Let’s talk about website mapping and how to take your website from average to effective [and fabulous].⁠

Website mapping is when you plan how your customer will [virtually] walk through your site and the actions they may [or may not] take.⁠

A great website map helps you plan your pages, content, and marketing strategies to serve customers in the way that will be most likely to convert.⁠

Ie. there’s no point creating an awesome FAQ page if your customer has to dig through 4 different pages and 12 clicks to even find it.⁠

Best case? They’d send you an email which means more work for you and your team.⁠

Worst case? They leave your site confused and frustrated because they needed some simple answers and couldn’t find them.⁠

Creating a map doesn’t have to be hard and it doesn’t have to follow a certain structure.⁠

To create your own map, follow these steps:

1. Start by jotting down a list of everything a customer might do on your website. Some examples include: find out what you do, make a purchase, subscribe to your email newsletters, view your available services, read your blog posts, and find out more about the history of your business. These will guide the content, features, and layout of your website so these actions are easy to take. 
2. Then have an A4/letter sized sheet of paper for each page of your website (for example, one for the home, about, services, and contact pages). Write the name of the page at the top of each sheet so you know which one you’re working on.
3. Write out all the primary action that a customer should be able to take on that page. There should always be one primary action for the visitor to take. For example, on the about page, the visitor is trying to find out more about you. A possible primary action would be: Customers should be able to see and read a description of the business. On a contact page, the primary action will likely be: Customers can get in touch with the company by viewing the company’s contact details. 
4. Each page will often have 1-3 secondary actions. Use these carefully as they can confuse customers if not appropriately positioned. A secondary action is an action you want the customer to take either once they have taken the primary action or if they determine the primary action is not what they wanted to do. For example, on your about page, the primary action is for people to learn more about the business. The secondary action could be to then contact you about your services. Knowing this would mean you are likely to put a call to action (a button etc) at the bottom of your about page which sends them onto the contact page. 
5. Once you have your pages actions planned out, you need to implement them into the design of your website so the primary actions are the main focus and easy to take. You’ll then add in the secondary actions so customers are more likely to continue throughout your website in the path you have mapped. 
6. Note: you will find errors in your mapping by tracking your customers real journeys through your website. It may show you that people are more likely to go to the services page after the about page so instead of linking the contact page you switch it to services. You can use google analytics to help with this, or other tracking plugins if you are on WordPress. 

Let me know in the comments if you have any questions about this post.

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