When you’re preparing your tree for testing, watch out for topics that have a single subtopic. In most cases, this is a clue that some content is hiding there.

Suppose we have the following headings, taken from a power-company site:

• Understanding your bill
• Reading your meter
  • Sending us your meter reading
• Moving house
• etc.
  
  

Clearly, there are two meter-related topics here – Reading your meter and Sending us your meter reading. The Reading your meter page contains text on how to read your meter, and adds a link to a subpage, Sending us your meter reading.

However, during tree testing, when the participant clicks Reading your meter, there is only a single subtopic to select, Sending us your meter reading. We need to add the “reading” content as a selectable item, like this:

• Understanding your bill
• Reading your meter
  • How to read your meter
  • Sending us your meter reading
• Moving house
• etc.
  
  

Sometimes, though, there really is only one piece of content in a section. For example, if your company only sells one product, your Products section may only have the one subtopic, so it makes sense that it’s the only selectable one in the Products subtree.

•  example – Meridian farm offers