Identifying the Audience

Identifying the Audience
All webmasters secretly dream that their web sites will appeal to everyone, but this isn't necessarily the best measure of success. The key to creating a successful web site is to find that percentage, however small, of those who are most receptive to your goals, and then do everything you can to cater to these people. The Web isn't a single, homogenous, monolithic market waiting for the right person to come along and exploit it. It's a tapestry of every conceivable niche. The site that identifies a clear, specific audience is in a better position for longevity than the site that attempts to dominate every niche on the Web.

Advertisers, marketers, and other money types spend considerable time, effort, and capital identifying their customers in microscopic detail. If you have access to this sort of information, by all means, use it. If you don't have these resources, don't worry about it. Most site builders identify their audiences without extensive market research and CIA-caliber customer profiling. You start out with some intelligent hunches. If you're building a web site for your business or organization, your audience includes your existing customers, along with the customers you'd like to attract. For a personal site, the perfect template for the typical audience member is you and others like you. Once your site begins to generate feedback, you may refine your assumptions about your audience and direct the growth of your site accordingly.

Defining the likely audience from the get-go helps you to figure out the most effective ways of achieving the goals of your site. It's Customer Service 101 in action: your particular audience comes to your site with a certain set of expectations, and you, the site builder, aim to please. Take the average businessperson. Businesspeople like charts and graphs. Your cubicle or office is probably surrounded by them. Why should this be? Charts and graphs are part of the language of business. If you can't get through to your boss in any other way, try plotting your point of view on some kind of curve, and watch the doors of perception swing open.

It stands to reason, then, that if your audience includes businesspeople, the content of your web site needs to resonate with those who speak the language of business. And if one of the goals of your web site happens to be, "To tell prospective clients how we can help them," see what you can do about getting some charts and graphs on your site. You don't want to be as flippant as that, though. Posting charts and graphs haphazardly, just for the sake of having them, is pandering, not catering, and your audience will see right through it. Always go back to your list of goals. Where would charts and graphs be most useful for your audience? Where would they make the most sense on your site?

As you think through the expectations of your audience, notice what begins to happen: the scope of your site comes more clearly into focus. You get a feel for the area that your web site needs to cover, which is precisely where you want to be.