Website Planning - the Audience

Essential considerations before website design.

Carefully consider the following questions and write down your responses.

What result do you want?

Be specific. For example:

We want website visitors to buy our nappies online.
We want website visitors to send us email enquiring about our services.
We want a high search ranking, to generate a buzz about our new product.



Who is the target audience?

Again, be specific. 'Everyone', as the target audience, is useless.
Some specific examples:

new mothers (some part of the general public)
all HR specialists (particular roles in other businesses)
practicing accountants (professionals in other fields)



What information does the audience need?

What do they want to achieve? What do they need to achieve their particular purpose?
For example:

The new mother wants nappies and needs proof of reliability and price comparisons.
The HR specialist wants a training program and needs to know if the product is suitable.
The accountant has to advise management and needs detailed information.



What is your Competitive angle?

Not necessarily a better product or service but rather an element of differentness - smaller, bigger, lighter, heavier, faster, slower, cheaper, more expensive, higher quality, good enough quality, different distribution. Points of differentiation.
For example:

Best prices and cutting edge technology.
Thorough and widespread research.



Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

  • Decide on keywords that your prospective clients might use in search engines.
    e.g. 'best prices', 'cutting edge'
  • Try to find a Domain name that incorporates the most important keyword.
    e.g. cutting-soft.com
  • It is great when you can constantly add new content. Plan on frequent updates to your website.


Next Steps

  1. Develop draft content
    Write the content for your website, targeted towards your audience.
  2. Website Appearance
    Decide on the preferred Look and Layout for your website.
    Use our Look and Layout pages.