Bid Ethiopia

Why are you creating a web site? Who is it for and what do they need to do on the site?
A form like Form 3-2 can be used to help you clarify the stakeholders, business goals, user goals, and usability objectives for the site. (Download from http://www.mkp.com/uew/.) Feel free to expand on it if it isn’t quite the right list for your site.

The Stakeholders
Who will be affected by the existence of your web site, and why do they care? Your clients. Your design team.

The end users. For an e-commerce site, the stakeholders include the vendors, the distributors, the shipping company, business partners, advertisers, investors, all departments within the e-commerce company (marketing, purchasing, billing, shipping, customer support), the customers, the person they’re buying for, the customers’ spouses who get ignored while the customers are using the computer, and their friends who are trying to call while they’re monopolizing the phone line.

You’ve got to factor in the concerns of all these people in a complex set of design tradeoffs. If you ignore some stakeholders, someday they’re going to walk in and play their trump card, and an otherwise careful design will be shot full of holes.

If you’ve never bothered to consider what information the shipping company wants, and you don’t have what they want, then you may find yourself with hundreds of orders (or worse yet, millions) with no way to fulfill them.

For instance, you may assumed a flat shipping rate or a rate scaled to the purchase quantity, but your shipping department may surprise you with extra charges for fragile items, hazardous chemicals, or biological waste.

Stakeholders who are affected by your site design but don’t actually use it themselves are sometimes called indirect users. Excellent usability means working for the indirect users as well as the direct users.

Business Goals
What are the business reasons for this web site? What’s the value proposition? How is the business going to determine whether the site was a success? For some sites, the evaluation is simply, “How much money did we make from customers of the web site?” In the large number of marketing web sites, the value is assessed based on indirect effects on purchasing, lead generation, and company reputation and valuation.

For many first-time sites, the criterion for success is that the business gains a better understanding of the role the Internet can play in its business.

In redesigning or expanding an existing web site (or developing a large initial web site), a cost justification is in order, without which the site is destined for failure.

Business goals have to be factored into consideration with user goals. For example, if usability goals aren’t tempered by business goals, the most usable e-commerce site is one where users get everything for free (it’s not only cheaper, it’s also a lot simpler)!

User Goals
Why will users come to your site? To be entertained or to get work done? To learn something or to create something?

To interact with other people or to avoid having to talk to one of your salespeople? Set up your initial expectations and refine them as you learn more about the users.

If you can’t think of a reason users would come, then they probably won’t. Some web sites try to lure users by providing portals or news, but if you can’t think of a reasons users would prefer your portal or news service over another source, then they probably still won’t come.

So consider how your service can be more useful – for example, greater relevance (e.g. local news), more up-to-date information, or easier use. Try adding value to your core services rather than throwing in unrelated extras.

Report This Post