One of the first things that you need to select, long before you start your study, design and execution, is who is your audience? With whom are you trying to communicate? You are evidently making a web site for a reason, and expectantly you intended someone to watch it. In fact, you must define your audience before you even get into any details about what the web site is to do – the ‘to do’ will really be made much more transparent once you recognize your audience.
There is the abnormal circumstance of someone making a web site just for himself, but this is a very uncommon exception. Generally there is some intention for someone else to watch the material, read the articles or listen to the sounds.
So who is this group of people who you except to visit your web site? This is a far more important question that it appears on the surface, as it will define and guide you through just about every remaining phase of your web site implementation. The question of ‘who’ will decide how you write, which graphics and sounds you comprise, what kind of HTML tags you use and what other technologies are required
It is dangerous to understand that you cannot communicate to everyone. For example, a web site that is meant at five year olds will probably not be very useful to computer professionals (except, possibly, as an example of how to do it).
So sit back and think for a minute. It does not matter what type of site you imagine – you can choose your audience. Begin with the subject material. Let’s say you are making a website about model railroads. That’s your subject, model railroads. This is very general, but it will do for now.
Okay, now, are you communicating with beginners? Experienced railroaders? Or are you attempting to explain the subject to someone who does not know anything about it? Possibly you want to communicate with all of these groups – but are you also interested in writing to the reviewer of the hobby?
Let’s take an intranet that I worked on a number of years ago. This was planned to explain how my staff was to perform their variety of system management events. It would incorporate step-by-step instructions for each of the responsibilities that they performed on a day-to-day basis.
So who is my audience? My own staff members. Let’s define them a little further. They are extremely technical, well trained and know how to do their own jobs. By defining just this much, the nature of what requirements to be written becomes more clear. Great detail is not needed, for example. In addition, by knowing that they are, say, trained in Windows NT, I can recognize that Windows NT commands do not need to be explained. It can be not mentioned, because I know my audience, that they know this information.
Another intranet which I have helped design is planned for use by store managers. By simple defining that information, I can make your mind up exactly what information is wanted by this group of people. I can also infer what data they do not require to have explained in detail – because they already know it. I can also expand the audience by saying ‘store captains and their direct reports’. Now I might have to comprise more information, as the direct reports may need additional explanation.
If possible, it is a great concept to interview or survey some of your proposed audience. I have done this on frequent occasions, and it has disallowed many errors which may or else have crept into the final creation. Keep in mind your end user may not be the person who is paying for the project – it is the people with whom you are trying to communicate.
Things to notice as you are defining your audience:
– Education – are you aim for an audience of college graduates or school children or something in between? This is essential to decide how you write your articles.
– Technical training – what type of training and technical knowledge do you expect your end users to have. By knowing this information, you can create assumptions about their abilities.
– Medical conditions – does your future audience have any medical conditions that you require to account for? For example, if you are writing to the blind, you may need to do extra work to be sure they can hear your site addition to (or instead of) being capable to see it.
– Graphical orientation – is your audience better communicated with using graphics, text, sound, movies or a mixture of the above? By knowing who they are, you can tailor your presentation towards them. For example, if I made a site tailored for my boss, I might include of flowcharts, spreadsheets and diagrams. For my technical people, text descriptions might be more than sufficient
Once you know your audience, other things become clear. For example, a common question is whether to code a site for just one browser or all browsers. When I made an intranet, we coded strictly for Internet Explorer V5 since everyone in the company used that browser. By knowing our audience we could define this early in the project. The same holds true for things like screen resolution, graphics formats (jpg, gif and png), load times (the intranet had a network so it was fast) and so on.
You audience also decides what type of content you will comprise on your site. Thus, if your site is future to be read by advanced webmasters, you perhaps don’t want to comprise articles on how to load you site onto a free host. They must already have this information.
As you can observe, by understanding your audience, you can answer several of the questions that come up during web site design. In fact, this understanding often creates the decisions become non-issues – they are noticeable.