Reaching the customer of your web site

Nick Harrison, Worldbank and Independent Consultant, gave an interesting presentation about designing websites.

We need to identify who the users are and what do they want?

• Usability tests
• Pop-up quizzes etc.
• Analyse search terms
  

Many of the new sites are now task oriented rather than content oriented. We should stop having a "copernicusian" view of our sites.













(Image: http://www.thebahamasweekly.com/publish/the-cosmos-doctor-david-sands/Strange_New_Worlds_Part_3-002595.shtml)

One example he presented was the UN website!



Google is a great example! Its a task oriented. When you arrive at the site, you know you can search. Yahoo on the other hand has too many "navigation choices"! On Google, one click down and you have a greatly fine-tuned
vs.

He then presented the methodology of Customer Carewords which bases its layout on "task analysis". This can be done by defining tasks, polling customers for their favourite tasks and then analysing the results to create list of key tasks. Some companies that use the site include Tetra Pak, IKEA, BBC, Schlumberger, etc. The analysis is important to ensure that the website is based on data rather than opinion of what the users want to see!

Future is driven by what users want! One of the presentations during the session was (Red). I noticed they had a very good "task oriented" site!