User Research & What It Means To Your (Online) Business

When engaging in any online initiative, it is often easy to focus on the obvious: the end product. When can we launch it? What assets will we need to build it? What integration issues will we face? Will it meet our revised business goals? Not surprisingly, these questions do not typically take into account those who will ultimately determine a site’s relative success or failure: the end user.

Whether you are building a new B2B portal or a promotional microsite, the more that you can truly understand the users going your new online property, the more effective your efforts and ROI numbers will be. texturemedia understands and values the need to get projects to market as quickly as possible, and we always welcome as much contextual information as possible to inform collaborative decisions. While we will make every effort to understand your current users and your future target audiences, nothing can replace real-time interaction with actual people.

User research, in its simplest form, calls for inquiry with a targeted user base and seeks to understand user behavior in the context of online usage. While user research can be conducted at various points throughout the early site definition phase, the earlier the better. However, it’s never too late to begin investigating weak spots in your approach. During our “define” phase, we like to “measure twice and cut once.” As the old adage goes, part of measuring twice means getting a trusted friend to look over your shoulder to check your work. In the case of building sites, that trusted friend is your end user. And believe it or not, they are more than happy to correct you when you might be measuring incorrectly.

Recently, texturemedia conducted a number of user-focused feedback sessions for one of its clients. While this client had already built out a beta version of their online platform, they wanted to gain feedback from their end users to understand how well their site was servicing user needs. Not surprisingly, the results were illuminating. After several focused, facilitated sessions run by texturemedia’s Interaction Design and Client Services teams, the amount of valuable information we received has given us clear direction as to how we’ll implement iterative changes in phase two of the project. In addition, it gave our client critical insight as to how they can better support their users both on and offline. Without these insights from core users, we would have likely continued down the path of making assumptions for the user instead of validating those assumptions early on in the process.

User research and usability assessment come in many forms. The key point here is to make sure that you initiate the process; it’s never too late to start. Feel free to give us a call and see how we can help you dig into your users’ true needs.

Peyton Lindley, Interaction Design