Better UX Design for Website Sitemap: How to Create a UX Sitemap

Your website structure determines whether users find what they need or leave frustrated. A UX sitemap gives you control over that structure before writing a single line of code or designing a single screen.

I have watched teams spend months building products that confused users from the first click. The problem was not bad design or weak code. The problem was they never mapped their information architecture before starting. They jumped straight into wireframes and prototypes, then wondered why their navigation felt broken.

A UX sitemap prevents this. It is a hierarchical diagram showing every page, how they connect, and how users move through your product. Think of it as a blueprint that keeps designers, developers, and product managers aligned on the same structural foundation.

What a UX Sitemap Actually Does

A UX sitemap visualizes your website content hierarchy. Each box represents a page. Lines between boxes show relationships and navigation paths. The result is a bird-eye view of your entire product before you invest in design or development.

This differs from an XML sitemap, which is a technical file for search engines. XML sitemaps list URLs in machine-readable format to help Google crawl your site. UX sitemaps are visual planning documents for humans specifically, for the people building your product.

The practical benefits:

Alignment happens early. Designers, developers, and stakeholders reference the same document. Disagreements surface during planning, not three weeks into development when changes cost ten times more.

Scope becomes visible. You can count every page your product needs. This makes estimating timelines and budgets more accurate. It also exposes scope creep before it derails your schedule.

Navigation problems reveal themselves. When you see the full hierarchy on one page, you spot redundant categories, missing pages, and confusing pathways. A Nielsen Norman Group study found that complexity and hidden options are among the most common information architecture mistakes. A sitemap catches these before users encounter them.

User flows become testable. With a sitemap, you can validate structure through card sorting and tree testing before building anything. This costs almost nothing compared to rebuilding navigation after launch.

When to Build Your Sitemap

Create your UX sitemap after user research but before wireframing. You need insights from personas and user journeys to inform structure. But you do not want to invest in detailed screen designs until structure is settled.

The sequence that works:

User research (interviews, surveys, competitive analysis)
Personas and user journeys
Card sorting (to discover how users group content)
UX sitemap (this step)
Tree testing (to validate your sitemap)
Wireframes and prototypes

For existing websites, add a content audit before building the new sitemap. Inventory every current page, note its performance, and decide what stays, goes, or consolidates. This prevents accidentally dropping pages that drive traffic or conversions.

8 Steps to Create Your UX Sitemap

Step 1: Gather Your Content Inventory

List every page your site needs. For existing sites, crawl your current URLs and add planned pages. For new products, work from feature requirements and user stories.

Use a spreadsheet with columns for:

Page name
URL (actual or proposed)
Parent page
Content type
Priority (must-have vs. nice-to-have)
Status (exists, needs creation, needs revision)

This inventory becomes the raw material for your sitemap. Missing something here means missing it in your final product.

Step 2: Define Your Primary Navigation

Primary navigation contains your top-level categories. These appear in your header menu and set the foundation for everything else.

Aim for 5-7 items. The 7 plus or minus 2 rule is a myth, but fewer categories reduce cognitive load. Ten or more primary items usually signals an opportunity to consolidate.

For a SaaS website, primary navigation often includes:

Features
Pricing
Solutions (or Use Cases)
Resources
Company

Enterprise applications add complexity. Eleken research shows that SaaS sitemaps need to balance marketing pages (for attracting users) with product pages (for serving logged-in users). Keep these separate. Marketing lives in the public site. Product lives behind authentication.

Step 3: Build Your Hierarchy

Secondary and tertiary navigation expand from primary categories. Map these relationships:

Primary - Secondary - Tertiary

For most sites under 50 pages, two levels suffice. Larger sites (100+ pages) need a third level. Academic and government sites sometimes go four levels deep, though this hurts discoverability.

Structure your hierarchy from the top down. Start with the home page, then branch to primary categories, then to secondary pages within each category. Use lines or arrows to show connections.

Miro guide recommends the tree format for this reason it makes parent-child relationships immediately visible.

Step 4: Choose Flat vs. Deep Architecture

Flat sitemaps keep pages within 4 clicks of the homepage. Better for small sites (under 50 pages), portfolios, and content-light products. Flat architecture helps SEO because search engines can crawl everything quickly.

Deep sitemaps have 5+ levels. Necessary for large sites (1,000+ pages) with complex content hierarchies. E-commerce with thousands of products, news sites with decade-long archives, enterprise applications with layered permissions.

The tradeoff: deep structures bury content. Users and search engines struggle to find pages many levels down. If you need depth, add shortcuts. Mega menus, search functionality, and cross-links help users reach deep pages without clicking through every level.

Paddle Creative guide notes that hybrid approaches work well for SaaS flat structure for marketing pages, deep structure for product features.

Step 5: Account for Utility Pages

Utility pages live outside your main navigation but every site needs them:

Privacy Policy
Terms of Service
Contact
404 Error
Search Results
Login/Logout
Account Settings
Footer-only pages (Careers, Press, Investors)

Add these to your sitemap, usually in a separate section marked Utility or Footer Pages. Missing them causes problems during development when someone asks where the privacy policy should link.

Step 6: Add Page Specifications

Each sitemap card can include metadata beyond the page name:

Template type (blog post, product page, landing page, form, gallery)
Dynamic or static (CMS-managed vs. hard-coded)
Authentication required (public vs. logged-in)
Priority (critical path vs. secondary)
Notes (content requirements, integrations needed, stakeholder concerns)

This metadata turns your sitemap into a project management tool. Developers see which templates to build. Content teams see what to write. Product managers see what blocking launch.

Step 7: Validate With Tree Testing

Tree testing evaluates your sitemap findability. Participants receive tasks (Find the pricing for enterprise customers) and navigate a text-only version of your hierarchy. No design, no navigation aids just the structure you built.

Results show:

Success rate: Did users find the right page?
Directness: Did they go straight there or wander?
Time: How long did it take?

A Maze guide recommends tree testing after card sorting. Card sorting generates structure ideas. Tree testing validates whether those ideas work.

Tools for tree testing include Optimal Workshop, UX Metrics, and Maze. Budget for 30-50 participants to get statistically useful results.

Step 8: Iterate and Document

Your sitemap changes as product requirements change. Treat it as a living document:

Version your sitemap files
Note what changed between versions and why
Get stakeholder sign-off before major structural changes
Update the sitemap when you add features post-launch

Documentation matters because people forget decisions. Six months from now, someone will ask why Solutions is separate from Features. Your changelog answers that question without a meeting.

Common Mistakes That Break Sitemaps

Vague Labels

Resources means nothing. Solutions could contain anything. Users cannot navigate categories they do not understand.

Adam Fard research identifies unclear labeling as one of the most frequent IA mistakes. If users cannot predict what they will find behind a link, they will not click it. Or worse, they will click, find something unexpected, and lose trust in your navigation.

Fix this by testing labels with real users. Card sorting reveals what language they use for concepts. Tree testing reveals whether your labels communicate the right meaning.

Duplicate Content Paths

The same page appearing in multiple places creates confusion. Which path is right? Which link should someone bookmark? Which URL should Google index?

Your sitemap reveals duplicates before they become technical debt. If the same content logically belongs in two places, pick one canonical location and add a cross-link from the other.

Too Many Categories

Seven primary navigation items feels manageable. Fifteen overwhelms users. They scan, see too many options, and either leave or guess randomly.

Nielsen Norman Group recommends consolidation when navigation grows past what users can process. Two levels of navigation with 5-7 items each creates a grid of 25-49 possible destinations already more than most users want to parse.

If you cannot cut categories, consider a mega menu that groups related links. Visual chunking helps users scan faster.

Designing Navigation by Org Chart

Internal company structure rarely matches user mental models. Users do not care that Marketing and Product are different departments. They care whether they can find pricing information.

Build your sitemap around user goals, not reporting lines. Card sorting results should drive category creation, not your company organizational hierarchy.

Skipping Mobile Considerations

Mobile navigation condenses. Your 7-item desktop menu becomes a hamburger with all items hidden. Deep hierarchies require extra taps. If your desktop sitemap relies on hover states or mega menus, mobile users cannot access the same content the same way.

Flowmapp guide recommends planning for mobile constraints during sitemap creation, not after. Note which categories collapse together on small screens. Prioritize critical paths that mobile users need.

Tools for Building UX Sitemaps

Figma Most design teams already use Figma. Its drag-and-drop interface handles sitemap creation, and collaborative features let stakeholders comment directly. Free tier available.

Miro Whiteboard tool with sitemap templates. Strong for remote collaboration and brainstorming sessions where the sitemap evolves live. Integrates with Figma, Jira, and Azure DevOps.

FlowMapp Purpose-built for website planning. Includes sitemap creation, user flows, wireframing, and content planning in one platform. Can generate visual sitemaps by crawling existing sites.

Slickplan Focused on sitemap creation with visual hierarchy tools. Good for presenting sitemaps to non-technical stakeholders.

Milanote Flexible canvas tool that works for sitemaps alongside mood boards and research. More creative-focused workflow.

FigJam Figma whiteboard companion. Some teams use it exclusively for sitemap and user flow work, keeping Figma for detailed screen design.

For simple projects, pen and paper works. A hand-drawn sitemap during a stakeholder meeting gets everyone aligned faster than scheduling another call to review a digital artifact.

SEO Benefits of Strong Information Architecture

Your UX sitemap improves SEO before you write metadata or build backlinks.

Crawlability: Flat hierarchies let search engine bots reach every page quickly. Pages buried 6+ clicks deep get crawled less frequently and may never index.

Internal linking: Your sitemap defines the link structure between pages. Strong internal links pass authority from high-ranking pages to newer content. This happens naturally when your hierarchy connects related pages.

URL structure: Sitemap hierarchies often translate directly to URL paths. /features/integrations/zapier tells both users and search engines exactly where a page sits in your structure.

Reduced duplicate content: A well-planned sitemap prevents the same content from appearing at multiple URLs. This prevents search engines from splitting ranking signals across duplicates.

Symphonic Digital analysis shows that sitemap structure impacts search visibility through improved crawl efficiency and clearer content hierarchies.

From Sitemap to Execution

A finished sitemap connects directly to the next phases of product development:

Wireframing: Each sitemap card becomes a wireframe. Template types defined in your sitemap tell designers which layout patterns to use.

Content strategy: Content teams see exactly what pages need writing. Priority tags help them sequence work.

Development planning: Developers estimate based on page count, template types, and dynamic content requirements all visible in the sitemap.

QA testing: Test plans use the sitemap to ensure every page works. Navigation testing follows sitemap paths to verify users can reach every destination.

At Bonanza Studios, we build sitemaps during our 2-week design sprints. Before sketching a single screen, we map the full structure with stakeholders in the room. This investment catches misalignment early, when fixing it costs hours instead of weeks.

The sitemap becomes a living reference throughout the build. When someone suggests adding a feature, we update the sitemap first. This forces questions: Where does it live? How do users find it? What existing pages need to link to it?

By launch, the sitemap has evolved through dozens of iterations. But the core structure validated through card sorting and tree testing during week one stays stable. Users can navigate the product intuitively because we validated that structure before designing a single pixel.

Your Next Move

Start with a content inventory. List every page your site has or needs. Group related pages together. Arrange groups into a hierarchy. Then test that hierarchy with real users before investing in design.

If you are rebuilding an existing site, audit first. Know what you have. Know what performs. Then decide what survives into the new structure.

If you are building from scratch, run card sorting with your target users. Learn how they think about your content. Use their mental models to shape your categories, not assumptions about what seems logical to your team.

The goal is not a perfect sitemap. The goal is a sitemap that gets validated and revised until users can navigate it successfully. That validation saves months of rework later.

About the Author

Behrad Mirafshar is Founder and CEO of Bonanza Studios, where he turns ideas into functional MVPs in 4-12 weeks. With 13 years in Berlin startup scene, he was part of the founding teams at Grover (unicorn) and Kenjo (top DACH HR platform). CEOs bring him in for projects their teams cannot or will not touch because he builds products, not PowerPoints.

Connect with Behrad on LinkedIn

Building a product but struggling with information architecture? Our 2-week design sprint includes sitemap creation, user testing, and a validated prototype. You will leave with a structure that works not a strategy deck that sits on a shelf.