Building the tree structure of your website

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The tree structure of a website allows you to have an overall vision of the site and the navigation paths before creating the models of the main pages. This is essential preliminary work to create a website . Creating a plan for your website is often a very difficult exercise. It is never easy to organize content, which is often more heterogeneous than you might initially imagine. Above all, creating a plan means prioritizing, making choices, which can take time and create discussions in a team. It is a difficult exercise, but oh so important. Without well-thought-out navigation, a website, no matter how pretty it may be, has little chance of achieving its objectives. This sheet should give you all the keys to understanding the issues and actually creating the tree structure of your website.

Summary

The tree structure of a website is a fundamental step in the creation of your website.
From Tree to Wireframe
The website tree, or sitemap, is generally presented in the form of a diagram that organizes the pages of the site into sections and defines the different navigation levels. This is generally the first step when designing a website . Once the website tree has been validated, the entire team has an overview of the site, and we can go down a level to focus on belize whatsapp lead the pages with a view to creating the mockups . The next step is to create the page zonings , that is to say, divide the main pages into zones, for example, a horizontal rectangle for the logo and the main menu, a vertical rectangle on the left for the secondary menu, etc. Then, we move from the zonings to the wireframes where we add the main texts and graphic components, then finally from the wireframes to the graphic mockups of the website.

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Maintain your tree structure in a clear manner to guide visitors
This is naturally the first challenge. It is customary to say that a page that can be reached in 3 clicks is useless. When you have to organize a large amount of information, it is often very difficult. There is no miracle recipe, you have to set up an initial navigation system, observe the routes and improve the system little by little. A navigation system can be based on different media.

Some examples:

Main navigation menu, with optional secondary menu that appears when hovering over the main menu
Secondary navigation menu, it can be the child menu of the selected item in the main menu, but it can also be a completely different menu
Internal search engine, with one or more search axes
Sidebar, where horizontal navigation can be promoted via product or article suggestions,
Footer, with access to the main categories of the site or to key pages
If your website tree structure is well thought out, you will be able to set up an effective navigation system for all situations. When designing a tree structure, it is not just about classifying content into categories and subcategories, it is about anticipating paths. If a visitor arrives on page XY via the AffiPub acquisition channel, and is interested in product ABC, will they easily access the target page? It is difficult to anticipate all the paths, but taking three visitor profiles, each arriving via a different channel, with a different need on a different landing page, can be very useful to refine your tree structure and bring it to life.

Working on your tree structure to improve your natural referencing
The tree structure of your website will have a considerable impact on its natural referencing, whether at the global level or in the hierarchy of your site's pages. Search engines analyze the links between the pages of your site to understand its general structure, and determine which are the key pages. The "deeper" a page is, the less it will be taken into account. Concretely, a 3rd or 4th level category will be referenced , but search engines will give it little importance compared to a first or second level category. Techniques exist, such as the use of an annex page, very well explained by Alexandra Martin with the example of Fnac , but it is generally recommended to have a maximum of three levels of hierarchy.