Fundamentals: Target Audience

The first rule of selecting target audience is not to lie to yourself. Your first instinct might be to say “our target audience is everyone…” -Unless you’re the government, you’re lying to yourself.

Being precise with your target audience selection will help you to present benefits that will be well received. If your target audience is not targeted enough, you will likely suffer from a bland, non-specific website or project, the kind that neither offends nor pleases anyone.

The most committal websites in the world are the ones that make the strongest impact on the audience they target. They have an authentic and determined voice that users respond to.

Fundamentals: Browsers

While building a website, you will learn more about web browsers than you ever wanted to know. Most of the world operates in Internet Explorer, but there are many popular web browsers:

Internet Explorer (Windows only)
IE is the worlds most installed browser. Although it is difficult to work with and lacks many advanced features available in other browsers, it is the standard.

Firefox (For Windows and mac)
Firefox is the modern open source replacement for IE. It is more standards compliant, more secure, and faster. Although only a small portion of the general population is using it, it is extremely popular in the tech savvy world. If you’re still using Explorer, consider switching; -it’s free.

Safari (Mac only)
Safari is the default browser on all new Macintosh computers. It is also a modern browser, with a feature set equivalent to Firefox.

Fundamentals: Collecting data

One of the most exciting things about owning a website is the ability to collect data. Large companies pay big bucks for a glimpse into the buying habits of their customers. With some careful planning, your website can set you on a path to knowing some of the things that the big boys know.

Some of the things that websites can tell you about your users:

• Approximate location
• Type of browser
• Length of time they spent on your site
• Path they took while navigating your site
• What search term they used to arrive at your site
• What site they clicked over from

With some prompting and proper motivation, you may also be able to entice users to cough up their names, email addresses and even phone numbers, and addresses.

Fundamentals

In our business, we get to answer a lot of questions. It’s the nature of our jobs. We deal with a lot of ephemera, and ideas; -there’s not always a straight route from a to b. And there’s also the technology factor… A swimming world of acronyms that moves faster than anyone can hope to […]