At Higher Ground Creative we pride ourselves on the effectiveness of our websites and marketing collateral. Design helps our products to look fantastic and to succeed commercially, but without planning and an understanding your target audience and user groups, even the best design work will fall short of client expectations.
This is why for all projects, and for websites in particular, we always undertake usability planning.
Our process for a usability project is to sit down with our client and understand:
- Their business - including their short, medium and long term business goals - their marketing plans and aims for the company.
- Their customers and all user types to the site. Users of a site are not only customers - take for example someone looking at a company's website searching for a job with them, or maybe a PR executive looking for information on the successes of the firm to write about in the press. The more of these valuable users we cater for up fornt, the more effective their interactions with your website, and thus your company, will be.
We look to filter your users down to no more than 5 main user types. This means that we can structure your website clearly and concisely. If you aim to cater for more than 6 users at the most - the site will most likely become cluttered as it attempts to be 'all things to all men'.
From the analysis of these user types, based on both the companies goals and the user goals within this, we can create a sitemap (showing all the pages of the site and detailing basic functionality) and all the main template wireframes (which will itemise the navigation, content and promotional structure of each main page type and also go into greater detail on how each of these will function).
One of the benefits of this process is that the client can be sure of the business effectiveness of the site before any design work is undertaken. It's much easier (and cheaper) to edit and debate around a wireframe, rather than a multi-layered and fully designed photoshop file. Once the wireframes are signed off, then the design can begin in earnest - and it also helps us to provide the designers with a concrete brief and structure around which to work.
As you can see, we really believe in this process. There's a lot to it, but it's valuable. Why not call us to discuss how we can help you to create the most effective website possible through Usability Planning by calling 0845 330 5550 or contact us directly at hello@highergroundcreative.co.uk.