Website Planning - Target Audience
Target Audience - What is your target audience?
Ask yourself, "Who is going to be looking at my website?"
Target Audience - Other Business People
If your target audience is other business people, what kind of things would a business person visiting your website be looking for?
- Product specifications?
- Benefits and or features?
- Availability?
- Cost?
Target Audience Skills
Are the people in your target audience who will be looking at your website "computer savvy" or are they going to be someone who with little or no computer experience? Are the visitors to your site:
- use to surfing the web or someone new to the web?
- understand how to save files you offer for download?
- understand how to or be able to download a plug-in to view your site?
Target Audience Visual or Motor Skill Problems
Will your visitors in your target audience have visual or motor skill problems? Would a visitor to your site:
- be blind or have colour blindness?
- be using special apparatus or technology to navigate and view the site?
Now ask yourself, "What technologies will your visitors have?"
Technology Target Audience Has
Website planning also needs to look at what technologies the target audience has:
- Computer equipment
- Operating system - version and updates
- Latest updates for various software
- Type of internet connections
- Browser - version and updates
Let's look at target audience technology a little closer:
- Will target audience have the latest greatest computer equipment?
Will your target audience have the latest computer technology available or will they be the average user that just has whatever came with their economical computer? Would the visitor have old technology that they are quite happy with for their needs?
- What operating system will target audience have?
Will your visitors have
Are you going to accommodate all operating systems?
- Will the target audience keep their computer up to date with
the latest updates?
Will your visitors keep their computer up to date with all the updates available or have the attitude "Things work just fine the way they are."
- How does target audience connect to the internet?
Do they have a cable or adsl connection or are they using dial-up?
- What browser will target audience be using?
Will your visitors be using:
- Internet Explorer?
- Firefox?
- Flock?
- Netscape? Official support ended on March 1st, 2008 but some of your target audience might not have changed yet.
- Safari? - available for Mac and PCs now.
- Any other browser?
- A text based browser like Lynx?
- JAWS? or another web page reader for the visually impaired.
Add into the above mix, which version of these browsers will the users be using?
Are you planning to use any browser or operating system specific items that will limit the number of visitors that can enjoy/use your website?
You need to assess all of the above before you can decide on your website technologies required, the web hosting package you will need and how this will affect your website budget.
If you found this web page a useful resource for your own website please link as follows:
What is your target audience? Target audience
skills? Target audience accessibilty?
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