Modern Sitemap and Footer

Back in the old days, almost every website had a sitemap where they listed out all the pages. The purpose of the sitemap is to help visitors and search engine spiders to find information on the site. Now, a lot of modern websites have dropped the sitemap page, instead they place the sitemap in the footer area.

Benefits of Placing a Sitemap in the Footer

Engage user click and visit duration:
As you may know, online readers don’t read everything on the page, they scroll and scan. Footer is probably the last place they look at before exiting. Placing a sitemap in the footer may attract readers’ attention and increase page clicks and views.
Make sure your visitors are not missing out:
Sometimes your visitors might be too lazy to click on the sitemap link or miss it all together, having a sitemap in the footer can ensure your visitors are aware of every page.
Use your footer to promote links:
You don’t really have to use the footer to list out everything, you can use it as an alternative location to promote important pages.
Save readers’ time:
Having a sitemap in the footer allows users to quickly jump from page to page.
You save the visitors a click:
By placing the sitemap in the footer rather than a separate page, you save the visitors a click.
Enhance layout design:
Don’t know what to put in the footer? Perhaps a sitemap can fill up the page and make your site look bigger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tips For Designing Footer Sitemap

1. Categorize – organize your links in categories.
2. Use Headings – use headings or titles for each category.
3. Be Consistent – the order of the links should be consistent.

Cheers,  Joshu

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8 Responses to “Modern Sitemap and Footer”

1. Garry says:

   October 21, 2009 at 12:43 pm

   What really attracts a new visitor to a site is the appearance,layout and the “feel”.As important as maintaining your physical business location.Effective layout means you are a no nonsense person and like to place things where they are most accessible from.

   Cheers
   Garry

   Reply
2. Garry says:

   October 21, 2009 at 12:43 pm

   What really attracts a new visitor to a site is the appearance,layout and the “feel”.As important as maintaining your physical business location.Effective layout means you are a no nonsense person and like to place things where they are most accessible from.

   Cheers
   Garry

   Reply
3. Mike Dewl says:

   October 22, 2009 at 7:01 pm

   A very nice post, True as this is a common trend that is observed on the web.

   regards
   Mike

   Reply
4. Mike Dewl says:

   October 22, 2009 at 7:01 pm

   A very nice post, True as this is a common trend that is observed on the web.

   regards
   Mike

   Reply
5. dvd says:

   October 26, 2009 at 11:59 am

   It is good article to read for the novice website designers and users to get how nowadays websites are developed by the vendors.

   Reply
6. dvd says:

   October 26, 2009 at 11:59 am

   It is good article to read for the novice website designers and users to get how nowadays websites are developed by the vendors.

   Reply
7. Pablo A says:

   March 11, 2011 at 1:26 am

   is there a WP plugin that will do this automatically?

   Reply
   • Joshu says:

     March 11, 2011 at 12:17 pm

     Hi Pablo,

     Yes there are plugins to add sitemap and also to add links to the footer. But here we are talking about the trend of having the sitemaps in the footer itself, that needs to be done by tweeaking the themes, most of the modern themes do have it already.

     Cheers
     Josh

     Reply