User needs and journeys

When writing for the web we need to consider user need and the customer journey.

User need

A user need is the reason why someone comes to our website, for example, to apply for a school place.

Always start by understanding your user, or customer, and what they are trying to achieve. Concentrate on what the user wants from the county council, not what we want to tell them.

For example:

• as a... parent (who is the user?)
• I need to... apply for a school place… (what does the user want to do?)
• so that... my child can go to school… (why does the user want to do this?)

Once you understand the user need, you can start writing content. Each page you write should only address one user need.

For example, here are 2 similar user needs:

• as a person experiencing domestic abuse
• I need to find out more about abuse and available support
• so that I can keep safe

For this user we need to provide information about what abuse is and where the person can get help. We have done this the page About domestic abuse.

• as friend or relative of someone experiencing domestic abuse
• I need to find out how I can help and available support organisations
• so that I can support them

For this user we give detail about how a person can support someone experiencing abuse, why someone might stay and information about getting more help. We have done this on the page Worried about someone?

Without assessing user needs, we might assume that we could write a single page that gives information about domestic abuse and where to get help. However, understanding these user needs shows us they require different responses. In the second, we need to give detail about how a person can support someone experiencing abuse, why someone might stay and information about getting more help.

We then need to look at how user needs form part of a customer journey.

Customer journeys

A customer journey is the path taken by a user to achieve their task. Typically, this is between 4 and 12 steps.

Looking at the path a user takes to complete a task shows us how they interact with the website currently. It can also help us find out how we could make improvements.