London Web Design & SEO Services

If you have done all the steps in Analyze, you are ready to design, write, and develop the Web site. A first step is to get a list of requirements for the site.

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What are requirements?

Web site requirements describe the features, functions, and content of the site. They are a list of what the site must have and what it must allow users to do.

Requirements might be general features and functions, such as:

• search
• contact us

Requirements might be specific features and functions for your site. Perhaps your Web site must allow users to:

• apply for grants online
• sign up for email alerts of contract opportunities
• purchase products
• get data from a database

Requirements might be specific content or content areas that your site must cover, such as:

• reports of research
• articles on health for the general public
• lists of funding opportunities
• links to other related sites
• reports of meetings
• press releases

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How do you develop requirements?

Site requirements should reflect your users’ needs.

The first step in developing requirements is to review the scenarios you wrote. The scenarios should describe the 10 to 30 most important and most frequent tasks users will want to do on your site.

Begin by extracting the requirements from each scenario. What features, functions, and content must the site have for users to successfully complete each scenario?

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How detailed should requirements be?

At this point, requirements can be a phrase or one-sentence description of what the site must have or must allow users to do. As you move through the process of designing the site, you may develop the requirements further with more detail.

Eventually, you may want to write the requirements as Use Cases, which describe in great detail how users will interact with the site to accomplish the scenarios. Before you are ready to develop use cases, however, you must do some of the other design steps.

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How do you use requirements?

Requirements only tell you what the Web site must have and what it must allow users to do. Requirements do not tell you how to design or develop the site to have those features, functions, and content. The other design steps help you figure out how to make sure that the site is organized, written, and designed to satisfy the requirements.

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Next steps

To organize the Web site, begin by conducting a content inventory of your current site to identify what items you already have and which items you will need to add based on your Web site requirements. A content inventory is also helps you to begin organizing your site in a way logical to your users.

What is a measurable usability goal?

A measurable usability goal is the definition of successful usability on your site for a specific set of users doing a specific task.

Example: You are building a Web application for owners of small businesses to pay state withholding tax online. You might set these measurable usability goals:
A business owner who has been paying withholding tax by mailing in a check and slip every month will now pay that tax online. On the first attempt, the business owner will:

• successfully complete the transaction in five minutes or less
• submit the right amount from the right bank and bank account
• make no more than one error while using the application
• recover from any error in one minute or less
• rate the experience a four or five on a one to five scale where five is the best
• indicate a desire to use the application for future tax payments

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What types of measurable usability goals should you set?

Typical usability goals include:

• Time
• Accuracy
• Overall success
• Satisfaction

Time

You can set a usability goal for the overall time the user will take to carry out a task (scenario) on the site. You can also break down that time and set measurable usability goals for:

• time to get to the application or to the right Web information page
• time to use the application or to understand the information
• time to recover from an error

Accuracy

Similarly, you can set a usability goal for the accuracy with which the user carries out the task (scenario) or you can break it down into separate goals for:

• number of unproductive navigation choices
• number of unproductive searches
• number of errors in using an application
• number of misunderstandings of information

Overall success

Obviously, the usability goal must be that users will be successful. If users cannot do their tasks or cannot get answers to their questions on your Web site, your Web site is failing those specific users for those specific tasks and questions.

You may also set measurable usability goals for how users will get to that success. For example, you might set a measurable usability goal for a Web application that new users will go to the help if they need it, will find what they need in the help, and will be back doing their original task within two minutes. You might set a measurable usability goal that a user who has done the task in your Web application before will do it successfully a second time without using the help.

Satisfaction

Again, obviously, your measurable usability goal must be that users are happy. You can measure overall satisfaction. You can also break down satisfaction and set separate measurable usability goals for navigation, search, level of detail in the content, language of the content, and other specific factors.

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Which types of measure should you rely on most?

When you test the Web site against your measurable usability goals, consider performance (time, accuracy, success) as more important than satisfaction ratings. If users give the site low ratings, the site needs to be fixed. If users give the site high ratings, you may not be getting a true picture. In usability testing, we often find that users give high satisfaction ratings even when they have had serious performance problems. They may be blaming themselves for the problems. They may not want to hurt your feelings. They may be being polite rather than saying what they really think.

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