How can you be sure your web site meets the needs of current and prospective customers, not to mention employment candidates, vendors, the press, and possibly even shareholders?

No matter the size of your organization, your web site likely has more than just one target audience. Each audience will have unique reasons for visiting your site, and expectations of what they will find there. It may seem complicated to create a single site that effectively speaks to each user group, delivers on your brand promise, provides relevant content and facilitates key business functions.

I simplify the solution for my clients by helping them to address some fundamental questions:

• Who are my primary user groups, which ones are secondary, and why?
• What does each type of visitor come to my site to do?
• Are they an information seeker or a task achiever?
• What do they expect to find or to do?
• What will they consider a successful experience with my site?

The answers to these and other questions can be found in a number of ways. For qualitative analysis, we may conduct focus groups or online surveys to determine the habits, preferences and expectations of your users.

Usability testing during the development process is another tool to understanding how satisfied and productive site visitors are, and whether it is really providing value. Does the navigation work well? Is the information organized in the way your visitors want to receive it?

Usability testing can help to determine whether the biggest challenge is in the design itself, or in the quality of functionality or content.

Examination of quantitative information can also prove quite interesting. Tracking recent activity on the site will reveal which areas are accessed most and least frequently, popular navigation paths, as well as how quickly users are exiting your site, and from what pages.

Armed with an understanding of your target users needs, habits and preferences, we can establish an information architecture, design interface, and content recommendations that that are created to insure their satisfaction and still meet your goals. Investing in this strategic planning on the front end of any web initiative will always save time and money by minimizing the risk that a solution will fail to achieve the desired results.