The UX design process happens before, during and after the website is being built. It ties in very closely with strategy and research, web development and design, SEO, content strategy and creation, and later conversion optimisation.
Conduct research and discovery
Step one involves conducting detailed research on the business, the users, and the technology involved. This is covered fully in the chapter Market Research, which includes user research. Doing this lets UX practitioners know exactly what they need to do to address the needs of the business and audience. This will generate a lot of data that needs to be filtered and organised.
Create the site’s basic structure
Information architecture (IA) is about managing information – taking a lot of raw data and applying tools and techniques to it to make it manageable and usable. The purpose of this is to make communication and understanding easier by putting information into logical, clear and familiar structures.
The information architecture of a site is crucial to usability. Categories and pages should flow from broad to narrow. An intuitively designed structure will guide the user to the site’s goals.
IA operates on both the micro and the macro level – it covers everything from the way individual pages are laid out (where the navigation and headings are, for example) to the way entire websites are put together.
Most websites have a hierarchical structure, which means there are broad, important pages at the top, and narrower, more specific and less important pages further down. Hierarchical structures can either be very broad and shallow (many main sections with few lower pages) or very narrow and deep (with few main sections and many pages below). It’s up to the UX practitioner to find the right balance of breadth and depth.
Analyse content
If you’re working on a website that already exists, it will be populated with a wide variety of content. In this case, you need to perform a content audit, which is an examination and evaluation of the existing material.
If the website is new – or if you plan to add new content to an existing website – you need to put together a content strategy. This is a plan that outlines what content is needed and when and how it will be created. There’s no single template or model for this – every content strategy will be unique.
The content strategy is largely the responsibility of the strategy, copy and concept teams, but the UX practitioner needs to get involved in a few key roles. The points that UX needs to address are:
• What the site should achieve. Naturally, the content should work towards achieving the site’s and business’ objectives.
• What the user wants and needs. By conducting thorough user research you should be able to answer this question. Provide only content that will add real value to the user.
• What makes the content unique, valuable or different.Content needs to provide value and engagement to the user.
• The tone and language used. You need to give thought here to the tone (fun, light, serious, and so on), register (formal or informal) and style you will use across your content. Make sure this is consistent across text, images, videos and other content types.
Create a sitemap
In UX terminology, a sitemap is the visualised structural plan for how the website’s
pages will be laid out and organised.
To create the visuals for your sitemap, you can follow this process.
1. Start by defining your home page – this should be the top item in the hierarchy.
2. Place the main navigation items below this.
3. Start arranging your pages of content below the main navigational items, according to the results of your user testing and insight, and your information architecture structure.
4. Continue adding pages below this until you have placed all your content. Make sure that every page is accessible from at least one other page – it may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often this is overlooked!
5. Define any other static navigation elements (footer, sidebar, header navigation, search tools). Place these in your diagram in a logical place (possibly branching off directly from the home page, or as separate blocks).
Which sitemap is which?
The term ‘sitemap’ can have two meanings. One is the way it’s defined above – the structural plan of the website. The other is a page on your website that lists all the pages available in a logical and accessible way. An example is the Apple website’s sitemap: www.apple.com/sitemap. This sitemap should be available from every page. Dynamic sitemaps can be employed so that the sitemap is
updated automatically as information is added to the website. Different sitemaps exist for different purposes, so investigate what your users would find most useful.
