The Ups and Downs of Focus Groups

Original Article from IntelliSites, the smart choice for web design (and SEO!)
Since websites are built to be used by all types of people, it makes sense that a variety of folks should give a new website a try during the development process. One way to do this effectively is to call together a focus group and gather feedback about how your website runs.

When focus groups are called into service, a few different things can happen.

And Some of Those Things Are Good...

A lot of positive things can come out of a focus group. When the group comes to a consensus about an element of your website that needs to be reworked, you've struck focus group gold. If each member of the group independently has the same hang-up, you know it's time to patch up that part of the site and that doing so will make your site more user-friendly.

And focus groups are especially good at coming up with constructive criticism about names of pages and names and locations of navigation buttons. If you can get some advice from your group about these elements, your group has done its job.

...But Some of the Things Aren't So Good

Sometimes focus group participants get a little carried away. If you've got a really outspoken crew with a variety of opinions, you can end up with conflicting information that just confuses things. It's quite possible that five focus group members could have five different opinions about what should be highlighted on the homepage of a site, and following all the advice would result in a page with too much clutter. Nothing kills a design faster than “Design by Committee,” and a focus group could generate a bunch of ideas that you'll need to wade through.

So does it make sense to run a new website past a focus group? Sure. I just don't recommend taking all of the advice given and running with it. It's cool to listen to and consider a variety of ideas as long as you just go forward with the best ones.

And who should you invite to participate in the focus group? I like this crew (although Binky's going to need to watch his mouth.)