January 31, 2008

Sunder Media

Building Websites with Customers in Mind

The internet has changed a lot of things in the business world. For many companies, their web presence has transformed from a minor concern to a critical point of contact with existing and potential customers. The ability for small businesses to share information about their company on the web has been a great way for small companies to reach a much larger audience. It’s also made it much easy to compare products and services. If your company has a good website, it can be a great asset, but a poorly thought out website can quickly become a problem. One of the best ways that you can ensure that your website is pulling its weight is to use a process called User Centered Design (UCD). The goal of UCD is to optimize the user’s experience, in this case your website, around how people want or need to work. There are a lot of articles and resources on the web about UCD and the techniques associated with it, but this article will focus on how to start thinking in a user centered manner and how it can benefit your business.

Company Centered Design

Chances are your current website is a company centered design. The goal is to get the customer to react to a call to action or complete a specific task. This model has worked great for years in marketing for a few reasons. In most cases, the call to action might be through an advertisement, direct-mail or even an email. This generally leads your customers to contact somebody at your company, such as a salesman or support tech, to take the next steps. This works because it takes a simple impersonal contact and gets the customer to engage with a person who can anticipate and react to their needs. Company Center Design works great for traditional marketing tools. However, most internet users are expecting something more robust and interactive than just a call to action. If one of your customers has chosen to visit your website rather than visit your business or contacted you directly, they’re probably looking for a more self-service option.

Working with Your Customers/Users

This is where the UCD philosophy comes in. Fortunately, following the UCD process doesn’t require any mind-reading or interrogation of your customers. By following some common processes, you will likely find that you already know what most of your users needs are. Here is a common set of questions used to analyze the needs of your users:

• Who are your users?
• What are the users’ experience levels?
• What are the users’ tasks and goals?
• What functions or information do the users need?
• How do the users’ expect the site to work?

Each of these questions helps you define your users. Once you have a better idea of who will be using your site you can better accommodate them. Let’s take a closer look at each of the questions and the kind of answers you will need to come up with to make them useful.

Who are your users?

This question will result in several answers. It’s unlikely that there is only one type of user that will visit your site, unless you have a very specialized service or product. The best way to answer this is to start grouping your users into categories. Some categories might include: prospective customers, existing customers, tech-savvy customers, tech-impaired customers, and customers seeking support. Come up with as many ways to describe your users as you can.

What are the users’ experience levels?

This question is critical in determining how you display information on your site. When users come to your site for information are they already familiar with your industry? Do you need to explain the basics of your products and services or just explain what differentiates them from the competition? Do you need to educate your users about concepts related to your company? These are all important things to know. For example, Ford doesn’t have to explain what a car is before they get into details, but a Best Buy employee may need to explain what an HD-DVD is.

What are the users’ tasks and goals?

This is the most important and often the trickiest of the questions to answer. Each person that comes to your website came for a reason, and they’re more likely to come back of but a product or service if they complete their tasks or goals efficiently. The challenging part is that there is often a big difference between your customers’ goals and what you want your customers’ goals to be. Customers may not be looking to buy a product right away; they may be doing research or educating themselves about their options. Try to come up with common tasks and goals for each of the user categories you used for the first question.

What functions and information does the user need?

From the first question, we know who our users are. From the third we know what they’re trying to do and can decide what functionality they will need. Finally, from the second question we know what additional information they may need to accomplish their tasks. These three questions have provided the information needed to develop a list of features and information for your website. As you create this list, try to analyze which task or goal each item on your list addresses. If there are items that don’t address a goal, then you should decide whether the item should be removed or if you missed a goal earlier the process. Areas where you’re presenting things the user doesn’t want or not helping them complete a task will hurt your site.

How do the users’ expect the site to work?

This is often the hardest part of the process of developing and designing a site for me, and it seems to be tough for many others too. I often want to have the newest, flashiest features and cool, cutting edge design, but these can hurt more than help. If you’re users are comfortable with certain things, it’s best to stick to them with little changes. Navigation, searching and e-commerce are all parts of your site that should be familiar to your users. If you sell high-tech products, you can likely push the limits a bit, if your primary users are not tech-savvy, these features may deter people from using your site.

Where to go next

If you can answer these 5 questions about your customers, you will be in a good position to make a great website. Whether you plan to make it yourself, or hire somebody to make it for you, following the principles of User Centered Design will help make your website stand out. You may also find out that a complete new website might not be necessary. Even minor changes based on this idea could have a significant impact. In the end, just remember that you’re making a website for your users not necessarily yourself.

Ian Muir is a web designer and developer specializing in the integration of graphic design, user experience and innovative programming. He currently works for CustomScoop in Concord, NH and provides design and development consultation through Sunder Media. Ian writes for SitePoint on topics related to ASP.NET and design and won the 2007 MIX design contest for Microsoft’s MIX conference. He has also been working to develop the technology community in Northern New England by organizing BarCampManchester and working on various projects with the Amoskeag Business Incubator.