Customer Types: Toma-to or Tomäto - Page 2

Even when an audience shares similarities for two competitors in business, their Web site designs and development produce two different types of sites. For example, both Barneys New York and Target share an audience that is interested in purchasing consumer goods (see Figures 1.1 and 1.2).

Figure 1.1
To view Barneys' e-commerce site, you need a high-end computer and a fast Internet connection to handle the presentation.

Figure 1.2
Target provides a Web site that almost all Web-enabled computers that have a current generation browser can reach.

Both Target and Barneys New York have physical "brick and mortar" stores that sell their products to customers. What separates the businesses is the type of customer each is targeting.

Target aims for the bargain shopper customer type, or the sensible, middle-class society. It has a wide selection of everyday and every-so-often goods (such as snack items, drinks, contact solution, and so on, as well as stereo equipment, fake Christmas trees, Halloween costumes, and the like). Barneys of New York targets and markets to the richer segment of society, or the full ticket price customer.

These differences in types of audiences are easily identified in the companies' respective Web sites. Barneys New York has few HTML-based forms on the site, but it almost exclusively uses a multimedia experience with Macromedia's vector-based tool Flash. To get the full experience of Barneys's Web site, users need to have fast Internet connections to handle the large file sizes, and they need a high-end computer system to render the Flash presentation. Target's site, on the other hand, has a simple, straightforward design that targets the majority of American Web surfers. On Target's site, people can shop for reasonably priced goods without interruption on a fairly low-powered computer with one of many available browsers.

Reader Types Versus Customer Types

Knowing your audience isn't just based on customers, regardless of what the talking heads on financial networks and television shows say about new media. Believe it or not, people surf the Web for information. (There's a reason that the Internet is referred to as the information superhighway.) These people are reader types. They can check out USA Today's Web site for coverage of American-centric interests (see Figure 1.3) and compare the news with what's in their local newspaper's Web site as well as other national or even international news sites. Although the online publication of USA Today reflects the content of its print counterpart, the site also supports online-only content and publishing updates that occur five days a week.

Figure 1.3
Informing the world unlike its print counterpart, which informs only the United States. The aim of this site is to inform its readers about the latest in national and international news.

Web sites that reach out to customer types need to provide a different type of atmosphere from those that cater to readers. With shopping sites, they need to provide a sense of trust with your credit card information and timely fulfillment of your order. Sites that cater to reader types are concerned about meeting publishing deadlines on a regular schedule to retain and grow their readership. Having something original or interesting to say is also a good idea.

The American right to freedom of the press does not belong only to people who can buy a printing press. Justin Hall's Links site, an independent online publication chronicling his life in his own words, images, and programming, is an example of a one-man publishing empire (see Figure 1.4). Established in 1994, Justin covers the convergence of new media and society, and his audience is anyone interested in things that matter to him and those that get caught up in the journal of an expressive person. Justin's publishing schedule is his own. (Usually, it's a once-a-day writing schedule.)

Figure 1.4
Justin Hall's personal site is an easy-to-read personal journal of one man's perspective through technology and its effect on culture. Yes, it has ad banners, too.

Experience Types

Surfing the Web is an experience unto itself. Users can engage in online artwork that only exist on the Web. And although they can burn art pieces onto CD-ROMs, the delivery of the artwork is the Web. Instead of going to a museum to experience artwork in person, the art is available wherever a person can go online to find it. Web artist Richard Grillotti's PixelJam takes full use out of a browser's capability to stretch images and the animation specifications in GIFs (see Figure 1.5).

Figure 1.5
Richard Grillotti's PixelJam uses the nature of GIF animations that are small and then stretches them like a canvas over a browser frame. In short, it's Web art.

Museums, on the other hand, are leveraging the power of the Web to advertise their shows (see Figure 1.6). Although the museums might have shows for their electronic artwork, the user has to physically go to the museum to click a mouse, tap keyboards, or use other input devices that the artist has created to interact with the artwork.

Figure 1.6
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) tries to convince visitors to check out their "brick and mortar" art museum.

However, both SFMOMA and PixelJam are out to create a unique surfing experience for their visitors. Grillotti's site is the experience, whereas SFMOMA's is an attractive marketing ploy that tries to lure paying visitors to their museum (and stop in the gift shop on their way out).

Through audience types, we realize that various types of sites are available. For your site development, you need to realize up front if you're building for one, two, or all three of these site types for your audience. It's not just a matter of knowing the audience, but building the right type of site for your audience.

Designing CSS Web Pages
Designing CSS Web Pages
Liberation Through Audience Limitations - Page 3