"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." - Abraham Lincoln
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We may be testing an existing tree (e.g. the structure of
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our existing site) or trying out some new trees (revised, or completely rethought) to see how well they work.
In either case,
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our 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
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we need to make some bigger decisions about
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our tree (e.g. whether to prune a large tree).
In this chapter, we’ll cover everything
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we need to consider when preparing
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a tree for testing.
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- overview text here
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Using a spreadsheet
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- overview text here
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or text file, sourcing the content, 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
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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
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Sanitizing text, importing to a tool, and randomizing subtopics
Key points
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