University of East Anglia: understanding the journeys of website users

In 2020, the University of East Anglia was planning the launch of a new website. To get them ready for this, they asked Pickle Jar Communications to help them understand the journeys that potential users would take through the website – particularly in areas where these journeys would now be changed by new navigation and page layouts.

On this project the timescales were very tight, and because this was a new site there were no existing analytics or heatmaps to point us in the right direction. So we decided to employ a combination of user testing and our own expert knowledge of higher education website best practices.

Working with the team at UEA, we established a series of user personas and sample tasks, then carried out testing on the website with a group of users emulating the behaviour of these personas. We then reviewed the website through the lens of these personas, identifying pain points, technical issues, potential content gaps, and more.

This two-pronged approach of simulated user testing and casting an expert impartial eye over the website allowed us to complete the work in record time, and to deliver useful and useable recommendations to UEA as a result.

We were later commissioned by UEA to undertake similar activity on the postgraduate section of their website. In this case we focused on specific user journeys and used the data built up over the new site’s months of use to provide a detailed picture of how masters and PhD applicants were carrying out their tasks.

If you are interested in understanding your user journey through your website, both current and new, with Pickle Jar Communications, please get in touch.