Any time I start an online project I imagine a very specific user: the single mother. She’s busy, distracted, multi-tasking, goal oriented and short on time. So, she’s like most of us, but with more pressure and baby food stains. Let’s call her Wendy.

One of the biggest mistakes organizations make when creating online content is imagining that users like Wendy will give their content their undivided attention. In fact, Wendy has precious little, if any, time to spend online. So, let’s pretend you were designing a single mom site for Wendy. Here are some things to understand.

First, you can’t give Wendy any more time and certainly can’t give her any more time to spend online. That means that if Wendy is already spending some fraction of her online time looking at single parent sites, you’ll need to rob time from those sites. If you’re no different from those other sites, chances are slim that Wendy will be making repeat visits.

Second, Wendy’s goal-oriented and on a mission. If you can’t show her that your site is mission critical, she will bail. Eye-scan studies carried out by the Poynter Institute show that users like Wendy rapidly scan the text of a webpage in search of words and phrases that match their goal. If they don’t find them within seconds, they move on.

Third, Wendy’s distracted. She’s not giving your page all her attention. She may be worrying about her bank balance, is probably sleep-deprived and is wondering when the baby will wake up or if the repairman will show. So, if your site’s not clearly laid out with words that are familiar to her, she will feel lost and frustrated.

Many years ago I saw a button in the MIT bookstore that read: “Know thy users, for they are not you.” This remains great advice. Wendy doesn’t work for your non-profit, doesn’t use the jargon you do, and could care less about what your org chart looks like, what your stretch goals are or which sub-department is responsible for which deliverables. That’s all noise to her.

And the committee meetings where you all fight over what Wendy would like to see on your homepage? That’s all noise too. Here’s an insider secret. Web designers call those “make it more blue” sessions. As in, “Jeez, I really like that page, but could you make it more blue, my husband loves blue.” Unless your husband is Wendy, who cares what he thinks? Nobody but the thousands of companies that make web content decisions on the say-so of a bad focus group of one.

All of this is common sense. But, over the past 20 years I’ve seen client after client act like they’re maladroit lumberjacks designing feminine hygiene products. They’re not interested in talking to anyone and can’t imagine the world through anything but their inwardly focused lens. As a result the sites they produce are ham-handed and as off-target as a birchbark tampon.

The reality is, we’re all Wendys. We want clear, concise websites that let us achieve our goals, are resonant with our tasks and let us get in and get out quickly, the way a well-designed convenience store does. Well, that’s what we want until we get into a committee room to design a site, then all that practically and common sense gets tossed in the blue box and politics, egos and dumbassed thinking trumps good user-centric design.

Let me give you an example. A few years back I was redesigning the International microsite (with a focus on Chinese students) for a college in Toronto. Before we began the process I invited a dozen Chinese students in for pizza and we talked about how they made the decision to pick the college. We expected we would hear about how they wanted to know about marks, the college’s reputation, the visa application process etc. Instead we made two important discoveries.

First, it was the students’ parents, not the students, who made the real decisions. Second, those parents, who often had weak English skills, didn’t care as much about reputation and marks as they did about one main worry: “Will my child be safe?”

That learning made us completely rethink the way we designed the site.

We had been completely wrong about who the audience was and what they cared about. The only way we discovered that was by talking to the target audience. In the time it took, the committee would have only managed to decide on takeout and would have been halfway through an argument about what shade of blue the site should be.

Listening to folks inside your organization who think they know how to design sites because they browse them makes about as much sense as letting someone operate on you because they’re big Scrubs fans. Instead, pay attention to your Wendys.

wayne

Wayne MacPhail

Wayne MacPhail has been a print and online journalist for 25 years. He was the managing editor of Hamilton Magazine and was a reporter and editor at The Hamilton Spectator until he founded Southam InfoLab,...