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Here’s a question I got from one of my readers over at UX Things, and I’d like to share my reply. Maybe it helps someone in a similar situation.

“I am working on a website for the company I work for. All of the UX classes I’m taking are focused on products. Can you give me some advice on how to design a good UX for a website? Do I need to worry about what my manager thinks? Are user personas necessary?”

It’s a challenging situation many designers find themselves in. The UX processes involved in developing a product are usually much more comprehensive. Therefore, a website’s user experience is often overlooked.

The ideal scenario would be to hire a UX researcher to bring the project closer to its audience. In addition to understanding the target audience, you need to understand the business objectives.

When designing for a product, users should be able to accomplish their goals with the least amount of friction possible. However, a website serves a somewhat different purpose. In most cases, our main objective with the website is to make finding information as easy as possible.

To build a memorable website experience, UI, UX, branding, copywriter, and content strategy should go hand in hand. Ideally, we’d have people dedicated to each of these, closely related, but different fields.

You need a UX researcher who can answer important questions.

The copywriter’s job is to keep the audience engaged by using words in a playful and engaging manner.

A designer who can transform it from ugly to gorgeous. Someone who can keep the visual side of things interesting as visitors navigate through the content.

Having a strong brand and the right elements defined is always beneficial. This includes choice of typography, a logo, various different patterns and best practices, that when used together achieve a consistent and memorable brand experience.

In seems it’s just you working on it, which is not ideal, but it’s very common.

In that case, you may want to narrow the scope of these steps and focus on fewer goals with the website. Ideally, you’d like to achieve all goals. In reality, it’s probably better to aim to achieve fewer goals, but really succeed with them. Together with your client or coworkers, narrow down the scope of the project to just a few most important goals you are trying to achieve.

By approaching it this way, you will be able to focus only on what matters the most. Your client, manager or coworkers, need to understand why we’re narrowing the scope down. Your manager should know that in an ideal scenario, there would be multiple specialised people working together on a website. Do not overestimate the power of a good UX copy writer. Or a good marketer.

By making your managers aware of the potential benefits having a good UX copywriter can bring, they might opt to hire one. I’ve managed to convince a few of my clients to do so. In such cases, results speak for themselves.

If that is not the case, and you are working alone on the project, get as much information as you possibly can in its early days. The more information you can collect early on, the better you’ll be off later down the line.

The business objective should help you identify your goals, but you should also track the tendencies of your potential visitors.

More you know about them, the better. You might want to interview a few potential ones. Find out who these people are. Find out their goals, jobs to be done, frustrations, and demographics.

You can’t understand them unless you get closer to them. Build your user personas while you’re at it, and share them around with your coworkers so everyone can get to know them better.

Wireframes and user flows should follow once you’ve got enough information to begin with.

Remember that putting the design for last is always a good idea.

First seen in my weekly newsletter UX Things