Who will be coming to your website? Don’t let the word “audience” throw you. It means anybody who would be using your site. Possible audiences include existing customers, members of your organization, prospective customers or members, people looking for cheap car insurance, and stay-at-home-Moms.
The more precisely you can define your audience, the easier it will be to build a site for them. It’s easier to design a site that will get the attention of stay-at-home-Mom’s than one that appeals to all women. It’s easier to design for IT professionals than general business people.
Do you have more than one audience? Maybe your website will target both customers and prospects, or your organization wants to use the website to serve existing members, but also recruit new members. That’s fine, most businesses do. List all your major audiences, the more specifically you can define them, the better it will be later in the design process.
Next we’ll look at what each audience will do with the web site.
