I published a blog post two weeks introducing the concept of website and app visualisation maps. The creation of these maps was then the topic for my first Digital Analytics weekly workshop last Friday.
Website visualisation maps are quite simple in concept, you draw boxes for pages or groups of pages and use arrows to represent visitors paths between these page nodes. Like many simple concepts, it can be quite difficult at first to get the hang of. To help, I will post some example visualisations including a run through of how they were created.
The ZHS Orchards website is a very simple website so a good one to get started with.
Key Pages
The first page included in this website visualisation is the homepage and I have positioned it at the top of the map. It could be placed elsewhere but I am reading this visualisation from top to bottom with the homepage typically viewed first (if it is viewed).
The top navigation menu within the website allows you to click through to the
- Our Story page
- Data Services and Social Media Services overview pages
- Blog homepage
- Contact Us page
The Data Services and Social Media Services pages are equivalent so I have grouped these into the same page node within this visualisation map. These four new page nodes are listed as a second row within the visualisation map with a link from the homepage to each.
The website contains multiple pages that provide details of the individual services that Samantha and I offer. These have been grouped into a single page node, located below the Service Overview page.
Note that visitor paths based on the top navigation are not added for all pages. Otherwise the first five pages would be linked to from every other page within the visualisation. This is not useful so don’t include every possible path, just the paths that are commonly expected to be taken.
Blog Section
Within the Blog section, besides the Blog homepage, there are four types of blog listing pages (displaying blog posts based on a search term, category, author or tag) and of course, all of the individual blog posts. These five options are five new page nodes within the visualisation.
From the Blog homepage, you can click through to read a blog post, search for blog posts or view a category of blog posts. The blog category, author and tag pages can be accessed from any blog post. From any blog listing page, the visitor should click through to view a blog post. Hopefully whenever a blog post is read, it is so insightful that the visitor just wants to read another blog post.
All of these paths are included within the visualisation. Other paths are not included, in order to avoid lines connected every page node in both directions. For example, while it is possible to perform a blog post search from any page within this site section, I chose not to display this set of paths as I consider this a less likely action.
Desired Visitor Paths
With most pages listed in the visualisation, I added desired visitor paths through the website.
The most likely way for someone (a propective client) to discover our website and business is through a blog post. It’s nice to share our knowledge with the world but we need to be conscious that ZHS Orchards needs to generate revenue and acquire new clients. A visitor reading multiple blog posts is nice, a blog post that generates hundreds (or even thousands) of views gives us a nice warm fuzzy feeling. But a blog post that encourages visitors to read about our services and then to get in touch, that is a successful blog post and visit.
The desired action from a blog post view is for the visitor to then read about our services. We want people to click through to read a Service Overview or Service Details page, so these paths are included within this visualisation. This action is a KPI for ZHS Orchards and we need to ensure the links/CTAs to click through exist on our blog posts.
This is a good moment to remind you that a website visualisation map will be created for any client on a Data Strategy Retainer to or as part of a Business Performance Audit…
Once the visitor reads about our services, they (you) will naturally want to get in touch. The other key visitor path here is to click through from the Service Details page to the Contact Us page so we can arrange a conversation to talk through how we can help you grow your business through the use of data and/or Social Media.
If a visitor reads about the story of Samantha and I, we want them to then read about our services. There are CTAs to encourage this with this customer journey included in this visualisation. Note that means that page is not a dead end with the website.
Blog posts can also be accessed via the Homepage and, as a not uncommon action, that path is included in the visualisation.
Final Pages/Actions
There are three contact options on the Contact Us page, using the email address, the phone number or submitting the form. These conversion actions are represented via a different shape in the visualisation map.
There are two final pages included in the visualisation map, Error pages and the Privacy Policy. Neither has a path included, although the Privacy Policy can be accessed via the footer on all pages. A reminder that the focus is on common visitor paths, not every possible visitor path.
In Conclusion
It’s a very simple website visualisation map but still a good example of the use of Page Nodes and selecting which visitor paths to include. I plan to publish more examples with run throughs in the future and am currently working on the Volkswagen Belgium website as something to be shared. I also need to publish answers to the questions I was asked during my workshop session.
I encourage everyone to create their own website visualisation map. Get out a pencil and piece of paper, open your website and start drawing. Your first versions will be wrong but work at it. I am happy to answer any questions and provide feedback on your efforts.
Please get in touch if you want a website visualisation map for your organisation and need someone to do this work for you. We can discuss in more detail how the website visualisation map can be used to understand and improve your business performance.
NOTE: the tool I used to create these visualisations is Gliffy. It is (or used to be) free when installed as a Chrome extension.
