THINK OF THE USER  

Who are they? What are they looking for? How can we connect them as fast as possible?

The outcome of this exercise is a matrix that describes each possible type of user. This matrix will drive all of our decisions in terms of planning the site.  

Keep in mind that stakeholders can fit into more than one user category – for example, a user may be a mobile user, but also a retail investor. We try to come up with as many different user groups as possible, and then narrow it down to the largest ones – and focus on meeting their needs.

What information are they looking for?

Here’s an example of the beginning of a user profile – the user groups are listed across the top, and what they’re looking for is listed beneath.

Institutional	Retail	Mobile
High-level	Company overview	Corporate Address
Instant access	Recent share history	IR contact information
Management Bios	RSS/Twitter Feeds	Ticker Symbol

 What can we do to make sure that we get them that information as fast as possible?

Tonbridge Power has designed as a ‘one-stop-shop’ Investor Dashboard page for a fast overview of the company’s IR materials.  Besides the stock quote, the page includes: the last three press releases; the latest investor presentation, financial report and fact sheet; investor contacts; and a form to sign up to receive email alerts from the company. 

 The ‘dashboard’ approach also enables users to bookmark a single page in their browser to come back to see all the vital, most recent and relevant activity from the Company.

The Mobile User

In the case of the mobile user, one effective approach is to make a stripped-down ‘mobile microsite’, which includes only the content relevant to this audience.

Bridgewater Systems’ site is designed to detect when users are accessing their web address from a mobile device and present them with a different version of the site.  The Company prioritizes the content they think the mobile user is seeking on-the-run and should they want more, the user is still able to access the non-mobile site.  This results in a product that’s easy to test, easy to troubleshoot and can easily adapt to the next generation of devices.

Stay tuned for next week’s post on strategy #3: “Giving them a Choice.”