The design of the site should be based on the online business objectives and on the requirements of the target group. How to follow a site design process that takes account of the development of its own structure in relation to the evolution of its relationship with its customers.

The objective of this phase is to design an interface and an information architecture that is targeted at, and focused on, the needs of visitors, in order to enhance their online experience. How can we optimize, for example, the process of signing up to receive the newsletter or of making a purchase online in such a way as to promote conversion?

"There’s the goalkeeper, Dida, with the ball in hand, he sees Maldini’s close by and passes the ball to him, Maldini pushes forward and passes to Gattuso, who sends it over to Kaka, who sees the Scheva is unmarked and launches it deep…Scheva stops the ball and blasts it under the goalkeeper into the far corner...Goal!"

I woke up with a start, feeling rather frightened, as if I had just had a bad dream. In actual fact, something great had just happened to me – I had dreamed up the perfect set-piece, the one that every fan yearns for his team to put together. But what exactly is the “perfect set-piece”, the one that maximizes the process of conversion when it comes to winning over students, managers or families?

I certainly didn’t think that there was a single approach that would be perfect for all my visitors: there were at least three, one for each target group. First of all, we had to look at our key processes (online purchasing, the registration process in practice, subscribing to the newsletter) and try to imagine the online path that our visitors would take. How could we manage to convince them to click on the next link? How could we avoid them abandoning the shopping cart before completing the transaction? The pages of our site had to be designed with a view, above all, to optimizing those processes. Everything on the page had to be examined: content, browsing, structure and online copywriting.