Needs analysis

We help you to answer these questions: What are our goals and objectives? What do our customers want? What do our website visitors do?

Typically, our needs analyses are most likely to be used in the context of a full redesign, the outputs being used by: the client, to understand what the site is being or could be used for; by digital agencies (or in-house teams) to inform information architecture work and the creation of ‘personas’; and by ourselves, as essential input into strategy recommendations.

Interviews

Ultimately, the website exists to serve its owner, so it makes sense to discover what the owner (in the form of its management) wants. The most effective way of gaining this understanding is intensive interviews with a range of internal stakeholders (one-on-one or in groups) to identify objectives, gain an understanding of the organisation and uncover areas of resistance that need to be overcome. David Bowen has a special skill in such interviews: he was a leading business journalist for 20 years, and is expert at teasing out real needs as well as identifying the delicate but inevitable areas of potential conflict that must be managed in any effective web presence.

We find it most effective if the interviewees are chosen by the client to cover all possible angles. They can either be carried out by telephone or, preferably, in a series of concentrated face-to-face sessions.

Web survey

A web survey is used to identify audience groups and their intent; along with further research it can also be developed into ‘personas’. We help you write the questions, deliver and manage the survey, and then analyze and present the findings. Online surveys are increasingly popular as a cost-effective alternative to full scale market research, if necessary using incentives to encourage participation.

The survey will be designed to be appropriate for informing you about prime areas of the site/features that are important for different user groups. It also provides the opportunity to gauge current levels of satisfaction with the site. The survey will be hosted by us (as an independent research agency on your behalf). It will be anonymous, but we will invite people to provide contact information should they be willing to take part in future work (for example, user testing).

Audience research such as this also provides a useful benchmark so that, when repeated, improvement (from the user viewpoint) can be directly measured.

Market research

We have a close relationship with a market research company, RS Consulting, which is able to offer single country or international coverage. It uses the full range of techniques to provide closely detailed analysis of audience expectations and needs.

Web analytics

Analysis of web analytics data allows us to understand audience behaviour and navigation issues. We use the data from your in-house analytics tool to look for insights that support or undermine assumptions and objectives; for example, to gain insights into successful and broken journeys and processes on the website. By combining web analytics with visitor surveys we can correlate what people say against what people actually do (surprisingly, these are often different). This helps us understand the most-viewed areas of the site and common user journeys. Dan Drury was previously CEO of a web analytics company, and has great experience working with many of the leading tools.