You know that drawer in your kitchen?
The one that started with a few batteries, maybe some tape and a pair of scissors—and somehow now contains three mystery keys, expired coupons, six pens that may or may not work, and a charger for a device you haven’t owned since 2017?
Websites can become junk drawers, too.
And honestly, it happens pretty easily.
A website launches with a thoughtful navigation and clear purpose. Then the company grows. A new service gets added. Someone needs a landing page. Another department wants something in the navigation. There’s a new initiative. A resource center gets created. A page that was supposed to be temporary sticks around for five years.
Before long, the sitemap reflects the history of the organization more than the needs of the people actually using the website.
Your Visitors Don’t Know Your Organizational Chart
One of the biggest things I look at when working through website strategy is whether the navigation makes sense to someone outside of the organization.
Internally, a company might have departments, programs, initiatives, divisions and terminology that everyone understands.
Your website visitor doesn’t.
They came to accomplish something.
They want to find a service. Understand what you do. Apply for something. Find a person. Get an answer. Make an appointment. See your work. Figure out whether you’re the right company for them.
And they’re probably not going to spend much time figuring out where you’ve decided to put it.
That’s where sitemap strategy becomes so important.
More Pages Don’t Necessarily Mean a Better Website
There can be a tendency during a website redesign to look at every existing page and ask:
“Where should this go on the new site?”
I think there’s a better question:
“Does this need to exist on the new site at all?”
A redesign is an opportunity to take everything apart before putting it back together.
Some pages should stay. Some should be consolidated. Some need to be renamed. Some deserve more prominence. And some can probably disappear altogether.
The goal isn’t to squeeze your existing website into a prettier navigation.
It’s to create a structure that better supports where your organization is today, and where it’s going next.
A Clean Navigation Doesn’t Mean a Small Website
This is an important distinction.
A company can have a lot of information without putting all of it in the main navigation.
DELTA |v| (https://www.deltavinc.com/) is a good example.
They specialize in motor vehicle forensic engineering, which means there’s a significant amount of technical information to communicate. Their website includes individual areas for Accident Reconstruction, Digital Media, Biomechanics and Event Data Recorders, along with deeper service-specific content.
But the top-level navigation doesn’t try to expose everything at once.
Instead, the primary choices are straightforward: Services, Clients, About, Careers, Locations and Contact. The more technical service offerings sit logically beneath Services, while company information is organized beneath About.
That’s hierarchy.
Simple navigation doesn’t mean less content. It means better-organized content.
And when we worked through the DELTA |v| website (https://www.deltavinc.com/), that clarity was especially important because the subject matter itself can be complex. The website didn’t need to make the experience feel more complicated.
Your Sitemap Should Create Pathways
This is probably my favorite part of website strategy.
I tend to think about a sitemap like a puzzle.
First, take apart what exists today.
Then start asking questions.
What does someone need first? What belongs together? What’s buried? What’s getting too much attention? What’s missing? Where could someone get stuck? And what is the natural next step after they land on a page?
Then you start putting the pieces back together.
But this time, you’re not organizing them around the organization.
You’re organizing them around the user.
A prospective client may need one pathway. A current customer may need another. A job seeker may need something entirely different.
Good website architecture recognizes that and helps each audience navigate toward what matters to them without forcing everyone down the same path.
Your Navigation Shouldn’t Have to Explain Itself
There’s also something to be said for simplicity in naming.
Clever marketing language has its place. Your navigation usually isn’t it.
If someone is looking for your services, “Services” is perfectly fine.
If they want to contact you, “Contact” works.
If they’re trying to learn who you are, “About” is pretty universally understood.
You shouldn’t need a decoder ring to navigate a website.
Save the personality, storytelling and creativity for the experience waiting on the other side of the click.
So…Has Your Sitemap Become a Junk Drawer?
Take a look at your website navigation today and pretend you’ve never seen it before.
- Can you tell what the organization does?
- Can you identify the most important next steps?
- Do similar pages live together?
- Are there pages that exist because “we’ve always had that page”?
- Does your navigation reflect terminology your audience uses—or terminology your internal team uses?
And maybe most importantly:
Can someone get where they need to go without having to think too hard about it?
If the answer to some of those questions is no, you might not need more content.
You might just need to dump out the junk drawer.
At QNTM, sitemap and content strategy are some of the earliest parts of our website process because we believe good design starts long before we’re choosing colors, imagery or layouts. Understanding the user, creating intentional pathways and deciding how information should fit together gives everything that follows a stronger foundation.
Because sometimes the best thing you can add to your website is a little less.
