Edward Garana — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:05:49 GMT

Good quick read. At our shop (Hoover’s Online) we too have recently changed our mentality around the Advanced Search concept. Instead of having a separate Advanced Search tool, we have incorporated a filtering system in our simple search results.

We’ve actually taken a hybrid approach to our filters – we surface the top five filter options for each category and have a “more options” link so users can see the additional filtering criteria for each category. We have received good feedback from our users on this new approach and have actually witnessed users using the filters with ease during usability tests.

Currently this new filtered search is available only to our subscribers, but based on the good response we will be rolling it out to our free site users in the near future.

Edward Garana — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:44:38 GMT

Thanks for the article Stephen, it was a useful read. But, I too had the problem where I needed to extend my site map beyond two layers. After fussing around with excel for a while trying to decipher the correct formula, to no avail, I took a step back and looked at the problem from a different perspective. And after brainstorming with my cube mate John, we came up with a solution that allows us to build a site map that can go beyond two levels.

Here’s what we came up with:
1. Create an excel spreadsheet with these four headings – Name, Title, Reports To, Reference URL
2. The first column (Name) should contain a list of unique numbers. Basically 1-whatever, based on the amount of items you will be including in your sitemap. NOTE: there can be no duplicate numbers in this first column.
3. The second column (Title) should contain the names of all the pages to be included in your sitemap.
4. The third column (Reports To) is the tricky part. This column is where you designate which page “Report To” which page. Basically you need to map the numbers from the first column into this column so you are in effect relaying a parent – child relationship. See example below

NAME TITLE REPORTS TO
21 FAQs 86
54 Investing 21
18 Your Money
86 Insurance 18
35 Affiliate Program 18

What we have above is basically a three level deep sitemap – Investing (child) is under FAQs (child) is under Insurance (child) is under Your Money (parent) who is also parent to Affiliate Program (child).

5. In the last column (url) add any urls you may want to use for page reference.
6. Once you have setup you excel, save and close it.
7. Now open Visio and follows the steps as outlined in this article, except for the Step 7.
8. When you get to Step 7 make sure you have “Title” and “Name” as a displayed field.
9. Go through the rest of the screens as normal.

When you are finished you should have a visual representation of your excel sitemap.

As a bonus, since you had “Name” as a displayed field you have a unique identifying number that you can use to refer back to your excel sheet to view the “reference url”. That way you know exactly what page your sitemap is referring to in your chart.

Super Bonus: If you have the ability to get a database dump of all the pages on your site in this format, creating a visual map becomes pretty easy. The only problem I ran into when using a database dump is making sure the “Reports To” relationships are correct.

FYI: We have a pretty extensive site so I know this method works down to at least seven levels. Although I had to do some manual formatting in Visio when I went down this deep. But, I’m now able to print the visual sitemap out and adorn it to one of our conference room’s wall.

Good luck.
Hope this helps.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Edward Garana