Traditionally, most websites have evolved around a company’s own structure rather than a specific user need.

As the social web continues to grow and dominate the online space, brands and organisations need to take account of how sociability affects people’s behaviour online.

Increasingly, as more and more websites, blogs, social networks and apps vie for attention, people are becoming more and more task driven in their behaviour – they know what they want and they want a website or app to provide this.

Apps for SmartPhones are a very good example of how people’s behaviour has changed – part of the success of web and mobile apps is their singular nature – they provide one, succinct service.

People don’t want their apps to make them wade through information about the company or other extraneous information – they just want it to ‘do what it says on the tin’. If they’ve downloaded an app to tell them the weather in Shropshire, they want to know just that – nothing more, nothing less.

Online, websites need to start accommodating this behaviour – why are people visiting your company website? What are the main tasks they want to achieve? The main thrust of any online presence should address these tasks quickly and succinctly – all other information should be in addition to these tasks – not an irritation to wade through in order to achieve the task in hand.