Just as it was crucial to get to know our client, it will now be essential to get to know the future user: the website visitor, the customer, the web application user. In other words, all those who are the reason our client embarks on this project and who they want to create the website for.
We dedicated quite a lot of space to finding out information about our client before getting here on purpose – the reason is that all the innumerable web design and UX design books and textbooks go on in detail about the other side, the user. Sometimes, unfortunately, they give way too much weight to users, their needs, interests, to keeping them happy – or even just awing and dazzling them – and somewhat neglect the interests of the client. We have not neglected the user, we have given them appropriate importance, and therefore we are now ready to delve into their opposite half: the visitors of their website. This is where traditional UX design comes in, as do all the millions of pages written about this discipline.
The first and crucial step will always be to discern and define who the user will be, who should become a user and who should not. We have to select and define our target audience as precisely as possible, and subsequently find out what these people want, what they desire, and what we can offer them – how we can satisfy their needs and desires.
Perhaps somewhat surprisingly we will find that our first step – that is, ascertaining the interests and goals of the client as best as possible – will make our work here quite significantly easier, and will help us define a suitable target audience with much more precision and specificity. The fact is, client’s specifications of their website and its anticipated target audience usually tend to be rather broad and vague. If, however, we also engage the limitations and assumptions arising from the first step (which we have done already) and look at future users from the point of view of these specifications, this group of future users can be refined substantially.
Target audience is prefigured and defined by the interests and goals of the client.
If our client’s primary objective is to sell luxury watches, we can easily limit target audience to upmarket clientele, and there is no need to try and build a website for the general public, whose members might be interested in these watches for other reasons. If the client plans to provide paid information wholesale, this will enable us to specify target audience as media agencies and high circulation media. If the client’s goal is to penetrate the established market with heavy-duty ball bearings, we can easily focus on B2B target audience within the machinery and equipment sector.
Do not be fooled by the target audience anticipated in the specifications provided by the client. It is not uncommon that the client’s idea of target audience and the client’s true interest are somewhat at odds. One of our tasks is to uncover any such contradictions and resolve them. The rule that goals overrule the client’s preconceived ideas applies here. In other words, what the client is trying to achieve has more weight than their preconceived idea of how it might possibly be achieved.
