The LEADERS Project has sought to develop innovative methods of delivering archive material to users via the Internet. In practice, this has been achieved through the development of open‐source tools that can be used by Archivists to build on‐line applications where transcripts and images of archive documents are delivered alongside contextual information from finding aids and authority records. This article explains how and why archive users have been placed at the centre of the LEADERS Project. It focuses on our preliminary research into who is currently visiting archive repositories and introduces our segmentation model for profiling types of users, as well as the results of our user survey, which we based on this model. This research was a prerequisite for the project: it has given us a broad understanding of the market for our product and has provided us with the background data necessary to ensure that we can go on to engage a representative sample of users to give us feedback on our work.