In this section you’ll work through the steps to consider your goals for the website and those of your users to check that the website is clear in its intention, and has the necessary functions to meet your users needs.
The term ‘value proposition’ is used to describe a short statement explaining the value of your service or product, and the primary reason anyone should engage with you.
You may not have a product to sell, however you should still have a clear mission that makes your organsiation stand out.
Your statement would be ideally located at the top of your homepage, and your audience should be able to clearly identify your statement.
Your statement should describe the benefits of what you offer, for whom, and how it is unique. To keep audience attention you should do this as succinctly as possible — use just a few words and make each word count.
A successful proposition is not only succinct and distills the essence of your mission, but where it is on the site and its design should be carefully considered for maximum impact.
This will be easier to do if the statement is:
Get help from a handful of other people — even better if they’re your target audience. Ask them to stand a couple of feet away from the screen and see if they can identify what the website (organisation) is offering.
You might then ask them review the site in a couple of minutes and tell you what they understand the main offer (proposition) to be.
You may have more than one audience, or rather a number of different types of users. We explain below how you might use a segmentation activity to identify your audience.
For a website to be effective it needs to communicate with its audience.
Different audiences will have distinct needs and preferences. Your website will need to to take these into account in order to be able to engage and effectively communicate with them.
If your website has more than one key audience, you will need to consider how both can be accommodated within the design and navigation.
The following video outlines some key audience segments, their needs and how this might affect the look and function of your site.
What are their goals or objectives by going on your website.
For your website to be successful it must meet your goals.
Which may be for example to publicise your cause or organisation, to raise funds, or recruit volunteers.
It also needs to meet your users goals - the site should help them achieve their goals. Before we consider examples of more specific goals, there are some universal goals that users have.
For example most users have the goal to find the information they are looking for fast and without frustration. We tend to consider these in the broader topic of user experience.
More specifically users may have goals to: find a piece of information e.g.
To work out what you users goal, needs and motivations are you need to be able to better understand, or empathise with them. To do this designers commonly create user personas.
These personas are archetypical users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. Developing a range of personas that incorporate elements of who you know or want to attract to your site can help you test whether your website is meeting their needs and goals.
A typical persona might include:
What are their goals or objectives by going on your website?
For your website to be successful it must meet your user goals
There are lots of functions that websites can perform, however some common ones are:
Referring back to your goals - what you’d like the user to understand or do, and to the user goals, an effective website will identify and meet these needs through the functions.
You can see some examples below. Key to success is to have a strong case for adding any functionality so the site remains each to navigate, runs smoothly and appears uncluttered.
There are a number of function which although they might not necessary to help users complete their goals, provide added value for the user. Examples include:
You might also consider the use of ‘testimonials’ to built social proof. This provides the user with confidence that your value proposition is for them.
A good website will use functions that can help the user get to the information or take the action that moves them closer to their goal.Some functions can frustrate users and should be used wisely:
In this section you’ll consider how the site works in more depth from your users perspectives, identifying ways that users can be engaged or unintentionally frustrated.
UX or ‘User Experience’ refers to the feeling users experience when using a product, application, system, or service.
A broad term that can cover anything from how well the user can navigate the product, how easy it is to use, and how relevant is the content to the user.
Although a user experience is subjective we can list the attributes that we might assess a user’s experience against. In this section we will cover the main elements that affect a user’s experience (either positively or negatively) of a website as an interface.
Because user experience is subjective, to understand a website is working we need to test the site with a range of people. The process will will help understanding of how people use a website, and their satisfaction with the experience.
There are many different ways you can try to get an idea of your user’s feedback from simple and quick through to more involved.
Quick ways might be to place a feedback form, or popup satisfaction survey on your website. More involved methods involve informal interviews and/or observing users.
Generally you can expect to get more quality insights the more effort is expended. Whereas a feedback form online may get more responses, users may not be motivated to share much. Spending time face to face, or online by sharing a screen build rapport and this is reflected in what is shared.
Website navigation is how users find their way around you website. How information is structured on your site should enable users to find their way to what they need in as few clicks as possible, and with as little frustration.
If you achieve a good user experience however then users are more likely to return to your site.
If users cannot find information quickly generally they will not spend more time looking, and in frustration will turn to another website, or source to try to find the answer.
Ease of navigation is built on well considered information architecture with a clear hierarchy of information. To visualise this bring to mind all the pages, or key topics each on a single post-it notes. The job of a hierarchy is to work out which information should be on the top (most important), and what other pages/topics best fit underneath others.
Common page titles for purpose driven websites are:
Website navigation may be horizontal, vertical, and or contain further links in a footer. They also use breadcrumbs to help the user track where they are on the site.
Website content is anything on your website that a user can use, read or interact with, so it might be text, visual or audio.
Your overall proposition with its placement in a key location is headline content. All your other content will organised under sections within your site navigation.
Great content plays a large role in engaging users to your cause, organisation’s offer and increases the chance that they will return.
Although writing great text content is partly an art, a large part is a learnable skill following some core guidelines:
Good images add great value to a site, not only in adding visual appeal but also through their ability to illustrate meaning. Great images serve both purposes well.
When selecting images some things to consider:
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Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit. In porta lacinia fringilla. Phasellus feugiat mi dui, at tempus metus aliquet nec. Vestibulum sed dolor nibh. Nullam sit amet mauris sit amet erat faucibus tristique. Phasellus sed vehicula metus.
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In this section you’ll look at the mostly hidden elements that help or hinder your website to perform well. We include a number of online tools that can run checks for you.
Your organsiation’s value proposition is arguably the single most important piece of messaging on your website. The term ‘value proposition’ is used to describe a short statement explaining the value of your service or product, and the primary reason anyone should engage with you.
You may not have a product to sell, however you should still have a clear mission that makes your organsiation stand out.
Your statement should describe the benefits of what you offer, for whom, and how it is unique. To keep audience attention you should do this as succinctly as possible — use just a few words and make each word count.
A successful proposition is not only succinct and distills the essence of your mission, but where it is on the site and its design should be carefully considered for maximum impact.
Your statement would be ideally located at the top of your homepage, and your audience should be able to clearly identify your statement.
This will be easier to do if the statement is:
Get help from a handful of other people — even better if they’re your target audience. Ask them to stand a couple of feet away from the screen and see if they can identify what the website (organisation) is offering.
You might then ask them review the site in a couple of minutes and tell you what they understand the main offer (proposition) to be.
Your audience is who you are aiming your website at - we might also refer them as your ‘users’. You may have more than one audience, or rather a number of different types of users. We explain below how you might use a segmentation activity to identify your audience.
For a website to be effective it needs to communicate with its audience.
Different audiences will have distinct needs and preferences. Your website will need to to take these into account in order to be able to engage and effectively communicate with them.
If your website has more than one key audience, you will need to consider how both can be accommodated within the design and navigation.
The following video outlines some key audience segments, their needs and how this might affect the look and function of your site.
In the previous section we considered who your audience are. In this section we consider what they might want to do - what are their goals or objectives by going on your website.For your website to be successful it must meet your goals, which may be for example to publicise your cause or organisation, to raise funds, or recruit volunteers.
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
In this section you’ll consider how well managing the site is working for your organisation in terms of functionality to update content, make changes, and ongoing maintenance costs.
Your organsiation’s value proposition is arguably the single most important piece of messaging on your website. The term ‘value proposition’ is used to describe a short statement explaining the value of your service or product, and the primary reason anyone should engage with you.
You may not have a product to sell, however you should still have a clear mission that makes your organsiation stand out.
Your statement should describe the benefits of what you offer, for whom, and how it is unique. To keep audience attention you should do this as succinctly as possible — use just a few words and make each word count.
A successful proposition is not only succinct and distills the essence of your mission, but where it is on the site and its design should be carefully considered for maximum impact.
Your statement would be ideally located at the top of your homepage, and your audience should be able to clearly identify your statement.
This will be easier to do if the statement is:
Get help from a handful of other people — even better if they’re your target audience. Ask them to stand a couple of feet away from the screen and see if they can identify what the website (organisation) is offering.
You might then ask them review the site in a couple of minutes and tell you what they understand the main offer (proposition) to be.
Your audience is who you are aiming your website at - we might also refer them as your ‘users’. You may have more than one audience, or rather a number of different types of users. We explain below how you might use a segmentation activity to identify your audience.
For a website to be effective it needs to communicate with its audience.
Different audiences will have distinct needs and preferences. Your website will need to to take these into account in order to be able to engage and effectively communicate with them.
If your website has more than one key audience, you will need to consider how both can be accommodated within the design and navigation.
The following video outlines some key audience segments, their needs and how this might affect the look and function of your site.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit. In porta lacinia fringilla. Phasellus feugiat mi dui, at tempus metus aliquet nec. Vestibulum sed dolor nibh. Nullam sit amet mauris sit amet erat faucibus tristique. Phasellus sed vehicula metus.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit. In porta lacinia fringilla.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit. In porta lacinia fringilla. Phasellus feugiat mi dui, at tempus metus aliquet nec. Vestibulum sed dolor nibh. Nullam sit amet mauris sit amet erat faucibus tristique. Phasellus sed vehicula metus.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit. In porta lacinia fringilla. Phasellus feugiat mi dui, at tempus metus aliquet nec. Vestibulum sed dolor nibh. Nullam sit amet mauris sit amet erat faucibus tristique. Phasellus sed vehicula metus.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit. In porta lacinia fringilla.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit. In porta lacinia fringilla. Phasellus feugiat mi dui, at tempus metus aliquet nec. Vestibulum sed dolor nibh. Nullam sit amet mauris sit amet erat faucibus tristique. Phasellus sed vehicula metus.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Curabitur vel leo augue. Duis a mollis velit:
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