normally in the form of documents and cannot be seen by the user. In this case, it can also be a planning tool for Web design.

User Navigation

An user navigation contains related links that allows the user to access multiple sections of the website. It generally comes in the form of a navigation bar, such as the image below. An user navigation is also global, in other words, it shows up on every page of the site and is always identical as shown in the previous page of that site.

Differences Between Site Map and User Navigation

As discussed above, a site map contains all of the links a certain web site has, but an user navigation do not contain all of the links within that site. An user navigation is used when the user wants to perform the general usage of the site, such as going to the "Electronics" section on a shopping site. An example for using the site map would be trying to find the "Customer Service" or the "Term of Usage" page, under normal circumstances, these links will not show up on the user navigation.

Overall, a site map lays out all of the links on a single page or document, while the user navigation, such as the navigation bar, only shows the main categories. The sub-categories are hidden until the mouse hovers over to the main category.

There are few possible reasons for the differences between the site map and the user navigation to occur. One reason being that a navigation bar containing every possible links can be visually chaotic and disorganized, the user might lose trust in the site or find it hard to use. Not only that, the function of the site map is similar to an index for the web site, therfore it is helpful to have the links of all the pages on the web site.