What is a User Story?

March 12th, 2025

A user story is a concise, simple description of how a user interacts with a product or service. In terms of your site and communications ministry, it is how users interact with your site, social media, and other communications. It’s written from the user’s (visitor and admin) perspective to help developers and designers understand the user’s needs and guide the development process for new website features. By focusing on the user’s needs, user stories help ensure that organization and development efforts align with delivering value to the end user.

Purpose of User Stories

A yellow sticky note with the handwritten words "USER STORY" in bold, black ink on a plain surface. User stories play a crucial role in agile software development by ensuring that each feature or enhancement contributes to the overall user experience. The key purposes of user stories include:

To understand how a feature will provide value to the user
By clearly outlining how a user will interact with the website or application, the development team can design features that deliver tangible benefits, improving the user experience.
To help teams focus on user needs, not just technical details
A user story helps the web development team remember that the end goal is a functional, user-friendly website or application, rather than becoming bogged down in backend complexities.
To help teams prioritize features and improve usability
In web development, teams often face long feature wishlists. User stories assist in determining which features are critical to users, helping prioritize them during sprints or iterations.

User Story Format

In web development, user stories are generally written in the following format:

“As a [user persona], I want [to perform this action] so that [I can accomplish this goal]”

This format ensures that the user story captures:

User Persona: Who is using the website (e.g., visitor, logged-in user, admin, etc.).
Action: What they want to do on the website (e.g., search for a program, sign up for a newsletter, filter results).
Goal: Why they want to do this, which helps understand the value or benefit of the feature to the user.

For example:

As a church member, I want to easily view service times and upcoming events, so I can stay informed and plan my attendance.
As an admin, I want to be able to download PDFs of forms filled out online as we need to keep a copy in our files.

This format is set up that the user story remains clear, concise, and directly tied to user needs.

Benefits of User Stories

Helps teams build features that solve real problems
User stories focus on delivering real value to the website’s users. This helps avoid unnecessary or confusing features and ensures that time is spent developing something that actually improves the user’s experience.
Helps teams separate who defines the “what” and who defines the “how”
In web development, stakeholders or product owners often define “what” should be built, while developers decide “how” to implement it. User stories provide a clear boundary between defining what the feature should accomplish (the user’s need) and how it will technically be implemented.
Helps teams leverage the skills and creativity of each team member
By laying out a simple, user-focused goal, web designers, front-end developers, and back-end builders can all collaborate on the best way to implement a feature. User stories encourage team collaboration and creativity, as everyone focuses on delivering the best solution for the user.

By focusing on user stories in web development, teams can create websites and applications that are intuitive, user-friendly, and aligned with user expectations. These stories guide the design and development process, so that each feature has clear value and purpose.