The User Analysis Process

1. In subsequent meetings with My Tree Farm staff, I posed open ended questions inviting them to tell me about their customer's and their own technical "computer" advancements since the release of version 1.0 of the site. When version 1.0 was released, the president and the office staff were using the Windows XP operating system and Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0 web browsers.
2. I was not allowed to interview customers directly so I had to depend solely upon the staff comments and answers to questions to help me get started with the development of My Tree Farm version 2.0. I developed two questionnaires to gather much of the information I needed. Questionnaire 1 was aimed toward the staff to get an understanding of bugs and issues they uncovered over the last five years as well as the capabilities they would like to see in the upgraded site. Questionnaire 2 was also for the staff but probed for feedback from customer's likes and dislikes as well as suggestions they may have offered.
3. Analyzing the questionnaire results as efficiently as possible, the necessary tasks to build the 2.0 version of the web site came into focus.

Findings from questionnaire 1:

• The staff feels the new design of the site is a more up to date expression of the business.
• The site images load faster and now customers have the ability to search for plants by category as well as by name.
• Bill is pleased he no longer feels obligated to keep his blog up to date. He felt the time spent on the entries was not productive and now the site will not look as if it is not up to date.
• The staff is happy to be able to now place special events and sales on the home page rather than having to mail flyers.
• Although it would be nice to handle invoices on line, customers simply are not comfortable making large transactions over the internet. Instead, they use business accounts and lines of credit provided by My Tree Farm.
• Having a current database to begin, the site would be completed in approximately two months.
• The customers over the last few years have requested convenient changes to the site such as making it more searchable and that was included in the upgrade.
• The estimated cost of the upgrade was $800 to $900 and the staff agreed that it would be in their budget and gave the go ahead.
• The upgrade is expected to serve the customers well enough to reduce call-in service which will save time and money.
• The "featured" section was a good idea so the contractors and municipalities could see how certain trees looked in similar projects as their own.
• The staff agreed that some of their competitors have already upgraded their sites and have “stolen” ideas from them for the My Tree Farm site.
• There will be no changes made in how the images will be taken and uploaded to the new site. The staff likes the "homemade" feel to the images.
• All new content for the site will be added via the new content management system that the office manager likes very much.
• The staff believes the new version 2.0 site will do more work for them than the version 1.0.

Findings from questionnaire 2:

• Customers were excited mostly about the speed in which they were able to find the plants they needed for their projects. It was much nicer than having to wait for the entire plant inventory to open as thumbnail images on the web page. Once it did they then had to scroll and visually hunt for the plant they wanted.
• As a future update, customers thought that an invoice system for records and accuracy would cut back on paperwork for the tree farm and themselves.
• Since even the smallest orders are more than $10,000, customers wanted to keep their line of credit system as it is.
• Customers who use other tree farms for plants mostly agreed that speed in finding what they wanted was most important to them. They liked the version 2.0 speediness and leanness. They did not care much for distractions on sites while they were using it for business.
• When asked about using social networking sites to enhance their business prowess, most customers replied, "What is that?"
• The on-site Google mapping service was a unanimous keeper requested by all the customers. They cannot recall when the last time was when one of their drivers got lost on the way to the tree farm.