UNIT-2 DIGITAL MARKETING
BBA Sem VI
Understanding Site User Requirements
To understand Site users
requirements, the Analysis phase is needed to be followed. Analysis phase determines the information needs of the site
Analysis involves using
different marketing research techniques to find out the needs of the site
audience. These needs can then be used to drive the design and content of the web
site.
This analysis of users’
requirements for a web site include several activities like interviews
with marketing staff; questionnaire sent to companies; usability and
accessibility testing; informal interviews with key accounts; focus
groups; reviewing competitors’ web sites
etc.
In analysis, we are
seeking to answer the following types
of ‘who, what, why, how’
questions:
● Who are the key
audiences for the site?
● Why should they use the
site (what will appeal to them)?
● What should the content
of the site be? Which services will be provided?
● How will the content of
the site be structured (information architecture)?
● How will navigation
around the site occur?
● What are the main
marketing outcomes we want the site to deliver (registrations, leads, sales)?
1. To help answer these
questions, web designers commonly use an approach known as user-centred
design which uses a range of techniques to ensure the site meets user
needs..
2. It is now generally
agreed that web site designers also need to add persuasion marketing
into the design mix; to create a design that is not only easy to use but also
delivers results for the business. Persuasion Communication encourages the
recipient of the communication to take particular actions or follow particular
paths.
Consultant Bryan
Eisenberg of Future Now (www.futurenowinc.com) is an advocate of persuasion
marketing alongside other design principles such as usability and
accessibility.
He says: during the
wireframe and storyboard phase we ask three critical questions of every
page a visitor will see:
1 What action needs to be taken?
2 Who needs to take that action?
3 How do we persuade that
person, to take the action we desire?
In sum, after combining
both the things, one must take care of followings for understanding and
fulfilling site user requirements.
(a) Usability
web visitors often have
defined goals such as finding particular information or completing an action
such as booking a flight or viewing an account balance. On the Web, usability
is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people
leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what
users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they
leave. If a website’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key
questions, they leave.
In practice, to ensure
usability, two key project activities need to be done.
(i) Expert reviews: An analysis of an existing site or prototype,
by an experienced usability expert who will identify deficiencies and
improvements to a site based on their knowledge of web design principles and
best practice. Expert reviews are often performed at the beginning of a
redesign project as a way of identifying problems with a previous design.
(ii) Usability testing
involves:
1 Identifying
representative users of the and identifying typical tasks;
2 Asking them to perform
specific tasks such as finding a product or completing an order;
3 Observing what they do and how they succeed.
(b) Accessibility
Web accessibility is
another core requirement for websites. It is about allowing all users of a website to interact with it regardless of disabilities they may have or
the web browser or platform they are using to access the site. The visually
impaired are the main audience that designing an accessible website can
help.
However, increased usage
of mobile or wireless access devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs)
and GPRS or 3G phones also make consideration of accessibility important.
The main arguments in
favour of accessibility are:
1 Number of visually
impaired people. In many countries, there are millions of
visually impaired people varying from ‘colour blind’ to partially sighted to
blind.
2 Number of users of less
popular browsers or variation in screen display
resolution. Microsoft Internet Explorer is now the dominant browser, but there
are less well-known browsers that have a loyal following amongst the visually
impaired (for example, screen-readers and Lynx, a text-only browser) and
early-adopters (for example, Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera). If a website
does not display well in these browsers, then you may lose these audiences..
3 More visitors from
natural listings of search engines. Many of the techniques
used to make sites more usable also assist in search engine optimization. For
example, clearer navigation, text alternatives for images, and site maps can all
help improve a site’s position in the search engine rankings.
4 Legal requirements.
In many countries, it is a legal requirement to make websites accessible. For
example, the UK has a Disability Discrimination Act that requires this.
Internet standards
organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium have been active in
promoting guidelines for web accessibility through the Website Accessibility
Initiative (see www.w3.org/WAI). This describes common accessibility problems
such as: images without alternative text; lack of alternative text for imagemap
hot-spots; misleading use of structural elements on pages; uncaptioned audio or
undescribed video; lack of alternative information for users who cannot access
frames or scripts; tables that are difficult to decipher when linearized; or
sites with poor color contrast.
A fuller checklist for
accessibility compliance for website design and coding using HTML is available
from the World Wide Web Consortium (www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/ full-checklist.html).
Some of the most
important elements are indicated by these ‘Quick Tips’ from the WAI:
● Images and animations: use alt tags to
describe the function of each visual.
● Image maps: use the
client-side map and text for hotspots.
● Multimedia: provide
captioning and transcripts of audio, and descriptions of video.
● Hypertext links: use
text that makes sense when read out of context, for example, avoid ‘click here'.
● Page organization: use
headings, lists, and consistent structure.
● Graphs and charts:
summarise or use the attribute.
(C ) Localisation
A further aspect of
customer-centricity for website design is the decision of whether to include
specific content for particular countries. This is referred to as
‘localization’. A site may need to support customers from a range of countries
with:
● different product
needs; ● language differences; ● cultural differences.
Localisation will address
all these issues. It may be that products will be similar in different
countries and localisation will simply involve converting the web site to suit
another country. However, in order to be effective, this often needs more than
translation, since different promotion concepts may be needed for different
countries.
(d) Benchmarking of
competitors’ web sites:
A review of corporate web
sites suggests that, for most companies, the type of information that can be
included on a web site will be fairly similar. Many commentators such as Sterne
(2001) make the point that some sites miss out the basic information that
someone who is unfamiliar with a company may want to know, such as:
● Who are you? ‘About Us’
is now a standard menu option. ● What do you do? What products or services are
available? ● Where do you do it? Are the products and services available
internationally?
( e) Designing the
information architecture
It is important to
recognize that every information system, be it a book or an intranet, has an
information architecture. The creation of an information architecture involves
creating a plan to group information logically – it involves creating a site
structure which is often represented as a site map. A well-developed
information architecture is very important to usability since it determines
navigation options. It is also important to search engine optimization, since
it determines how different types of content that users may search for are
labelled and grouped.
The benefits of creating
an information architecture include:
● A defined structure and
categorisation of information will support user and organisation goals, i.e. it
is a vital aspect of usability.
● It helps increase
‘flow’ on the site – a user’s mental model of where to find content should
mirror that of the content on the web site.
● Search engine optimisation – a higher
listing in the search rankings can often be used through structuring and
labelling information in a structured way.
Blueprints
(site maps) illustrate how the content of a web site is related and navigated.
while a wireframe also
known as ‘schematics’ focuses on individual pages; with a
wireframe the navigation focus becomes where it will be placed on the page.
Read: Planning Website Design
Source: Internet Marketing by Dave Caffeey
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