Identifying Your Customers and Their Needs

Identifying Your Customers and Their Needs (0)

Emily Berry | 5/08/2009

Too often when our clients come to us we hear about disagreements between departments about who thinks what should be on your new website.

While the needs of the different departments within your business should be carefully considered, don’t forget to pay attention to the most important and valuable part of your online audience - your customers.

It can be difficult to identify your customers, especially if your business is new to the online space, but there are a few key strategies you can employ to ensure you identify your customers, their needs and the different journeys they will make when using your website.

A business requirements document (or requirements definition document) prepared by an Information Architect is often prepared in conjunction with a competitor analysis.

These two documents combined will provide you with invaluable information about:

• Your core business goals and how the website will assist in meeting these goals
• Critical success factors and KPI’s to help you measure the success of the new website project
• User personas to identify the core users of the site
• Key tasks to be completed by a user (user scenarios/user journeys)
• Definition of functional requirements needed to achieve the business and user goals

The above then acts as a strong starting point when commencing the next phase (Pre Production) of your web project, forming a checklist of the key considerations when wireframing the key templates and writing the detailed functional specification.

A Requirements Definition document will also be used when the creative team comes on board to ensure the design concepts they create are appropriate to your audience.

Are you starting a new web project (or even planning on redeveloping an existing online brand?

Are you unsure who your users really are and what they should be, or need to get from your website?

Working collaboratively with an Information Architect will give you an advantageous insight into your customers so that you can build the best possible website for your most important visitors.

tags: Web Design ,  Web Development ,  Usability