May 29, 2011 at 18:49Overview of site customer needs
The purpose of the review is to streamline ideas about the web development market. Orderly ideas about needs will allow us to choose the right niche for our development in the future and determine the competitive advantages of a new product or web resource. The review may be useful for developers who are launching new solutions on the market or for beginner web studios, since in conditions of high competition it is necessary to identify unmet needs of customers (or create such needs) and gain a foothold in the market. The point of view of the "Customer" is due to the need to primarily solve the problems of the customer.
Customers can be divided into several large groups.
In addition to the above categories of large customers, there may be categories whose common global goal is to make money online by creating content and attracting an audience.
Of course, there are customers on the market whose business is smaller and the needs are largely covered by those already described.
Recently, the concept of an Internet portal has become more “blurred,” however, it is worth highlighting two groups of sites that fall under the definition.
Thematic portals are created mainly to increase the interest of the audience in a particular topic. Owners earn on advertising and on subscriptions of companies providing services or products on the theme of the portal or related topics.
Feature of the resource in its size. As a rule, if we talk about popular portals, these are very large sites with high traffic and often prone to attacks. With the development of the Internet, many thematic portals are growing more and more and need territorial distribution (for example, the portal on construction and repair vashdom.ru ).
Another feature of such resources is the presence of forums and guest books that need constant moderation. Various contests, voting are held on such resources, stimulating the demand for products or services of sponsors and advertisers.
Portals may contain small catalogs of companies located on the resource. This fact forms yet another possible need - to link goods or services from catalogs to the article. Naturally, the uniqueness of the content and the optimization of the portal comes first.
Needs:
The peculiarity of the portals may be the complexity of creating content, because it is necessary to combine many heterogeneous elements into one material, for example, if there is a need to insert an advertising banner in the text of the article. An important requirement in this case will be the versatility and ease of development of the administrative panel.
Corporate portals are used within large organizations for employee communication, discussions, and posting general information. The peculiarity of such portals is a special approach to information security, because in many cases the corporate portal is part of a public site. Corporate portals must be protected by authorization through LDAP or the like.
The key tasks that a corporate portal should perform can also include
Social networks, the main purpose of which is to accumulate a large number of users, can also be general and thematic, but they are created mainly as a platform for collecting statistics, broadcasting ads, as well as for monetization through social applications or the provision of paid accounts.
Basic requirements here:
A possible need for blog sites in the future may be tracking and filtering plagiarism, as well as integration with individual blogs through OpenID or Oauth.
Having an online store is more profitable than a store made of glass and concrete by minimizing the cost of its creation and maintenance. With the advent of a large number of engines for web trading, you can open a store in a short time and almost at no cost. The customer will focus on the further promotion of the store in the network and its advertising.
One of the key goals in the process of creating a store is to achieve maximum confidence in the resource. A high level of customer confidence will increase traffic and the number of purchases. Therefore, the functionality of the online store must satisfy the following requirements:
Particular attention should be paid to the usability of the site. It is important to clarify the need to fill out certain fields when placing an order. On any page, the user should see a phone by which he can contact the store operator. It is worth noting that the appearance of any errors or inaccuracies in the operation of the store is unacceptable, as this can permanently deprive the store of user trust.
It is believed that in the near future, the volume of online trade will only grow, since the main business need is being met - increasing sales.
The main objective of promotional sites is to advertise a product, service or promotion. Such a site is most likely promoted through advertising in the media. A resource can stimulate demand with an attractive design, possibly with interactive elements.
Requirements:
Special requirements in such projects are given to design and account for the largest share of the budget. There is another feature - it is possible that there are game elements in the content or various contests, for example, on the site http://foxy.yandex.ru you can participate in the “race”
This is a special category of web resources. They may look like sites, or they can exist for complex data processing or as interfaces between heterogeneous applications and resources on the network. Services use various protocols in their work, for example XML-RPC, SOAP. Web service requirements vary greatly depending on goals and objectives.
Resources on the Internet containing various documentation or dictionaries. In essence, they constitute a large network of interconnected web pages. With the possibility of constant updates from the browser. The main requirements for such systems will be:
In general, consideration of needs in terms of goals and objectives of customers can be completed. The next step is to review and analyze the needs of developers.
Customer groups and their needs:
Customers can be divided into several large groups.
- Large companies (holdings, corporations): products or services of large companies are often produced and sold in large volumes or are very expensive. Clients of such companies, as a rule, are also large representatives of the markets.
Needs:- Image sites - a unique, complex design, many videos.
- Sites with a list of products, but without prices and other commercial information. They are purely exploratory in nature.
- Several languages
- Customers want to see a profitable presentation of their company’s activities on the site. In addition, the sites contain feedback forms or other functionality that allows the user to receive a personal answer (for example, calculate electricity debt as on www.sesb.ru ).
- Large distributors: engaged in the wholesale and retail sale of consumer goods. Distributors can have a large branched warehouse network, but often have only one large resource in the network. The site contains a voluminous catalog and is used for online shopping.
Needs:- Online shopping - the main part of the site is an extensive catalog with descriptions of goods.
- Good resource optimization for search engines (friendly url, meta for each product, unique texts).
- User’s personal account.
- High performance and fault tolerance of the site. It should be designed for a large number of visitors.
- Quick synchronization of the site directory with accounting systems and aggregators (Yandex.Market, price.ru).
- Acceptance of electronic money.
- Online consultant
- Financial and legal organizations: banks, agencies for the provision of accounting services, real estate agencies and others.
Needs:- A site should contain many different forms of feedback. It can be: a question form for a specialist, various calculators (loans, cost of services, etc.)
- Large banks or insurance companies may also have an extensive network of branches, the content on the site should vary depending on the user's region.
- It is advisable that the site reflect information on exchange rates and other financial information in real time.
- Multilingualism
- Recently, online banking has become increasingly common. Through the Internet banking site user gets the opportunity to manage their deposits. A mandatory requirement for an online banking system is the security of transactions and the protection against hacking attempts.
- Media: the main goal is to attract a large audience to the resource, get feedback from the audience and make money on advertising.
Needs:- Placement of heterogeneous content (mainly videos, articles)
- A large number of employees to fill the site
- Possibility to discuss content (comments, forums, polls)
- High performance
- Mobile versions
- Newsletters
- Microformat Support
- RSS or Atom support
- Live streaming support
- Government agencies and institutions: create sites for public relations. The main goal is to unload the employees of the institution through the withdrawal of operations on the network. Such operations can be: applications for passports, an appointment with the clinic, tax or fines. For example, www.r77.nalog.ru .
Needs:- Increased resilience to crashes and attacks
- User dashboards
- If state inter-regional structure, you need to take into account the user's region in the display of content.
- Availability of specialized feedback forms
Large state institutions have an extensive structure of representative offices in the regions. Each representative office may have a resource on the network. This fact again creates an important need for centralized management of all sites of the structure, that is, to minimize maintenance costs.
In addition to the above categories of large customers, there may be categories whose common global goal is to make money online by creating content and attracting an audience.
Of course, there are customers on the market whose business is smaller and the needs are largely covered by those already described.
Types of sites depending on the goals of the customer
Internet portals
Recently, the concept of an Internet portal has become more “blurred,” however, it is worth highlighting two groups of sites that fall under the definition.
Public Themed Portals
Thematic portals are created mainly to increase the interest of the audience in a particular topic. Owners earn on advertising and on subscriptions of companies providing services or products on the theme of the portal or related topics.
Feature of the resource in its size. As a rule, if we talk about popular portals, these are very large sites with high traffic and often prone to attacks. With the development of the Internet, many thematic portals are growing more and more and need territorial distribution (for example, the portal on construction and repair vashdom.ru ).
Another feature of such resources is the presence of forums and guest books that need constant moderation. Various contests, voting are held on such resources, stimulating the demand for products or services of sponsors and advertisers.
Portals may contain small catalogs of companies located on the resource. This fact forms yet another possible need - to link goods or services from catalogs to the article. Naturally, the uniqueness of the content and the optimization of the portal comes first.
Needs:
- The site should contain a variety of content elements (news feeds, articles, blogs, directories, etc.)
- It is necessary to create links between content elements (for example, attach the same video to an article and to a news line without duplication)
- Convenient moderation of forums and comments
- Resistant to high loads and failures
- Mobile versions
- A site search should produce the most relevant results.
The peculiarity of the portals may be the complexity of creating content, because it is necessary to combine many heterogeneous elements into one material, for example, if there is a need to insert an advertising banner in the text of the article. An important requirement in this case will be the versatility and ease of development of the administrative panel.
Corporate Portals
Corporate portals are used within large organizations for employee communication, discussions, and posting general information. The peculiarity of such portals is a special approach to information security, because in many cases the corporate portal is part of a public site. Corporate portals must be protected by authorization through LDAP or the like.
The key tasks that a corporate portal should perform can also include
- Task management
- Integration with accounting systems
- Forum
- Time tracking
Social networks and team blogs
Social networks, the main purpose of which is to accumulate a large number of users, can also be general and thematic, but they are created mainly as a platform for collecting statistics, broadcasting ads, as well as for monetization through social applications or the provision of paid accounts.
Basic requirements here:
- Resistance to loads and attacks
- Mobile version availability
- Multilingualism
- Convenient moderation system where necessary
- Good search engine optimization
A possible need for blog sites in the future may be tracking and filtering plagiarism, as well as integration with individual blogs through OpenID or Oauth.
Online stores
Having an online store is more profitable than a store made of glass and concrete by minimizing the cost of its creation and maintenance. With the advent of a large number of engines for web trading, you can open a store in a short time and almost at no cost. The customer will focus on the further promotion of the store in the network and its advertising.
One of the key goals in the process of creating a store is to achieve maximum confidence in the resource. A high level of customer confidence will increase traffic and the number of purchases. Therefore, the functionality of the online store must satisfy the following requirements:
- Good product descriptions that need to be kept up to date
- Quick response to order or user question.
- Availability of product and store reviews
- Availability of catalog search or advanced product filter
- Acceptance of electronic money
Particular attention should be paid to the usability of the site. It is important to clarify the need to fill out certain fields when placing an order. On any page, the user should see a phone by which he can contact the store operator. It is worth noting that the appearance of any errors or inaccuracies in the operation of the store is unacceptable, as this can permanently deprive the store of user trust.
It is believed that in the near future, the volume of online trade will only grow, since the main business need is being met - increasing sales.
Promo Sites
The main objective of promotional sites is to advertise a product, service or promotion. Such a site is most likely promoted through advertising in the media. A resource can stimulate demand with an attractive design, possibly with interactive elements.
Requirements:
- Support for flash or its analogues (maybe even a site entirely made on flash)
- Feedback
- Audio, video content on the site
Special requirements in such projects are given to design and account for the largest share of the budget. There is another feature - it is possible that there are game elements in the content or various contests, for example, on the site http://foxy.yandex.ru you can participate in the “race”
Web Services
This is a special category of web resources. They may look like sites, or they can exist for complex data processing or as interfaces between heterogeneous applications and resources on the network. Services use various protocols in their work, for example XML-RPC, SOAP. Web service requirements vary greatly depending on goals and objectives.
Help systems
Resources on the Internet containing various documentation or dictionaries. In essence, they constitute a large network of interconnected web pages. With the possibility of constant updates from the browser. The main requirements for such systems will be:
- Multilingualism
- Its simple markup language
In general, consideration of needs in terms of goals and objectives of customers can be completed. The next step is to review and analyze the needs of developers.