FOCUS - On The User

By D. Keith Robinson

Why FOCUS on The User?

All Web sites have users. A user is anyone who visits a site. Depending on the type of site, its goals and audience a user can be many different things. A user can be a reader, a shopper, an information gatherer, a content contributor or a host of other things.

For a Web site to be successful there must be FOCUS put on the user from the beginning to the end. A site is nothing without it's users and every effort should be made to understand the user and meet their goals when developing a site. If the user's goals aren't met the site will be a failure. It's as simple as that.

Get to Know The User

Anyone with a Web site wants it to succeed, to achieve the goals laid out for it. One of the first steps toward achieving these goals is determining the audience for the Web site and getting to know those who will use the site. It is nearly impossible to design and build a Web site properly without having a clear understanding of who will be using the site and what for.

There are many ways to learn about the users of a site. These include:

Interviewing potential users or existing customers
Analysis of the competition
Surveys
Focus Groups
Statistical observation

Depending on the situation and the particularities of the project, getting to know the users can be fairly easy or rather complicated. At the very least the effort needs to be made, even a little understanding goes along way. Sounds practical doesn't it? Of course, but it's surprising how often sites get built with no effort gone into learning about those folks who will be using the site.

Establish User Goals

Once the users have been identified it's time to work with them to establish goals. The foundation of any project is it's goals and the user goals are as important as any to a sites success.

Good clear goals can take many forms, and these will vary from project to project, as will the importance of user goals. Make no mistake, having user goals will always make decisions easier and help insure the success of a Web site. A goal can be as simple as "Have clear, readable text" to as complex as "Every page must be accessible from a Linux machine running Konqueror."

User goals can be used to help make design and development decisions and become a mechanism to keep a project on track as well. Many times Web projects can easily escalate in scope and knowing the users and their goals can bring projects back under control. Once goals are established it's important to keep track of them and measure the project against them as often as possible.

Test, Test and Test again

Usability and user testing doesn't have to be a time consuming, esoteric nightmare. Many Web sites and projects don't need to go though a full cycle of usability to be successful, although depending on the type of site and it's goals this might be the right thing to do. For many sites a little cheap user testing will reveal major usability problems.

Simply gathering some users together, placing them in front of a site and watching them use it can be very, very enlightening. I'm always amazed at what I can learn about my work from watching actual users. If possible this type of user testing should be done at least with a few people. Ideally you will have access to an actual user of your site, but if not use a friend, co worker or neighbor. Some testing is always better than none at all.

Follow Guidelines and Standards

There few rules on the Web, if any, and what little there are change all the time. It can be hard to keep up with the technology as well as the wants and needs of your users. Oftentimes a site will need to be redesigned many times to keep up, and this can become costly in many ways.

While there are few set rules on the Web, there are many guidelines, standards and best practices that can be used to not only keep the sites of today on track, but future proof for the changes down the road. Understanding the basics and guidelines of Web usability won't replace getting to know your users and their goals, but it will help. Understanding Web standards and best practices in web development can save lots of time, money and frustration.

To learn more about Web standards, best practices and basic usability guidelines, refer to the resources below.

Benefits of user FOCUS

If the time is taken to FOCUS on the user throughout the life cycle of a project it will assuredly be all the better for it. Even a little user FOCUS goes a long way, and there is really no reason why the time shouldn't be taken to make an effort to understand, make goals for and test with users. Add to that some basic usability understanding, guidelines and Web standards and you've got a guaranteed winner.

Resources

Comment on this article over at Asterisk*.

Send feedback about this article.