DYNO Mapper has many features to use in the content planning phase of designing a website. This makes it easy to manage your workflow and gather the content that is necessary. Using the tools available, DYNO Mapper makes it easy to plan, discover, and execute a new content strategy whether it is a medium or large website that you are redesigning. These tools enable you to plan the website from the ground up while staying extremely organized. You become capable of distributing content assignments to your team members while making sure that they meet their milestones and other due dates. You can create content blocks made of plain text, rich text, images, links, files, and videos—while ensuring that they are contained seamlessly in the site map. Team members may be assigned pages and their progress can be tracked with the content calendar. The files may then be exported for easy content planning in PDF and CSV formats.

While DYNO Mapper does provide all of these things to aid in completely redesigning a website, it is vital for the company to remain organized and focused on their own goal for this large project. When undertaking something such as this, all goals need to be outlined before beginning the redesign.

Importance of Organization

A website redesign as a whole is no simple task by any means, but it does not have to be so overwhelming that it stresses you out. It should be approached with a specific goal in mind, as well as a certain scope applied to the content. Having these two things in mind will ensure that when the website redesign is finished, the website will reflect it and will be successful for the brand. When thinking about the goal of the website, what is it that the visitors need to accomplish? There needs to be a specific and definitive answer to this question. When the website is finished, look back on the goal that was defined, and ensure that the website can accomplish this.

In the midst of redesigning the website and evaluating all of the content individually, refer back to the goal and make sure that the content falls into the scope that was defined. This is where being organized is vital. Using DYNO Mapper's tools fulfill the question many web developers have—how do I keep everything organized? Using these tools and software is literally as easy as copying a URL. DYNO Mapper inventories and analyzes all of the content and presents it to the user in a way that is easy to understand and easy to manipulate. The content and information is broken down into manageable pieces that can be sorted and filtered, making manipulation and editing a snap. This is essential when tackling a project as large as the redesign of an entire website.

There will be pieces of content that come into question, and you may not be sure if they need to stay on the website. These confusing pieces will need to be conducive to completing the goal that has been outlined, and will need to fall into the scope that you have outlined. This helps with staying organized. Yes the content may be well written and received positive feedback, but is it relevant to the overall goal of the website? If it is not, it needs to be deleted. There may also be content that is relevant, but it is not great quality. You have two options here: you can just throw it out, or you can choose to keep it and have it improved so that it becomes a quality piece that the brand is proud of. Knowing where you stand with all of these scenarios is just part of being organized when going into the website redesign. All of the team members that are responsible for collaborating on the project will need to not only know, but also fully understand not only the defined goal of the website, but also the intended scope of the content for the website.

DYNO Mapper's Premium Visual Sitemap Generator

The visual sitemap generator offered by DYNO Mapper comes with features that aid in faster and more accurate site map generation. It will create an interactive site map that will show all of the inventory information, analytic data, and will have capability for comments to aid in successful collaboration. The editing feature lets users rearrange their hierarchy, move pages within categories, and assign a workflow outline to each page—making sure that nothing gets missed during the website redesign. With this sitemap generator tool, site maps can be made using either an XML import or by entering a URL. There are three styles of site maps to choose from, and all have the option to customize the color scheme and logo on each site map. When the site maps are complete, it is easy to share them so that users can look them over and review the analytics, hierarchy, and feedback.

Creating with the Sitemap Generator

The DYNO Mapper site map crawler will allow site maps to be created from any existing website URL. More advanced options for the crawler include: follow subdomains, follow robots.txt, ignore a query string, ignore trailing slash, ignore scheme, ignore page title, domain as root, and arrange links by URL. Google Analytics can be integrated into the site map to filter highlighted pages that match the analytics criteria. Using content audit and inventory tools, it is possible to filter pages, files, images, status, and location. DYNO Mapper's visual sitemap generator works with most of the popular browsers and there are no downloads that are necessary. Access all of the tools right from your browser, all that you will need is a connection to the internet and a website that needs a sitemap to be generated.

Editing With the Sitemap Generator

The sleek design of the site map generator allows for easy editing. The hierarchy of the site map can be rearranged using the drag-and-drop functionality provided. The pages can be categorized by using the pre-labeled content types, or you may take the time to create your own custom labels. The workflow status page allows you to tag pages that have been completed in order to make sure that nothing gets overlooked. When sharing the responsibilities with other team members, breaking down the workload may sometimes lead to a few items that are overlooked.

Customizing with the Visual Sitemap Generator

There are four styles of visual sitemaps that users can choose from; circle, default, tree, and the folder. With this also comes optional tool icon is that allow the viewer to see the page from the browser as well as the analytics, inventory, and comments. The URL display provides the option to show the URL of each page within the website on the site map. For a large website with numerous levels, the maximum level option allows the user to put a cap on how many levels of the site map are displayed at a time. To customize this site map even further, users can edit the colors of the site map.

Sharing the site map

Once the site map has been completed, you may need to share it with others. DYNO Mapper allows you to share both public and private visual sitemaps. The public site maps have a unique URL to share, meaning it will only be able to be seen by those who have access to the URL. You may also share the sitemaps socially through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and LinkedIn. If that isn't your cup of tea, simply email the site maps using DYNO Mapper.

Taking Inventory of the Content

DYNO Mapper's content inventory tool will inventory the entire website and let you know exactly how many pages, images, and links are contained within the website. After this, you will be able to filter, sort, and search all inventory based on the status, type, and location. After you find what you need, you can export the list quite simply. Each page on the site map will display its contents inventory information with a pop up.

The Inventory

The content inventory can be utilized for planning and budgeting, while the administration section contains tools that are easy to use for viewing the content. Mobile accessibility for the content inventory ensures that you may check or double check any portion of it no matter where you are. The pop up analytics is optional, but viewing these on a site map will let you know how each piece of content is performing. You will be able to inventory the number of pages, subdomains, images, files, links, errors, and bad links. You may then filter the contents by type such as image, page, or file. You may even filter it by location, such as internal or external.

Searching the Content Inventory

After the content inventory has been crawled, you can easily search through the pages, links, images, and files. On any particular website, you may explore exactly how many sub-domains exist within it. When searching the inventory, you will be able to find all of the links that exist within the website, you may identify the bad or broken links (along with their location), and you may also get an accurate count of all of the public facing pages contained in a website. In being able to access all of this information from the content inventory, the webmaster has somewhat of a road map to all the fixes that are necessary to improve on the user experience of the website.

Accessibility Testing

DYNO Mapper has tools that fully aid in determining a website's accessibility. It is vital that websites be accessible to every person, including those that might have any sort of disabilities. How does DYNO Mapper help with this? When you choose to use it, there is a tool that allows evaluation of a website and its HTML content for accessibility problems. It compares the HTML to existing published guidelines and then it will display all problem that are known, likely, and even potential. When the issues have been isolated, you may then resolve the problem to better provide access to a user with a disability so that they can have a satisfying user experience. You will also need to keep the specified goal and scope in mind when making the website accessible.

Conclusion

Undertaking the task of a complete website redesign may seem like an impossible feat. The website may have been around a while with things being added and deleted, things have been moved around, and there may even be more than one web master that has been in charge of it. With the culmination of all of these things, the internal structure of the website (or user interface) becomes confusing and disorganized, essentially it is a mess. It is now impossible to inventory all of the content by hand or even just using a spreadsheet. This is where DYNO Mapper's site map generator comes in. The only thing that you need to do is to copy the website URL into the textbox and wait. DYNO Mapper will take inventory of all content that is on the website, and will also perform a content audit when directed to do so.

The key to a successful website redesign is knowing which direction the website is going, and knowing the goal that has been established. When this is not the case, users will feel confused and likely will not return to the website until they can complete the task intended quickly and easily. DYNO Mapper offers tools that are easy to use and tools that will help you to stay organized not only during the redesign, but also with every team member that is collaborating on it. Having a comprehensive and clear vision for the website redesign will ensure that all will go as smooth as possible. With price points that are perfect for freelancers or larger companies, DYNO Mapper gives options that are perfect for any website.

Author: Garenne BigbyWebsite: http://garennebigby.com

Founder of DYNO Mapper and Former Advisory Committee Representative at the W3C.