The Design of Sites: Patterns for Creating Winning Web Sites, Second Edition

Chapter 3. Knowing Your Customers: Principles and Techniques

A gulf between a design team and the end customers is a fundamental problem inherent in Web site design, whether the Web site is for entertainment, e-commerce, community, or information purposes. To bridge this gulf, you need to focus on customer-centered design. At the heart of customer-centered design are two principles:

1. Know your customers (covered in this chapter).

2. Keep your customers involved throughout the design and implementation process (covered in Chapter 4 [Involving Customers with Iterative Design]).

Knowing Your Customers Helps You Choose Patterns

So far, we have explained why good Web site design is important, and we have presented customer-centered design as the way to create ...