User centered planning: be your own information architect

A friend of mine works as an information architect for a large web development agency. Her job is to plan their sites the way an architect plans buildings: she works out what people need and plans how to give it to them.

She was once approached by a toy company for advice on how to improve their website. As usual, she set up some tests with their target audience, one of which was that she asked some kids to find various toys on the website and timed how long it took them. Not only did it take them a very long time, some of them actually broke down in tears with frustration. Can you imagine your website making kids cry?! How awful!

So what went wrong? The problem was that the company had based their menus on the categories they use in their warehouse. But those categories are meaningless to their customers! So the kids just couldn't find what they wanted.

That's a fairly extreme case, but it's actually a very common mistake. You can avoid these kinds of problems by following one key principle: when you're creating a website, the most important thing is to think from your customer's point of view.

Give them what they want

Instead of thinking about what you'd like to tell your customers, it's better to think about what they would like to ask. Work out who your visitors are, work out what they want, then give it to them.

Try this exercise. Imagine five different people who might come to your website. As an example, let's pretend you're an acupuncturist. Start by imagining a typical customer: perhaps someone who often goes to alternative therapists (visitor A). Then we imagine some other possible visitors: perhaps someone with an ongoing pain problem who's tried conventional medicine without success (visitor B); perhaps someone who wants to buy a session for a friend as a present (visitor C); etc. Think of both regular customers and new ones.

Now, try to work out what each of them needs from your website. Some of their needs will be the same: for example, they'll all be wondering if you're qualified, how much you charge, etc. Some of their needs will be different: visitor A is already familiar with acupuncture, but visitor B is new to it, and will probably have some fears – the most obvious one being that she'll be wondering whether it hurts. Visitor C, on the other hand, has a completely different question – she's wondering whether you do pretty gift vouchers!

Intuitive structure

Now you have a list of questions, you can answer them on your website. The ones that matter to more than one of your imaginary customers may warrant pages of their own – your price list, your location, your qualifications, etc. Others may group well together: the question 'Does acupuncture hurt?' could be combined with other information in a 'what to expect' page. Or it could go in an FAQ section.

What you're aiming for is to arrange the information that your customers want in a way which is intuitive; which makes sense to them.

I often compare the web to a supermarket. People use both the same way – actively. They don't usually go there to browse, and they definitely don't go looking for a nice long sales pitch. They're impatient. They want to find what they came for as quickly as possible.

To make it easy to find things, supermarkets lay out their products intuitively. They group things into groups that are meaningful to us: pasta sauces next to pasta; all the dairy products in one place. They also stick to the existing conventions – they put things where we expect to find them. For example, we expect to find the vegetables near the entrance. God knows why – I always pick up my vegetables last, after I've decided what I'm cooking – but there it is. The web has these conventions too. We expect to find 'contact us' at the end of the main menu. If it's not there, we look at the top right hand corner. If it's not there, we look right at the bottom, in the footer (but we may already be a little impatient by this point!). The more we put things where users expect them to be, the easier it is to use our site.

Good signage (and apologies for using the word 'signage')

In the supermarket each aisle is clearly and literally labeled. On the web, think of your menu as being like aisle signs. The names of the links must be very clear. This isn't the place to be cute or clever – we don't ever want to have to guess where things are! Best to call a spade a spade.

Label clearly within each page, too, with a clear, appropriate heading that describes the content of the page, and meaningful subheadings.

If your site is very complicated, with lots of submenus, a breadcrumb can help. That's a line at the top of the page that shows the links they've clicked through to get where they are: Home > About us > Our history. Your web designer can set this up for you.

Room to breathe

Another thing that helps people find what they want is to make sure there aren't too many options in your menus. A basic rule of thumb is that the more stuff there is to see, the less people see any of it. If your menu has 20 links, it's going to take ages for people to find what they want. Better to have 5 or 6 links in your main menu, and have submenus within those sections.

Incidentally, this applies to the content of pages, too. If your page is crowded with images and ads, people won't know where to look. Keep things simple, with plenty of white space, which makes for a more restful experience.

Remember who you're talking to

Try to use a tone of voice which suits your customers. Keep an eye on your vocabulary, too – be especially careful to avoid jargon which will make them feel excluded or insecure. Don't worry, you can do both of these things and still sound like yourself; we all naturally moderate the way we speak according to who we're talking to. It can help to imagine your typical customer sitting in front of you while you're writing your copy.

Let the user stay in charge

On the web, people really want to be in charge. They want to choose what they look at. Back to the supermarket analogy; can you imagine how annoying it would be if you walked into the supermarket and found there was a set path laid out that you had to follow? Or if you had to watch a short movie before you were allowed to go in? You'd just walk straight out and go to a different supermarket!

Every so often someone does a poll of the top ten most annoying things on the web. The things that top that poll are always things that stop the user being in control: flash intros that they have to sit through; noises or movies being played that they haven't asked for; having to click through five pages in order to get where they want to go, or scroll through a whole load of hard sell to find the information they need.

Get out of your own head

Often we're so used to looking at our business from the inside, we find it hard to see it as a customer would. Imagining things from their point of view is a big help, but there's no substitute for talking to them. Companies pay a lot of money for the kind of research that my friend (the information architect) does, but the fact is you can do your own research for nothing. Approach a few of your customers, or even just friends, and ask them to give you some feedback on your website. Do they find it easy to use? Is anything confusing? What information would they like which isn't there yet? You can always offer discounts or free gifts as a thank you for their help – it'll probably be worth its weight in gold.