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Your website's users: who do you want to visit your website? (screen 2 of 9)
In Guide 4(1) you learnt how to determine the purpose of your website, what types of information it could include, and some of the transactions users might engage in.
The task now is to identify:
- Who will visit your website?
- Who do you want to visit your website?
These could be two different groups!
It is important to identify the target audience for your site. Are they the elderly, the young, the arty, musicians? Are they school children, Australians, the unemployed, the Japanese? Or all of these?
Identifying your target audience is critical. If you don't know who your users will be it's difficult to design a site to meet their needs.
Your target audience must be able to relate to your site, and find what they are looking for when they visit.
Some visits to your website will be random
Even if you identify the target audience for your website, you will still have visitors who come across it accidentally. Your website should be designed with these people in mind too, to maximise the use made of the information you have available.
Because you can't necessarily control where users enter your site you need to ensure that no matter what screen they find themselves on in your site they are able to find their way easily to other areas of interest on your website.
This means that the first screen anyone encounters on your site should have a standard navigation system and every screen should identify your organisation either by using its logo or your organisation's name.
It's an opportunity to promote your organisation as well as to supply the user with the information they're looking for.
Why would users want to visit your website?
Why indeed? What is there on your website that would make someone spend time and money, not only to find your website, but to look at it and use it?
Your site should provide compelling reasons for people to visit it.
You should engage your organisation's staff(2) in identifying the sort of information people want about your organisation or from it.
Organising information on your website
Once you've identified what your users might want, you can set about organising that information so it's easy to find on your website. That means, of course, trying to imagine yourself into a user's mind.
Your website information may not end up being organised in the same way as your business is - that is, your website may not mirror your organisational structure.
Ideally, you should organise information on your website so that users can find what they want easily.
Keep your website structure flat and make each screen link to many others so that screens are not dead ends but provide alternative ways to find information.
Suppliers of Government information online
If your website is part of the Australian Federal Government
or you are involved in the publication of materials online for the Australian
Federal Government, you will need to comply with the 
"Guidelines
for Commonwealth Information Published in Electronic Formats"(3).
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2 of 9 |
References
- Guide 4 screen 1 http://culture.gov.au/resources/guides/g4/s1.htm
- Guide 4 screen 2 http://culture.gov.au/resources/guides/g4/s2.htm#people
- Guidelines for Commonwealth Information Published in Electronic Format http://www.agimo.gov.au/information/publishing/formats
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