I've been wanting to comment on a not-so-recent article from A List Apart (one of my favorite sources of insight) for quite some time now. It originally appeared in late November of last year: Power to the People. It's a very good read, reemphasizing the true focus of any Web site project: finding what people want, and giving it to them in as clear and straightforward a fashion as possible.

Personal experience is what makes this article so relevant. All clients seek our services with specific goals in mind -- the trick is to uncover exactly what these goals are when the client's contact is not consiously aware of their goals, or maybe not able to articulate them.

Unfortunately, in a few instances upon probing it comes to our attention that perhaps their goals may be misguided or wrongly prioritized, and it almost always is due to one reason: the client wants to communicate something their users don't necessarily want to hear, and communicate it in a way that these users may not understand.

When undertaking a new Web project, take time to understand your users and customers, and focus not only on what you want them to do, but what they want to do on your site. Provide the latter in a way that is as easy to find as possible -- even if it means small sacrifices in the former. Sometimes personal preferences to layout and design styles must take a backseat somewhat to these needs, but in the end a project driven by user needs will be more succesful than one driven by any other.