The skills that pay the bills
Customer-focussed Website Design
A simple truth of web design I have found is that neither the client or myself represent the target audience for a website. When making decisions about the design of website, it is important that there be an awareness of who the intended customer is and what they want.
Being "customer-focussed" involves putting oneself in the position of the end-user, the person visiting the website and using this perpective to judge the effectiveness of the design. This sounds quite simple enough but in practice it takes a lot of effort to distance yourself from your own preferences and behaviour.
There are a number of techniques that I personally use to do this.
Customer research
Researching the competition and trying to understand what assumptions they are making about their customers. Where possible, conducting surveys of existing (or potential) website visitors to understand their needs and expectations. Contextual research and interview with
Mental modelling
The data gathered from research and surveys can be used to create a "mental model" of how the website should be structured. This breaks down the audience into specific tasks or objectives that they are looking to fulfill within a given scope. The resulting model makes it possible to align website content and structure with audience expectations.
Sitemapping
Persona creation
A final step is often to breath life into my understanding of the customer by creating personas, imaginary visitors complete with their own biograhical details.