What is SiteNotation?

SiteNotation is a free app that runs in your web browser. It’s designed for digital marketing professionals, but anyone can use it.

SiteNotation is really three tools in one:

a site sketcher
a migration manager
an online organizer

Let’s take a look at each of these three functions.

1. Site Sketcher

If you want to sketch out the structure of a website, SiteNotation makes it easy. Just type in the names of your webpages and slide them into place using SiteNotation’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface.

There are two different modes available to help you put together your site: viewing mode and drag-and-drop mode.

Viewing Mode

In viewing mode, the pages of your website are displayed in a traditional “tree” format that makes it easy to grasp the site’s structure and visualize the navigation. Twisties (arrows) allow you to expand and collapse sections of the site as needed. Drag-and-drop functionality is disabled to prevent accidental changes to the site.

Drag-and-Drop Mode

In drag-and-drop mode, connecting lines are shown to make the structure of the site crystal-clear.

To change a page’s position in the hierarchy, simply drag it left or right, up or down.

2. Migration Manager

If you’re moving your organization’s website from one content management system (CMS) to another, you will soon discover that the task can be a daunting one.

Despite the sunny promises vendors like to make, a CMS migration is never a simple matter of using an automated tool to magically transfer your website from your old CMS to the new one. Content will need to be formatted differently in the new CMS, automated tools will sometimes fail, and the migration process will inevitably reveal aspects of your current website that need reworking.

Given these realities, it’s tremendously helpful to have an independent tool you can use to track your progress. SiteNotation allows you to organize your notes, keep a permanent record of the “tree view” of your original site, map relationships, and track your progress toward completion.

If you wish, you can use color coding or other systems of tagging. SiteNotation gives you peace of mind, allowing you to be sure that no content from your current website gets accidentally left behind in the move to the new CMS.

3. Online Organizer

If you’re a digital marketing professional who manages part or all of a website, you know that there’s no such thing as a site being “finished.” To serve your audience/customers, you have to keep content fresh, information up to date, and functionality in line with best practices. This requires you to stay on top of a large volume of information and manage many overlapping tasks and projects on an ongoing basis.

Spreadsheets and bullet-point lists simply aren’t up to managing this kind of complexity. The most fundamental problem with such tools is that they don’t mirror the structure of the data you’re managing. SiteNotation saves the day by allowing you take notes about your website a more logical format—namely, a site tree, the structure of the website itself. This allows you to stay organized and efficient, easily taking notes about decisions that have been made, changes you’ve made to particular pages, and future changes you plan to make.

Instead of going back and forth between your website and another piece of software such as a Microsoft Word or Excel, you can stay right in your web browser, focusing on whichever page in your site you’re currently working on. SiteNotation also allows you to:

navigate easily around the site
switch seemlessly between tasks using a search bar and/or a list of recently viewed pages
view any page on your website simply by clicking its link, or use SiteNotation’s adjustable multi-column layout to automatically load each page in a side-by-side view with the site tree and your notes

If you work in a team environment, SiteNotation allows multiple people to comment on webpages and hold conversations. Want to know who authorized a change or made a particular decision? If the notes are in SiteNotation, you’ve got your answer. Each note is automatically stamped with the date and time, marked with the identity of the person who wrote it, and saved forever.

How to Get Started

Why not give it a try? All you need to get started with SiteNotation is an email address.