Indexed Navigation

Goland believes that a great deal of DataArt's site is a balancing act. He says, "DataArt's main business is software outsourcing and consulting services. The problem is there are visitors familiar with certain concepts who want more concrete information and those who want just a basic overview. Uniting both approaches would appear awkward, so we mainly focused on the first group of 'prepared' visitors. That's our target audience because people usually find us in search engines or by referral and they know what they're looking for."

If they're looking for a way to get around the site, DataArt provides a top-level online site map (see previous page). Remember, site maps take two forms. One you build for yourself to help keep track of the general structure of the site, and the other is a tool for visitors. The online site map offered to visitors is simply an index of the hierarchy of the site.

The DataArt online site map is an indexed mirror of the functional and content navigation options. Because one of the design goals of the DataArt site was to give visitors the opportunity to view any page with one click without subnavigation menus that are hidden and revealed, there aren't many navigation options to reveal in this particular site map. Notice, however, that it is convenient to view all the options in one space.

Remember this rule: Do not make your main navigation look like an online site map because, although it allows visitors to visually search for a desired page in the map, it's a navigation that offers too many options for visitors to handle every time they want a new page.