Forrester Research says these 4 design rules help ensure your Web site supports your goals and your bank account.
When designers look to tackle a new Web site or refurbish an old one,
they are doomed to lackluster results and underperformance – that is, unless
they follow these four guidelines. Forrester
Research, in a recent report
examining the best Web design firms, finds that in order to improve ROI,
companies must:
* Focus on
understanding users. The key here, Forrester says, is creating and
implementing customer personas to guide the design effort. The use of personas
helps companies focus on serving the most important goals of their most
important customers. The result is shorter design cycles and improved site
quality, Forrester says.
* Adopt a
scenario-based methodology. Forrester says that customers and prospects
arrive at sites with goals in mind. By crafting clear paths to content and
function that satisfy those goals, companies quickly see their ROI increase. The
key here, Forrester says, is to design, build and test sites for the actual user
scenarios they must support. How long does it take to get from making a buying
decision to finishing up an actual purchase? The best sites make key tasks easy
and intuitive to accomplish.
* Cultivate
design smarts across the whole team. Forrester says that everyone involved
in the design process – from HTML coders all the way up the CEO or executive
champion – should know the site’s target users and their most critical goals.
Even lower-level team members, including stakeholders from IT and marketing,
should be able to draw lines from business goals (like generating qualified
leads) to corresponding user goals (like configuring the right product and then
finding a dealer who sells it), Forrester says. Project managers must be able to
defend content, navigation and presentation decisions based on how well they
support user scenarios.
* Exercise
project discipline. When looking to design or retool an existing site, focus
on the flaws with the highest impact on the customer, and then test and optimize
the fixes, Forrester says. Make sure any change you make is focused on your
customers, and continuously revisit those changes to ensure they support the
site’s overall goals.
Web Design 
