1. Client Needs Analysis & Competitors

2. Overview Gathering Client Information
Establishing Goals and Objectives
Client Relations Concepts
Usability Requirements
Competitive Analysis

3. Gathering Client Information
Who is the client?
If you are part of an in-house development team, the ‘client’ is your boss (or his/her boss)
If you are an outside developer, it is the individual(s) that hired you or your company to develop a website or web application
Plan for a number of client meetings
Having a question checklist helps
Don’t just ‘wing it’ in the meetings

4. Your Questions to the Client
What is the vision and purpose of the site?
What are the short term and long term business goals of the site?
Product Sales
Image
Customer Support
Online Services
What criteria will determine the site’s success?

5. Your Questions to the Client
Who are the users / audiences?
What content should (and should not) be part of the site?
Who are your competitors?
What functionality and technologies will be involved in developing the site?
What are the target platform(s)?

6. Client-Supplied Materials
The client should provide:
Business model and strategy
Branding (logo, fonts / typefaces, colors)
Marketing literature for the company
Marketing plan for the website
If you are redesigning an existing website:
Web analytics data
Site architecture
Any usability studies

7. What are Goals and Objectives?
Goals are high-level statements about what the client wants to achieve
Objectives are lower-level outcomes that support each goal.
Sample goal and objective supporting goal: Goal: To become more cost-efficient Objective: In the first year following site launch reduce call volume by 40%.

8. Developing Goals & Objectives
Goals do not provide details; they indicate a general direction only.
Objectives, on the other hand, are:
Measurable (otherwise how do you know you were successful?)
Time-limited (typically in month or quarter increments with 1 year as the maximum; this tells you when to measure)

9. Client Chooses Goals/Objectives
The client needs to set these goals and objectives
If you set them and are too optimistic, the client may perceive your work to be a failure
If the client sets them and they are not met, the repercussions are less severe (for you)
Ultimately it is the client’s website and they know their industry the best

10. Sample Goals & Objectives
Goal: Become more profitable
Objective: Increase online sales revenue 25% in 6 months
Goal: Become more cost-efficient
Objective: Reduce mailing costs 15% in 6 months

11. Sample Goals & Objectives
Goal: Improve brand image
Objective: Improve average brand quality to a 4 or above (on a 1-5 scale) using multiple focus groups over a 1 year period
Goal: Increase website awareness
Objective: Increase the number of unique visitors by at least 20% within 3 months

12. Determining Goals
For a banking website (e.g., National City Bank, Key Bank, TCF Bank)
For an educational institution website (e.g., WCC, EMU, UM)
For a computer manufacturer / seller website (e.g., Dell, Apple)

13. Balancing Client and User Needs
Look for the overlap between what client needs and user needs
Always look for convergence in the data
If more than one data source is giving the same recommendation, you feel more confident in implementing it
However, keep in mind the time, cost, and resource constraints of the project

14. Client Relations Concepts
Stakeholders
Deliverable
Buy-In
Scope-Creep

15. Stakeholders Anyone with a valid interest in the project
Stakeholder test:
Does your project impact their work? If the answer is yes, they are a stakeholder

16. Deliverable Anything tangible provided to the client
User Personas during the Requirements Analysis Phase
Site Diagrams and Site Outlines during the Conceptual Design Phase
And many more

17. Buy-In
Approval and support of project direction and decisions from individuals in the client organization
Get buy-in from high-level decision makers.
Strong support from lower-level managers is of no value when their boss disagrees or is unaware of the project.
User experience recommendations often fail to be implemented because buy-in is missing.

18. Scope-Creep Work occurs outside the established scope
For example, you have developed 4 personas for the client. This is the number specified in the contract.
Later on the client asks for another 2 personas to be developed, based on some of their latest thinking about the project.
Scope-creep pushes you over on time and also pushes you over on budget.

19. Usability Requirements
These are the standards for the site to meet in testing with users
If the requirements are met, you feel more confident launching the site
Requirements are typically created for:
Completion rates for tasks
Time to complete tasks
Number of errors users make
How satisfied users feel after using the site

20. Sample Usability Requirements
90% of users will successfully place an order
90% of users will complete the account registration process in 5 minutes or less
80% of first-time users will locate a desired product within 3 minutes

21. Why Examine Competitors?
Sometimes the client does not have all the answers or is debating between various approaches.
You may need a baseline to compare the new or redesigned website against later, especially for showing return on investment (ROI).

22. Competitive Analysis
User experience professionals explore multiple competitor websites to determine:
Ideas for content and functionality (and what is commonly included for these)
Approaches to structuring / labeling content
Indications of target audiences that have been overlooked
Interface ideas (although these will not be acted upon until Mockups & Prototyping)

23. Our Focus
Our competitive analysis will focus on documenting and analyzing content and functionality, although a competitive analysis could address any aspect of a website or web application