When starting a new website project, it’s incredibly helpful to have a visual reference showing the pages on your site, navigation structure, and page-to-page connections. This can take many forms: drawn on a whiteboard, scribbled on a notepad, listed in Excel, diagrammed in Word, or just sent in a plain text email. Our favorite method that we’ve found when brainstorming with clients is to use visual mind mapping software.
Tools like OmniGraffle can work incredibly well, but are often overkill for one-time usage. We went searching for easy to use alternatives and came across Text 2 Mind Map – a simple tool that takes text lists and outputs customizable layouts.
Start by entering your list of pages on the left side of the page and then indent to show nested sub-pages. Then click Draw Mind Map, and you’ll see your structure start to form. Below is an example showing a partial sitemap of our own site, razorfrog.com.
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- Example Sitemap
Once you’re done, you’ll want to share a screenshot or PDF with us in order to continue discussing your project. Refer to this screenshot for those sharing options.