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Site Design & Promotion: Figuring Out & Considering Target Audience
Originally Published: 2001-04-17
Updated: 2006
In Creating a Web Site's Family Tree, the focus was on content. Now let's bring in another, yet, important consideration: whom the site is hoping to presenting that content to . . . and how.
The three main criteria in figuring out your audience [which is the content's target], which may affect and inspire how to present the contents for that audience:
- their prior knowledge about the topic,
- their experience using Web pages, and
- their method of access to your Site.
Advance Planning Helps Save Time
All this work even before creating your first Web page seems to strip the fun out of making a Web site, huh? Yet this will allow you more ease and elbow room for changes while working on your site and its contents.
Doesn't matter if hiring someone to create the site's templates or layout or plan on doing it yourself - a web site is like a house. It needs a foundation, to be built upon, and an idea in mind of what that house needs to offer the people it is being built for to use. If the house's occupants do not have the experience or means to use the ultra-modern, and attractive looking, kitchen appliances, they will probably have to find alternatives (e.g. delivery or dining out). Do you want people seeking alternatives to your site (e.g. finding another Web site for that information or product)?
Creating a Web Site's Family Tree shared how to help identify your site's main purpose to have it become more than a personal home page or another Web site out of millions on the Web. The site developed roots, or ideas, of the type of content it will offered through the pages!
Every author, before writing a novel, thinks of a basic premise. This rough outline helps him/her figure out the blend of characters introduced to the readers. Then the writer starts to fill-in that outline, or a storyboard, with chapters for the reader to become immersed in.
Since you will write, or author, the content by planning the theme in advance, you have essentially started the storyboard process. Now that the premise and characters are figured out you can work on filling-in the details.
Consider the primary goal: an audience for your content.
Yet, before you start creating your Web pages, ask yourself the following two questions:
- Whom are you offering this content?
- How do you think they will be reading it?
Many commercial sites start out with the horse placed behind the cart - they focus on the end goal of making money with the site (the cart) ahead of their audience (the horse). Without the horse, the cart will not go anywhere or reach its destination. With the horse placed in back the cart's journey may be less than straight, take longer, or stopped before completion (the sale aborted or cancelled) by the horse. Yet the commercial site may think the audience wants or is expecting a pretty seat cover or fancy canopy on the cart; this is still putting the cart ahead of the horse.
Although the World Wide Web [WWW or Web] offers flexibility in updating or changing content that printed format does not, you have to remember that flexibility has a price. You should strongly consider whom you are targeting that site and its content. It is easier and less time-consuming to move forward in presenting contents, or new content, than it is to back peddle.
Oh yes, I know, there are people that cruise the Web that are nicknamed surfers. That is your secondary audience as luck may be the main item that draws them to your content. The contents need to target a primary audience and the site's presentation of those contents will help to further define the primary audience.
Who Will Be The Primary Audience?
- Who will be the primary audience?
- International readers? Recall some overseas locations' Internet Service Providers use timing methods of billing their users.
- Hobbies or pastimes?
- Age and gender?
- Level of education?
- The possible reading level?
- The preferred learning style?
- Their environment/work?
There is not a site that exists that is able to target "anyone" or "everyone". Every site has a targetted audience that it is hoping to attract.
Google and Yahoo! Search targetted audience? People, online, needing or wishing to locate other sites by making a query (a web search). Dating sites' primary audience? Individuals wishing to find a date or romance. WebSite Primer's target audience? Those interested in reading and learning about creating a Web site.
Knowing The Desired Audience Helps Determing The Presentation
You need to formulate the general theme of what kind of audience you may be targeting through your content. Then you can decide how to present that content, as far as wording.
- Beginner, intermediate, or expert level?
- Again, level of education?
- Even if a beginner, do they have prior knowledge and/or experience with the subject matter?
- What may be their attitude toward the subject matter?
- What is their familiarity with the terms you will be using?
Now, there are a couple more segments of consideration. These will help formulate, in your mind, the Web layout and components best suited for the presentation of that content:
- How computer savvy will they be?
- From where are they likely to be accessing the Site? Work or home?
- What kind of computer will they use? MacIntosh or PC [IBM compatible]?
- You have to think more about the computer used: What speed of modem [connection ability]? Monitor size and resolution?
- What kind of browser? Most recent or an earlier version of the browser?
For example: are you targetting health care professionals that work in geriatics or narrowing the target to those health care professionals, in geriatics, having the means to access the using the latest version of a particular browser ↦-or otehr technology (e. g. with their cell phone)?
"The Customer Is Always Right.''
All this questioning in advance helps you better define the goal of your site [the main content] and help steer the site to meet your audience's goals and expectations. It also helps them read this information in a manner they can more easily understand.
In the end, your content will be presented in a way to help the site's users decide if it offers the information or content that benefits them. This will help your audience determine how frequently they will visit, or use, the Web Site and if they will recommend the contents to others or not. Therefore, you will be striving to help them get what they want while visiting your site.