Identifying the target audience for your site
If you identify your audience, your website has a far greater chance of catering to their needs. It is important to work with business representatives, particularly those in marketing, to identify your target audience groups, as well as any secondary audiences.

Understanding users' needs
Once you have identified your target audience groups, you need to develop an understanding of their information needs, and the issues that affect how they use your website.

A number of methods can be used to assist with the task of understanding users' needs. These include:

• interviews
• focus groups or workshops
• surveys - online or on paper
• contextual inquiry - observing users in their workplace or study environment
• developing user "personas"
• search log analysis
• web server log analysis
• monitoring feedback from users.

When identifying users' needs and preferences, consider some of the following questions:

What are your users' motivations, habits and preferences?

• Why are they likely to be visiting your site?
  
• What information or resources are they most interested in?
  
• How often do they visit?
  
• Do they prefer to search rather than browse?
  
• What do they like or dislike about your current website?
  

What are the users' technological capacities?

• What kinds of computers and web browsers are your target user group using?
  
• What kind of internet connection will they have?
  
• Will they be in a country or remote location with limited bandwidth?
  
• Will they have plug-ins or other applications installed?
  
  

What are the users' physical capacities or limitations?
Is your audience ageing? If so, there are a number of age-related physical impairments such as loss of vision and hearing that may need to be considered.

Might they have significant visual impairments?
Are you likely to have users with motor skill impairments who might have difficulty with drop-down lists, or excessive clicking?

Is your audience local or international?

• What cultural differences and sensitivities must be kept in mind?
  
• Do you use imagery, icons or terminology that might not be widely understood outside your culture?

Go to Top