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Design Usability Foundations Website Usability Architecture and Menus

"While websites are not required to list every page or section..."

...Not sure when this video was published, but this seems contrary to today's standards (winter 2016). Wouldn't you want to have at least some menu (such as a sitemap) accurately list all your pages, if at least for the sake of SEO? Is this even mandatory or not?

Rebecca Riley
Rebecca Riley
Courses Plus Student 2,265 Points

It is not mandatory and really depends on the site. For example, if the site has a lot of pages like a blog site that is frequently getting updated, then a sitemap can provide better visibility to search engines as to new content, and can help new websites as well. However, for something like a one page marketing site it could not provide much value. Sitemaps are also only meaningful to search engines, as they're XML files, and provide no value to visitors (besides potentially driving visitors to your site through SEO).

Having a menu (or navigation) is, again, not mandatory but a good idea so that visitors can find what they are looking for and access related content. You could forgo a menu on a one page site, but in my experience it's usually a better user experience to be able to jump to a section rather than having to scroll manually.

So, no it's not required. It's more considered a "best practice".