I have to admit: I've used mind mapping software for years. And yet, when I decided to create a website for my freelance writing business, the first thing I did was try to come up with a good home page headline.
Strong words are vital to a home page--any home page. But what makes a site work is the overall design and navigation, and the content you provide to visitors.
So the second thing I did was to open up a ConceptDraw MINDMAP and start figuring out what I wanted on my site. Here are the general areas I broke my site into:
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I wasn't presenting myself the way I wanted to be seen by potential customers. The two main things I specialize in are developing strategies that help companies get noticed, and creating content--all kinds of content. Very often, the strategy involves content creation. But not always. So I keep them separate:
So now I have the basic skeleton of what I want my website to communicate. I'll post again soon (I'm not going to commit to tomorrow just in case...) on how to use MINDMAP to capture and organize in one place all the content and links you're going to need for your site.
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Would be curious about your thoughts of the home page being a mindmap with real navigation not just an image?
ReplyDeleteHi Bob,
ReplyDeleteI have been a big advocate of people using mind maps as site maps. But I think the idea of placing a large (readable), well-designed map on the home page would be fantastic. It's all about helping people get the information they want--and get it fast. If they can quickly scan a map and click once to get to just the right place, that would be a step forward in web design.
What are your thoughts about it?
Hobie