It’s crucial to establish what types of peop le are visiting your site and what sort of information and features you need to provide for them.
If you don’t have this information, it’s like trying to buy a birthday present for someone you haven’t seen in a while. It’s really likely you’ll end up buying something they don’t want because it doesn’t interest them, or they’ve got one already, and you end up wasting money and both you and the recipient are disappointed with the outcome.
If you have a birthday list to work from – some suggestions of what is going to be great to receive, then those problems are greatly reduced or eliminated altogether.
So, it’s the same principle with you website, if you don’t know what people want you’re much more likley to end up building something they’re not going to use .
There are lots of ways to determine what people might be interested in:
- Speak to people who work on the customer service desk and find out what customers are asking for
- See what parts of your site are the most popular, and make sure those sections are easy to use
- Add a feedback form or survey to your site, even a simple poll, so people can tell you what they think.
- Make some appointments to meet real people, or the types of people you’re aiming you site at, and ask them to tell you what you think about it. Around 5 people is a good number to start with.
Once you have this information, building a successful site becomes so much easier.
A final word of advice – make sure several people are asking for a particular feature, not just one person. That way you can add features that are going to be popular. (Otherwise, you might still end up creating things that few people are interested in, so your not much further on than when you started!)
