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As most of us look to give our website the X Factor - that special thing that will differentiate us - how many people actually stop before they start and work on the why factor?

I was talking to Gary this morning about a conversation he had with a non-technical friend who couldn’t understand why he had to struggle to book a holiday online the way he wanted to and on the face of it, he is right.

A website that has been ‘why’d’ would be able to deliver information for Gary’s friend because the outcomes and requirements would have been sorted based around what he wanted and needed, rather than the other way round. He - being the customer.
The customer (the guy that pays the bill) is the guy that should drive much of the interface design and the way the website delivers information. He is the one we would want to press our buttons so we need to make sure that our website presses his. When I say ‘he’, I am talking about  ‘them’ - your target market.

What Is The Purpose?

Many new websites don’t take a lot of things into consideration when being built. It’s more of a case of how the website can be built with bells and whistles, based on what the company, designer, developer or project manager thinks. But what if the user doesn’t like the noise? What if what you think they want, isn’t what they need?

We need the user - they need the right experience - not the other way round.

Why would they expect certain things and what are those things? Why would they even visit our site in the first place? Why would they buy from us? Why would they subscribe to our newsletter? Why? Why? Why?

In fact, Why? isn’t necessarily the best question to ask as it allows vagueness in an answer. We need to get to the root causes. The NLP meta model taught me to ask more specific questions in such circumstances, such as:

• How specifically…
  • does this page not push traffic through?
  • does the website not inspire confidence?
• What is an example of this…
  • a good checkout system?
  • a competitors website that outranks yours?

The more intelligence you have, the more you can give your customers what they want. The work doesn’t end when the website is built, because then you get the stats and the KPI to help you even further. The more you refine, the less friction and the more return you get. It’s an investment.

The web is a big place and when it comes to web design and user experience it’s as subjective as you can get. The question is, are you big enough and bold enough to ask the questions of other people that only they can give the answers to?