Know your audience Once you

Know your audience
from WebHostPad.com

Once you've defined your purpose, the next step is to make sure you know your potential audience.

One important step is determining what the average connection speed is of users. If you're getting mostly dialup traffic -- typically from home-based visitors -- faster-loading pages will help keep users on site.

Also, determining browser use is important as well. Many of the newer versions come with a variety of plug-ins, but if a site is too advanced, you could alienate those visitors using older, incompatible browsers.

Once you know these facts, it's time to look at what technology itself can add or detract. The big question with using any new technology is whether it will enhance the company's main business or message or hinder the site experience.

For example, if you're an e-commerce site, are the shopping features the main focus of the site, or are they buried behind a gigantic and pointless Flash intro? If you're a multimedia company does your site reflect your prowess with the latest technology? If you're business is content, do the pages load fast and is the site intuitive?

Manuel Rico, the coordinator of a Web site for a popular Spanish magazine, used a Madrid-based design firm to get his site up and running. He says he developed a very clear idea of mission and users before meeting the designers. This then led to a fairly simple creative process.

"I told them what I wanted included from a content perspective, and they came up with some mock- up screens," he says. "I then looked at those and made suggestions and changes for the final product."

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