What Kind of Map?
There are several kinds of site maps, ranging from a simple list to a vast, interactive graphical network. The one you should use is the one that best helps users visualize your site for their purposes and gets them where they want to be as easily as possible. There isn’t any one-size-fits-all formula. A table-of-contents style site map may be ideal for helping a casual browser find a white paper in a library of related documents, but it wouldn’t be much use to an administrator trying to locate a failed node in a telecommunications network. For that, an interactive graphical display that lets the user zoom in and drill down to the offending node would be more effective. Depending on the site and the kinds of users you expect, you may create not one but several site maps. Figure 1 shows a map of the Nature Neuroscience Web site that was used by designers when the site was in its planning stage (http://mappa.mundi.net/maps/maps_006/dyna_dia_01.html). The three-dimensional, tiered model h
