Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Target Audiences

There will be many different types of users that will visit my portfolio site. Below I will define the main category of users that will be accessing this portfolio.

Category 1 - Course Lecturers
User's would generally be a Male/Female aged 25-40. They would have Degree level education and teaching in the area of Website Design and Interactive Media. Due to this the user would be computer literate to a higher standard than most and would probably log on to the Internet 1-2 times a day. The browser of choice would either be Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 7. As they are computer literate they will also have all the major plug-ins for supporting web based content.

Category 2 - Design Professionals
Users Male or Female aged 30-50 looking for new members to join their design teams. Due to the nature of their area of work they will be highly computer literate on both Mac and PC. The browser of choice would be either FireFox 2 or Safari, although due to work, they would also have a range of older browsers including IE5.5 in order to browser test websites. Activity on the Internet would be very regularly probably at least 5-6 times a day maybe sometimes even staying on the Internet for extended periods. Due to the nature of their work they would have all the latest browser plug-ins for all browsers. As they are working in the design area they will have a fast Internet connection.

Possibly be looking for young talented designers coming to the end of University Degrees.

Category 3 - Small Businesses
User would probably be self employed with a small team of employees, wanting to make a presence on the Internet. Would be aged between 25-50 and not have a lot of computer literacy a reasonable Internet speed, browser of choice would be Internet Explorer 6 or 7, may have the recent plug-ins. Would be looking for a local firm to design a website for them at a reasonable cost. The user may have aspirations of becoming number one on the Google Search Engine.

Category 4 - Students
User would be Male or Female aged 16-40 possibly studying a degree or course in Interactive Media. Browser of choice would be FireFox 2 or Internet Explorer 7, and recent browsers if on a Degree design course. Will have the recent browser plug-ins and will have a fast internet connection. Would be looking at work as a source of inspiration and/or research.

9 comments:

Suzanne Hullah said...

For your student target audience, can a student not be older than 25? I think that your age range is a bit short. Afterall, there are 2 people over the age of 25 on my year and I think there's 1 on your year too.

Opening the age range slightly will mean that you can cater for all students, not just the ones straight from an FE course.

Chris Towell said...

I forgot about Scott but most of time he acts like a big kid anyway. I will change it to suit our 'Silver Surfer'.

DREW said...

I think its interesting that you have included students as a target audience. Suzanne also suggested I do this my opinion is that although students will be looking at our work I wouldn't consider them a target audience as them viewing my work only effects them and not me. If they like the work its great news but I don't think it would give them reason to contact me.

Craig Burgess said...

Yeah, I'm with Drew on the students point. I only added students to mine as it is very probable that other students will also be present at our final presentations, not meaning that I have to keep them in mind as I am designing the site.

However, you have put them in category 4, so it's clear you have your priorities right as to how they fit into your target audiences.

Ben Waller said...

I agree with Drew and Craig about the student target audience. If potential students were to find my portfolio helpful then I would be pleased but it is not a primary concern.

My main aim is to pass the course and eventually gain employment in the industry. Because of this I would be focusing much more on Educationalists who will be marking the work and Industry Professionals who I will need to impress to find employment.

Julian Dyer said...

As Ben has already said, targeting students isn't really a primary concern. Probably not even secondary or tertiary.

Target audiences should be about the people who you can attract to your website who you can benefit from, rather than just what visitors you might receive.

Scott Dunwoodie said...

Well I never, I don't know whether I should be happy that I get a mention in your comments section......

or should I report you to the government

Scott Dunwoodie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Chris Towell said...

You know double commenting doesn't count towards your quota, and nor does commenting 2 hours before the deadline.

@Julian - That's why they are the 4th Target Audience. They will still visit the site for inspiration and advice thuogh.

Couldn't you two have commented a couple of days earlier instead of leaving it to last minute?