In this chapter we will outline:
- Ways you and your design company can best plan the scope of your website project
- How to uncover your customers’ needs using tried and tested techniques
Once you have decided to take the project forward, you and your newly-appointed web design agency need to move on to the discovery, or requirement-gathering stage. Working with your web design agency to agree on a written strategy brief is important, because it will define the scope of your project.
Sometimes, organisations choose to appoint an independent research agency to establish their website’s requirements. They will then present this research to the web designer who can use it to help plan the scope of the website.
However, you shouldn’t be disheartened if your designers prefer to do their own investigations; this is entirely normal. These days, many designers prefer to work with companies themselves to help understand and identify their customers, competitors and their business goals as part of the design process.
Mark Coombes of Complete claims that the independent research agencies companies appoint can sometimes ‘be soft and fluffy in their answers. We have to go in and get something hard; otherwise the business isn’t going to get a measurable benefit.’
As with all business projects, key stakeholders need to be involved from the start; as big decisions will need to be made quickly.
You’ll also need to firm budgets, decide on milestones and get key people involved at every major stage of the process.
In the fast-paced world of the web, goals can and will change throughout the course of the project, so your agency should be direct, honest and flexible enough to react to sudden changes to your business plans.
‘Any agency worth their salt will try and get under the skin of the business and find out what the business need is. Any agency that doesn’t do that isn’t going to solve your problem. That’s a key thing, but the client also needs to be open. You are going to investigate and interrogate.’
Although the snazzy design work will form the crux of your project, there are finer practical details to pin down before research begins.
Mark Bennett of BlackOrange suggests the following checklist:
- Roles and responsibilities
- Initial specifications (content and functionality)
- Domain names, hosting requirements
- Timeframes
- Milestones
- Costs
- Copyright and intellectual property ownership
- Ongoing maintenance and support
Firstly it is worth taking into account that, when an agency assesses your business, there is no hard and fast technique to how they will carry out this process.
‘If anyone goes in with a blanket rule to apply to anything, just don’t trust it. Every organisation is different and unique. We’ve got a set of tools we use on a regular basis, such as workshops with internal people, user focus groups and individual key stakeholder surveys.’
In order to work out what is required, it is not unusual for an agency to begin a project by sending an engagement team into the business. According to Mark Coombes, Director of Online Channels at marketing communications agency Complete, gathering information in this way is an effective means of gaining insights into what a company wants or needs from its website. This, in turn, will inform the designers’ approach to the project.
‘There aren’t a set number of tools and methodologies we’d use on any particular project. We use the right ones as we go through. It very much fits in with the business sector and their requirements. Is the site a complete refresh? Or is it a response to ‘Why aren’t we selling enough? We have a great e-commerce system; maybe people aren’t seeing the bargains?’ …there are a lot of ways to break it down.’
Your budget will be a crucial decider as to what strategy you’ll take. How much you spend on your website should be sensibly proportioned to the turnover of your business.
As Neil Davis of Precedent Communications points out; ‘if the annual turnover of a company is £1 million, then spending £100,000 on a website isn’t going to be a wise investment.’
In addition, you will also need to figure out whether you will achieve an adequate return on your investment.
A small business may only need to conduct fundamental research such as a workshop, a few customer interviews and a competitor review. If they choose to spend more money on any additional research, will it be worth the possible extra return on investment?
For example, if a certain research technique generates a one per cent return on investment it might only equate to a few hundred pounds of additional income for a small business after costs are taken into account. But for a big company that one per cent might be a million pounds, in which case it might be worth them investing a bit extra.
One way to help determine how your new site should look is to conduct a few user interviews. This helps you design the site around specific user scenarios, not around what managers might want.
For example, Neil Gardiner, who runs his own design company NGStudio and often works with small businesses, will create biographies, or profiles, of his clients’ typical customers. These profiles are often referred to as personas.
‘The client will have an idea about who their customer is and what they think they’ll want but when they go back and start to speak to some of those customers, you often find that those views don’t always correspond.’
In order to develop personas, the Webcredible design consultancy will initially place a questionnaire on its clients’ existing websites to discover their main audience groups. It will then conduct interviews with stakeholders within the company who can help define those users in more detail.
Next, Webcredible will conduct in-depth interviews with representative users in order to understand their motivations. For instance, if an individual were buying something, how would the website fit in with their overall journey from thinking about a particular product to actually making a purchase?
Once the research is complete, the information gathered can be used to create personas that can be used to test different elements of the site.
‘We’ll flesh out the users’ individual goals, their needs and attitudes and behaviour. Following on from those interviews you have a real understanding of what the users’ main goals will be. Then, any time you come up with an idea for the site, rather than guessing if it’s going to work for your users, you run it by your personas.’
Rather than reinvent the wheel, taking a look at what does and doesn’t work on your current website, if you have one, can help you understand the problems that need to be fixed.
Simple analytical tools like Google Analytics or WebTrends allow you to discover ‘where people are going or, probably importantly, where they’re not going,’ says Marty Carroll, director of usability at Foviance. ‘You can use that information as the basis of the design to say what’s working, and what’s not.’
Case study
Find out how the Atlantic Hotel in Jersey used a web design agency to help create a website that matched their reputation for luxury and quality in our
case study.