A sitemap is often seen as superfluous when developing a website, and this is true even if you have created a sitemap for the sole purpose of having one. You can tailor your own sitemap to your needs by emphasising the need for a well-structured sitemap.
1) To support navigation
A sitemap is essentially a map of your website. If a visitor gets lost while browsing through the thousands of pages on your site, they can always refer to your sitemap to find out where they are and navigate your pages with ease.
2) Communication about the theme of your website
Your visitors will understand the essentials of your website in no time after loading your sitemap. There is no need to go through every single page to get an overview of your website and this saves your visitors time.
3) For the optimisation of your website
When you create a sitemap, you are essentially creating a single page that is linked to all the pages on your website. Consider what happens when search engine robots land on this page: They click on the links in the sitemap, and your entire website is indexed by the search engines! For this reason, a link to the sitemap should also be clearly displayed on the first page of your website.
4) Relevance and organisation
A sitemap gives you a complete overview of the structure of your website, and you can take the existing hierarchy into account if you need to add new material or new sections by looking at the sitemap. This will keep your website fully organised and everything sorted by relevance.
For the reasons mentioned above, creating a sitemap is essential for large-scale website initiatives. This way you can keep your website easily accessible and well organised for everyone.