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To find out what visitors need from your website, identify the tasks they come to complete, examine where they struggle, and check your explanations with people who are likely to use the site. Analytics and support records can reveal patterns, but interviews, observation, usability testing, and accessibility checks help explain what those patterns mean. Use the findings to improve content and journeys, then test the changes.
Start with the visitor’s task, not a feature idea
A visitor need is the task a person is trying to complete and the outcome they want. It is not automatically a request for a particular page, button, chatbot, or other feature. A feature may help, but first establish the problem it is meant to solve.
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For example, “add a live chat button” is a proposed solution. The underlying need might be “As a customer trying to change an order, I need to find out whether it has shipped, so that I can decide whether to update the delivery address.” Research can show whether that need is best met with clearer order-status information, a self-service option, support contact details, or some combination.
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Choose a specific service, piece of content, or journey to investigate. Write down the decision the work should inform—such as revising a help page or simplifying a checkout step—and the visitor outcome you want to support. This keeps research focused without assuming in advance what the solution should be.
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Describe who visits and what is happening for them
Describe visitor groups in terms of shared needs and circumstances, rather than relying only on broad labels such as “customers” or “new users.” Ask who is trying to do what, what prompted the visit, how they currently handle the task, and what constraints they face. Include people who help visitors complete tasks, such as caregivers or support staff, when they are part of the journey.
- Task: What is the person trying to find, understand, decide, or do?
- Trigger: What happened that led them to the site now?
- Current approach: What do they do today, including workarounds or contacting support?
- Context: What device, location, time pressure, language, connectivity, or other circumstances may affect the task?
- Barriers: What makes the task difficult, uncertain, or impossible?
A group can be broad when its members genuinely share the same task and outcome. If people who seem similar have materially different needs—for example, because they use different services or face different barriers—describe those needs separately. GOV.UK guidance on identifying user needs recommends grounding the description in evidence and expressing the need in task-focused language.
Combine existing evidence with direct contact
Begin by reviewing what the organization already knows: relevant analytics, on-site search terms, support or call-centre records, previous research, and trustworthy external evidence. These sources can help you find recurring questions, points where people leave a journey, and topics generating repeated contacts. They show patterns, not necessarily the reason a particular person clicked, searched, or stopped.
Then speak with or observe people who are likely to use the service. Ask about goals and what they actually do, including workarounds. Colleagues’ and stakeholders’ suggestions are useful hypotheses, but GOV.UK’s Service Manual advises treating opinions that do not come from users as assumptions to be tested through research.
| Method | What it can help answer | What it cannot establish alone |
|---|---|---|
| Web analytics | Which pages or journey steps attract activity, where patterns change, and where visitors leave or continue. | Why an individual behaved that way, whether the task succeeded, or what outcome they wanted. |
| On-site search logs | What visitors try to find using the site’s own search and which queries may point to missing or hard-to-find information. | Whether the search results answered the need or why a particular query was used. |
| Support and call-centre records | Questions and problems people raise when existing self-service or content has not resolved an issue. | How common a problem is across all visitors, unless records are interpreted alongside other evidence. |
| Interviews | Visitors’ goals, recalled experiences, constraints, and explanations of their approaches. | Exactly what people do in every real-world situation; accounts depend on what participants remember and report. |
| Observation and usability testing | How people approach a task, where they hesitate or make errors, and whether they can complete it in the experience being tested. | Everyday behavior in all contexts; a controlled test may differ from natural use. |
Use these methods as complementary evidence, not competing verdicts. If analytics show many visitors searching for a policy term, that is a reason to investigate. Search logs, support records, and conversations with visitors may clarify what they mean by the term and whether the relevant information is missing, hard to locate, or difficult to understand.
Turn evidence into a clear statement of need
A useful format is: “As a [person or group], I need to [action], so that [outcome].” Keep the language recognizable to the people who will use or review the finding. State the task and desired outcome, not the feature the team has already decided to build.
- Solution-led: “As a visitor, I need a chatbot, so that I can get help.”
- Task- and outcome-led: “As a visitor trying to return an item, I need to understand the return deadline and steps, so that I can send it back correctly.”
The second statement leaves room to discover whether clearer guidance, an account feature, support, or another change would best meet the need. GOV.UK content guidance cautions that assumptions made when designing content or a service can be wrong; a need should be checked against evidence rather than treated as a design instruction.
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Usability testing helps reveal whether the current or proposed experience supports a visitor’s task. Before a session, define a realistic task and what counts as success. Recruit people likely to use the service, then observe them attempting the task without steering them toward the intended answer. Record completion, errors, hesitation, and points of confusion, and use recurring difficulties to shape changes to test.
- Choose a question. Identify the uncertainty the test needs to resolve, such as whether people can find return instructions or understand which action to take.
- Write the task in the visitor’s terms. Give participants enough context to act naturally, but do not name the page or control they are meant to find.
- Set success criteria. Define what a correct completion looks like before the session. Note partial completion, wrong turns, and requests for help as well as success.
- Recruit relevant participants. Seek people with experience or circumstances that match the task. Poor participant selection can make results misleading.
- Observe without coaching. Let participants work through the task. Ask neutral follow-up questions when appropriate, and distinguish what they did from what they later say they would do.
- Review the evidence and change the experience. Look for recurring barriers, make a focused change to content or design, and test again when the decision warrants it.
For qualitative usability testing, GOV.UK’s guidance recommends recruiting 5 to 6 participants, and more for quantitative testing. This is that guide’s recommendation for qualitative studies, not a universal sample-size rule or a basis for claiming statistical representativeness. Early concepts can be tested with simple, low-tech prototypes when the question is about the concept rather than a finished interface.
Remote testing can be useful, particularly later in development, but it may make it harder to guide a session or understand how someone is interacting. Choose a format that suits the question and participant context. A controlled task can expose interaction problems without proving that the same behavior will occur naturally.
Include accessibility and real-world context
Accessibility is part of understanding whether people can use a site to reach their goals. Consider disabled visitors and the assistive technologies they may use, alongside device, browser, connectivity, language, age, literacy, and the circumstances in which the service is used. Include disabled people in research rather than assuming that a standards check describes their experience.
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A free scan shows the junk files, broken settings and background clutter dragging Windows down - then fixes them in one click.Free scan · Windows 10 & 11Technical accessibility checks and user research answer different questions. A standards audit can identify technical issues; manual checks and assistive-technology testing can reveal additional barriers; research with disabled people shows how the experience works for people attempting real tasks. None of these alone establishes that every visitor can complete the task. W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guidance explains the overlap between accessibility, usability, and inclusion. It quotes ISO 9241-11’s definition of usability as the extent to which specified users can achieve specified goals effectively, efficiently, and with satisfaction in a specified context of use.
The UK Home Office User-Centred Design Manual specifies that at least 1 in 5 participants in its research context should have a disability. That is an organization-specific requirement, not a universal legal or methodological rule. Organizations should follow the requirements that apply to their own service and jurisdiction.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Prioritize barriers by the task they block
Once findings are gathered, connect each observed barrier to the visitor task and outcome it affects. Consider how often the issue appears in the evidence, how serious its effect is on the task, who is affected, and whether the barrier prevents completion or creates avoidable support work. These considerations help teams decide what to address first; they are not a substitute for evidence or a universal scoring formula.
- Separate a confirmed observation from an interpretation or proposed fix.
- Look for the same difficulty across different sources, such as a usability session and repeated support contacts.
- Distinguish a content problem from a navigation, interaction, technical, or accessibility problem where the evidence allows.
- Record uncertainties that still need to be checked rather than presenting them as established user needs.
There are no universal analytics events, conversion targets, or performance thresholds that apply to every website. Define measures that reflect the specific task and outcome you are improving, and review privacy and consent obligations for the site’s jurisdiction and data practices.
Make changes and keep learning
Use findings to change the content, journey, or service—not simply to produce a list of observations. Test a proposed change against the original task and success criteria. If it creates a different barrier or does not help visitors reach the intended outcome, refine it or consider another approach.
Best Value
Keep the evidence current as services, designs, and visitor circumstances change. Government Design Principles from the Government Digital Service and Central Digital and Data Office emphasize research, analysis of data, talking to users, accessibility, and iteration rather than assumptions. The practical cycle is to identify a decision, gather evidence, test a response, and revisit the need when the service or context changes.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
How often should I revisit website visitors’ needs?
There is no universal schedule in the cited guidance. Revisit them when a service, journey, audience, or relevant circumstance changes, and during development when evidence may affect a design decision.
Can a prototype be used before a page or feature is built?
Yes. GOV.UK usability-testing guidance notes that early concepts can be tested with simple, low-tech prototypes when they are suitable for the question being investigated.
Does a successful usability test prove a website is accessible?
No. Task testing, research with disabled people, assistive-technology checks, and standards-based accessibility checks provide different evidence and should be combined.
Do the UK participant recommendations apply to every organization?
No. The GOV.UK recommendation of 5 to 6 participants applies to qualitative usability testing in that guidance; the Home Office’s 1-in-5 disability-participant requirement belongs to its own manual. Neither should be presented as a universal rule.
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