All about the audience

Like most (if not all) types of media, the audience is always a main influence in what goes into the work itself. The author/creator/etc needs to take a lot into consideration about the intended audience when composing a work, whether it's an essay, a video or in this case, a website.

As "Getting to Know Your Audience" on Philosophe.com illustrates, knowing and understanding the audience of a website is critical and very important when developing a website. Noticing the general trends of a group of people can be easy, as long as the point of view of the audience analyzer isn't too narrow or skewed. As the article states, examining the audience itself, the audience's operating systems, as well as the audience's browsers can be extremely helpful when creating a website.

While reading the "Eyetracking and Website Design," piece by Christi O'Connell I actually found myself being a "typical" website user. It was hard for me to read all of the article without skimming too much. Ironically, the article itself discusses the patterns of how users view and read websites and how their eyes tend to follow the path of an "F." Yup, I caught myself doing the same thing, several times. Too much content on a web page seems to be boring and hard to focus on. Whereas a website with an overload of fancy pictures and writing may turn the user off completely, but in a different way.

Overall, after reading both articles, I drew some conclusions. One is that the audience plays a huge role in the making of a website, just like in writing or presentations. In addition, the layout can deeply affect the audience and how they see the content of the site. Keeping it targeted towards the audience, as well as clean but not too boring seems to be the key to a successful website. I guess we will see if this is the truth in a few weeks!