Working with your audience
One of the key elements of writing well is writing for your audience.
Try to imagine what type of audience is most likely to visit your web site and try to imagine what reasons they have for going to different sections of your site.
Audience fit
In their very useful book Hot Text Jonathan and Lisa Price introduce the concept of audience fit as a key criteria for assessing the value of each web element.
They suggest that readers come to different websites for different reasons and visit different pages within the same website for different reasons. They use a set of five categories to determine audience fit with the type of content appropriate for that site or that page.
| People who go to websites : | Require : |
|---|---|
| to have fun | humor; a light feel; a range of different options |
| to learn | detail; depth of navigation; appropriate summaries |
| to act | mechanisms (eg shopping-carts) that are effective and easy to use |
| to be aware | clear, accessible summary information |
| to get close to people | interactivity and clear points of contact |
Casual visitors and specific seekers
Another way of thinking about your audience and their needs is to recognise that some will be more familiar with your site than others. Users can be divided into:
Regular users: these people require that you maintain a consistent format and that you regularly update your content.
Casual browsers: may be "checking you out" for a number of reasons, they require clear navigation that leads them along a range of pathways through the site - there should be no dead ends.
Casual information seekers: have a specific question that they want answered and they require clear and logical navigation that effectively signposts all available content. They don't want to trip over irrelevant content.
