Analysis

The term end-users describes the group of people most likely to use a website.

If a web development company has a clear idea of the target audience, they should take account of what works best for that group of end-users when creating a website.

Some common end-user groups are:

• young children

• employees with specific requirements

• customers/clients (often context based)

• inexperienced users

• skilled and expert users

• users who require additional features to aid accessibility:

• users with learning difficulties or disabilities

• users who require voice recognition integration

• users who require specialised output such as screen readers

The tasks that end-users need to be able to carry out are known as the end-user requirements. These requirements might involve using particular accessibility software or hardware and could inform functional requirements.

Functional requirements for a website can be categorised as follows:

• processes that the website must be able to carry out

• interaction with databases/information that the website needs to have access to in order to function properly

End-user and functional requirements will inform the design phase of web development.

They can be used to measure fitness for purpose during the evaluation phase of web development.