Targeted Design: Were the web design industry is going wrong

The importance of the target audience is often under estimated when designing websites. I was having a discussion with a high level IT services manager over dinner recently and we both agreed that companies and designers have lost sight of the end goal of most websites. They are cramming ever flashier designs with far too much content into sites that don’t need it.

For instance if you want to get the phone number of a restaurant to make a reservation you want it prominent on the page so you don’t have to spend time looking for it. This is in the interest of the restaurant because they want you to reserve and come and eat so they can function as a profitable business. If on the same page there is around 500 other numbers from everyone from the restaurants cleaner to the suppliers of fine wines then finding that number will be a challenge. If there is another restaurant on the same street which serves food just as good as that restaurant and you are unable to find the number for your first choice you are likely to go on the competitors’ site and reserve a table there. This will therefore mean that the company has lost the business that they were planning to give the company simply because the information was not forthcoming on the website.

This is obviously an extreme example but when building sites we should all keep functionality in mind. Of course the visual aspect of the site will make it eye catching but the site is there for a reason and mostly with commercial sites are there for the purpose of making their companies money. If they are unable to do so then they are unfit for purpose no matter how good they look and how many lines of code you have used to create it.
When planning a site there is certain things you need to think about

1. Target audience
2. Accessibility
3. Colour scheme

There are many subsections of each and they are all interconnected. I will use an example to explain. Ok, say for instance you are designing a site for people who have limited vision. Say you are selling corrective contact lenses. There will be two main targeted audiences for the site. The first target audience being people who have a problem with there sight and the second target audience being people buying the contacts for them. So you are going to need two settings; one for the first target audience and one for the second. The people with a sight problem will need larger text for them to be able to read it and the people with “normal” sight will want it set out normally. Now you have to think about which setting should be default. It would depend on which market you were mainly targeting and for this example I am going to say that people with sight problems would like to stay moderately independent so they would want to do it themselves so the text should be set larger by default.

Now you have worked out what the target audience is and the size of the text will have to be for accessibility. Now we have to think about colour scheme. This is very much connected to the target audience. You would not have a flashy chrome and black website for the audience because the majority of people who have sight problems (not all) are more elderly. Therefore they are more partial to soft pastel colours such as light blues, greens and greys.

Now at this point we have worked out the audience, accessibility and the colour scheme. Now we have to work out how the person is going to purchase the item. Can your grandma use email? I know mine can’t so it would be more appropriate to display a phone number that they can call to talk to your company.

This example could go on forever through my process of constant evaluation and targeting but you get the idea. Think about the site don’t just splash some colours and the required text on the page in a way that you find attractive because it does not matter what you think it’s not representing you its representing somebody else.

To do this process you need to be in constant consolation with your customer making sure what you are doing really what they want because it is not your site it’s theirs you are simply there tool for making it. Your professional input will be valued by most customers but at the end of the day the customer knows best and that’s final.
I hope this has given you a good overview of the procedure that I recommend you go through when creating a commercial website.

Andrew Pryde (pryde-design.co.uk)