"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln
You may be testing an existing tree (e.g. the structure of your existing site) or trying out some new trees (revised, or completely rethought) to see how well they work.
In either case, your tree will need to be prepared for testing. In many cases, this is just a matter of minor housekeeping (importing the tree into a spreadsheet, excluding certain headings like “Search”, and so on), but sometimes you need to make some bigger decisions about your tree (e.g. whether to prune a large tree).
In this chapter, we’ll cover everything you’ll need to consider when preparing your tree for testing.
Working in an electronic format
overview text hereUsing a spreadsheet or text file
Getting your tree into a spreadsheet
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Sourcing the tree content and using the right format
Which part of the tree?
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How to cut big trees down to size for testing
Which headings to include/exclude?
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Global nav, footer links, utility links, etc.
Spotting missing content
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Content that doesn't have a page of its own might be missed
Dealing with shortcuts and duplicated content
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Handling topics that appear in more than one place
Breaking up double-level topics
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Handling multi-level navigation (e.g. mega menus)
Using link names instead of page titles
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Link names represent the nav better than page titles do
What to call “Home”
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In certain cases, "Home" may cause problems
Transferring the tree to your testing app
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Sanitizing text, importing to a tool, and randomizing subtopics