I know many creative types that frown on research. (Just take a look at our own Tom Simons' recent post "There is no science to focus groups" !) They hate focus groups and testing of all kinds. I guess that makes me a geek because I love research. Especially when it comes to building an effective web site.

Iterative research throughout the development of any web site is the best way to ensure success.  It doesn’t have to be mind-numbing volumes of data—just the right questions at the right time.

Here are a few research opportunities mapped against the development process.  You don’t have to do them all. But the more you do, the better your site will be.  For this post, we’ll just take a look at the research moments during the discovery and definition phase—two phases in our four stage web development methodology.

Discovery and Definition

The first place to start is a heuristic analysis.  While this may sound like something you leave in a cup for your doctor, it actually refers to something pretty basic—an expert opinion of your current site.  In the hands of a good Information Architect and User Experience professional, a heuristic analysis can get you 80% of the way toward a better site.  Why?  Because someone who builds and studies sites all the time for a living knows a heck of a lot about what works and what doesn’t.  Because it only involves one person, a heuristic analysis can be done pretty quickly.

All clients want to know how their web site stacks up against the competition. So conducting a competitive assessment is pretty much a no-brainer. You can learn a lot by looking at competitive sites.  Better still you can learn it in very short order.  You’ll find out what content, features and functionality are simply the price of poker.  And you’ll also find areas where you can claim competitive advantage.  Think of it this way, if your competitor’s site was launched a few years ago, chances are you won’t find any Web 2.0 features.  So this could be your opportunity to gain advantage over the other guys by including things like RSS feeds, podcasts and wikkis.  Of course you never want to add these things just because you can. But if it gives you a leg up, why not?

You’d be making a mistake to do a competitive assessment without doing a best in class consumer site assessment—even if your site is a B2B play only.  The reason is simple. Business people are people too and they form their opinions about the web based on their consumer behavior.  There is a ton to be learned about your B2B site by looking at such sites as Amazon, E-Bay, NetFlix, Flickr, Pandora.  Heck there’s a lot to be learned by dwelling on the design restraint shown by Google. Can you imagine how many times a day Google’s creative director gets asked to make a change to their interface.  You have to admire the elegant simplicity of their design.

Developing personas and validating those personas through research is a great way to make sure you are building a site for humans rather than some vague demographic abstraction. Simply put, a persona is the creation of an individual personality for each of your major users.  Instead of keeping your user in the fuzzy wuzzy land of demographic data (mothers aged 25 to 45 living on the east coast), ground your experience in the reality of a single person (Emma Johnson, 33, mother of twins, working part time, loves the environment but drives an SUV…).  The more specific your personas, the easier it will be to find out if your site actually works for them.

I could go on and on. And I will. Another day, another post and all that. But for now, I have have some research to do…