Do your research
Spending the time to clearly identify your priority audiences and the reasons they come to your website will help you to deliver a focused, accurate site that meets both their needs and yours.
Know your audience
You can’t engage successfully with your audience if you don’t know who you are speaking to. The more specific you can be about who your target audience and customers are, the better your communications with them will be. We offer lots of resources and tools to help you to identify and reach the right people to achieve your business objectives.
Who are you trying to reach?
“Students?” – Any or all? “Staff?” – Academic, professional service, on campus or off? Our experience is that schools and units are usually trying to reach a defined group with specific needs such as geographical location or technology requirements. Focusing on the needs of this group will ensure more successful engagement.
“It changes” – many of those we work with have different audience priorities at different times of the year or according to different scenarios. Identifying and recording these requirements will help you to plan effectively to catch the attention of the right people at the right time.
Focus your activities
We know successful online engagement comes from knowing your audience and giving them what they need while supporting your business goals. The majority of visitors to your website will share similar needs or tasks. To make best use of available skills and resource, it makes sense to focus your activities on ensuring these needs are met.
What do I need to do?
- Collaborate with your colleagues to identify and agree your priority audiences. Your stakeholders may include staff at all levels as well as representatives from your target audience.
- Use the information you gather to build a picture or persona for each of your priority groups. Include as much detail as you can about their needs, skills and expectations.
- Think about what you know about how these people engage with you or use your service.
- What thing or things would make life easier for your school or unit – could this be answered online?
- What questions are you always being asked?
- Is this information already on your website – why don’t people find it?
- Identify and agree which tasks are most important. This is where to focus your attention.
How we can help
Training
- Persona training – an introduction to the core concepts and techniques of personas and how they can help you to engage successfully with your audiences and user groups.
Find out more or book persona training
- Google analytics training – learn how to access and interpret data about your website visitors using Google Analytics.
Find out more or book Google analytics training
Facilitated workshops and tools
- Persona workshops to build specific personas for your needs
- Workshops to identify and agree priority tasks
- Facilitated tools to support prioritising activity such as online surveys
Contact us to discuss your needs.