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Users come to a site for a variety of reasons: to learn about the company, perform some type
of competitive analysis (note... thus indicating some interest in your products/services!), solve
a problem, respond to an offer and receive news. Often there will be several types of users
that visit your site: some may be first timers looking for basic information; some may be
established customers who need to get very specific information; and others may be looking
for in-depth technical information. Right away, we have established that we will have to
provide several different tracks for visitors to take. WARNING: this step may be the most important in the entire process. If you don’t get this
right here and now, you will be in serious trouble at the end of Rule #10. Talk to people in
your target audience, learn what they want and need, and don’t rely on your perceptions. Your company:
Clients often tell us, “Ours is a niche market; our customers know us and what we do.” They
then proceed to give us a discourse on why these steps aren’t important. They mistakenly
believe that they don’t need to define user’s goals or isolate different paths for users. So they
insist on navigation and content that looks good to them, but leaves visitors confused and
frustrated. Your needs are very clear (we hope): generate demand for services, capture that demand,
educate your audience, prompt an action, reinforce your brand and most importantly, channel
the user to his goal. The most important goal of your site should be to generate and capture demand. To that
end, you must know your audience and the needs they want to satisfy when they come to
your site. End of discussion. Goals: - Determine the target audience
- Break down the audience and identify each group’s needs
- Understand your goals and what you want from each user.
Rule #2: Build a rough architecture Create a path for each segment of your target audience:
Based on Rule #1, we can begin to lay out the architecture of the site, based on the paths we
are going to steer the user down. If we have a clear idea of why people come to our site, this
step can be easy. If we are just throwing together an architecture based on our perception of
how people see our company or our existing content (with no plan or goals), this is just
another step in the wrong direction. << previous | next >>
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