To create a website that communicates well, you must think about the people with whom you are communicating. Understanding your audiences and what they need is critical to deciding such issues as these:
- What to write
- How much to write
- The vocabulary to use
- How to organize the content on your website
An analysis of the audience is sometimes more a process of guesswork than an inquiry into the minds and activities of the user. When questioning the website’s targeted audience, web authors must ask two main questions:
- What does the user know about the thing I am writing about?
- What does the user want to know about the thing I am writing about?
Web authors should try to include only essential information on the website. If the audience cannot function without certain information, that information must hold top priority. Nonessential information may keep audiences from completing their work and should be removed from the website. The goal of the website is to make the information available to the user when needed.
Audiences may consist of multiple groups—large and small—as well as individuals. For example, a large group of technical writers can divide into smaller groups based on experience in the field, while each person retains his or her individuality. Thus, a web author must closely analyze each group audience and individual audience to determine the group characteristics and individual characteristics. This allows the web author to properly customize the website, which gives the group/individual audiences the ability to choose the content they want.
Many websites construct personas, or hypothetical people, who may visit the website they are creating. For example, STCBOK created 14 different personas that represent the majority of STCBOK users. There are an infinite number of different types of web users and 14 personas cannot cover all of them. The goal of creating personas is to determine who the audience is visiting the website, what his or her background is, and what they hope to learn or find from the website.
All web writers can assume that there will be different kinds of users, which include the following:
- Experts
- Newbies
- Everyone else
The best way to handle these groups is to write for those unfamiliar with the material without making it sound too simple for the expert users. One way to do this is to think of the user as someone with a degree in every field, excluding the website’s subject. Thus, the website author can explain everything the user wants to know without sounding overly basic.
A thorough understanding of the audiences’ work environment and daily tasks convey each group’s specific requirements. The best case scenario for determining audience characteristics and needs is to observe and interview users in their particular environment. However, writers sometimes cannot get to know audiences directly, and so they must rely on information from developers, marketers, consultants, and support members if interviewing them is not an option.
Usability testing also reveals customer needs. These findings help developers and writers determine what is essential for the users on the site and assess the sections of the website that are confusing and problematic.
For an overview on this topic, see: Redish, J. (2007). Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works.