Boot Camp

Web Authoring Boot Camp
market you are targeting. These people will be viewing the website for a specific reason,
and you need to know exactly what they are looking for when they visit. You may also
have more than one key audience, such as if the website targets more than one age group,
or customers for different product lines.
Like the purpose, you need to clearly define your understanding of what visitors want
to do or feel when they come to your site in order to help them fulfill its purpose. While
there is a certain amount of guesswork, research and your discussions with your client
will help you identify the target audience. Consider:
• Audience Characteristics: Age, location, income range, gender, education, language,
and other visitor discernments.
• Information Preferences: Reading bulleted lists, show-and-tell, video, instructional,
newsy, quick & dirty, and so on.
• Computer Specifications: The likely computer speed, monitor sizes, various
internet connections, accessibility tools, and other things that impact how fast the
visitor can get the information download and use the information.
• Web Experience: The likely experience level of the audience with items like
navigation, forms, logins, and other ways they may interact with a website.
Information Flow
You need to plan on all the types of information you need to include in the website. While
the client should provide the content (text, images, etc.), you need to know what this will
be so you can plan how to organize the website. This impacts how you:
• Create the information flow for the visitor, such as the layout and types of pages.
• Create the navigation and prioritize what the visitor sees first.
• Organize the information the visitor needs to act upon.
• Place text content, navigation, images, and overall communication items to fulfill
the website’s purpose.
Key information points you need to consider include:
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• Inform or educate: Break down by presented information, where to get more
information, resources/links, etc.
• Product sales: Break down by products, features/benefits, how to buy, testimonials/how
to use, and so on.
• Marketing and promotion: Break down by services offered, reputation points/