“Visitors don’t necessarily care where something lives as long as they have no problem finding it. Via traditional navigation, that reflects (usually) a site map and it’s hierarchy, is only one way people can go through a site and frankly I feel that in most cases it’s pretty straightforward and, if anything, designers and stakeholders only complicate things by trying to make sure everything is ‘living comfortably.’
The site map is important, but not as important as addressing the paths that people follow through your site in their search for information. Another thing stakeholders tend to want to do is make sure content is prioritized. This is fine when talking about internal goals, and has some relevance when it comes to a site’s visitors, but…and this is a big but…when someone is looking for content that piece of content they’re currently looking for is the most important bit. I guess what I’m getting at is that as business goals shift, and audience and user needs change the value placed on different sections and groupings of content will change as well.
It’s pretty hard to create a hierarchical site map that adjusts in real time to shifting priorities, goals and needs—regardless of where the originate.
Shouldn’t more time be spent on addressing the user’s real needs? We should be helping them to find the information they’re looking for and giving them options to keep them on track when traditional navigation fails.…”
http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archive/2005/01/
thinking-differently-about-site-mapping-and-navigation
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