As part of understanding what your users are looking for on your website you may want to consider task analysis. This will help you understand your users and is done by observing them carrying out tasks. It will help you identify tasks your website must support – it will help you label or redefine navigational elements and organise content to funnel users towards goals.
In principle the purpose of performing task analysis helps you understand;
- What your users’ goals are.
- How your users actually achieve those goals
Remember it’s important to conduct task analysis in the early stages and before any design work is considered. Task analysis will also help support other aspects of the user centered design process;
- Website requirements gathering
- Developing your content strategy
- Site structure
- Wireframing
- Prototyping
Testing scenarios
You may want to ask users what overall tasks they are trying to accomplish or how they currently accomplish the task.
Try to find someone who has no relationship with your organisation and ask them to perform certain tasks or gather information about products or services. Then ask them to signup receive emails from you.
Consider how they currently complete tasks by
- Using search engines or directories
- Navigate through your website
- View your website via word of mouth