Finding Your Target Audience

You are wanting to create a website but not quite sure where to begin. The best place to start is to identify your target audience. Understanding who is your target audience is one of the most important issues when writing anything; whether a book, magazine article or a website. Knowing who you are writing for enables you to set the tone and structure allowing you to create a piece of work that has the greatest impact on your target audience which allows them to return to your site, recommend the site to others and visit/review other sites or works you put out there.
If you already know the subject matter of the site then basically you already have a general idea of your target audience. Let's assume, though, that you are not certain about your subject matter and need to start at the very beginning.

LOOKING FOR QUALITATIVE INFORMATION

Yahoo's Style Guide explains that researching qualitative information as being "useful when you don't have an existing website and want to define your potential audience". (Yahoo StyleGuide, 2010) You need to figure out what the people want. How do you do it? You ask questions and do research. Just what is it that people will be looking for on your site? Are they doing research or possibly comparing information with another site? Does your audience just want a break from the daily grind with some funny stories or games to play? Are they looking to purchase anything that you might be able to provide? Why would they choose your site over others? There are many questions out there that can help you find what people are looking for in your site and the more questions you ask, the more beneficial it is to building a great website.
Yahoo's Resource page (http://styleguide.yahoo.com/resources) has many tools and services available to help you gather this information. You may also conduct surveys, polls and interviews yourself. Even after you have an idea of your subject matter and start your website, you'll want to keep reviewing the same questions over and over so you can keep your site up to date and interesting with new material.
Once you have a general idea of what people are looking for you then need to ask yourself what are the common factors in the answers to these questions? What would you enjoy creating a site about? What specific groups of people are you looking to reach? That is when you take the next step and look at the quantitative information.

LOOKING FOR QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION

Quantitative data tells you "who your users are and what tasks they are performing on your site". (Yahoo StyleGuide, 2010) By understanding the specifics of your target audience you can create a site that would almost make your visitors feel as if you created that site just for them specifically. Once again, it's time to do your homework and do lots of research and ask lots of questions. Are you targeting people in a specific location? What is your audiences' political or religious views? What are your target ages and genders? Are you targeting students, business people, researchers? If you are selling something, how much are people spending on your target products? And many more similar questions.
Yahoo has a great site that can aid you with this type of information at http://www.web.analytics.yahoo.com. You can also create surveys which are also a great help in obtaining demographic information. Once again, the more specific information you have, the greater impact your site will have on your audience.

PUTTING THIS KNOWLEDGE TO WORK FOR YOU

Once you have all your answers to all the qualitative and quantitative questions, you can begin figuring out just how to put it all together to create the perfect website for your audience. Identifying your audience will allow you to provide the proper information for your site visitors. Think about this for a moment: Suppose you are creating a Math website that teaches children how to do multiplication. Your target audience would then be those who already know how to add and subtract. If you then put in information like 1+1=2, you are definitely not hitting your target and will therefore, lose your audience and any trust in your knowledge from them as well as any return visits to your site. Make sure that the information is relevant to your target audience. You certainly don't want to use scientific notations on a site made for someone who just wants to learn how to make a paper airplane for an elementary school science project.
The whole idea is to provide information that meets your audience's interests. It is the audience that you are creating a website for so remember that they are the ones that you have to please to ensure return visits to your site. If the majority of people are looking for something different than what you are really interested in, find a way to incorporate what you enjoy into the equation. For example, I'm not a person that is much into writing news articles. I enjoy nature and also enjoy photography. A couple of years ago, though, a news story came up that was literally right down the street from me that I could also incorporate my love of nature and photography into. What I ended up with was an article that was probably my most popular.
Always keep your target audience in the front of your mind when you are creating your website. If you do your best to meet their needs, then you are on the path to success with your site.

Reference
Yahoo (2010). Yahoo StyleGuide. http://styleguide.yahoo.com/ . Retrieved on August 1, 2010