I had an interesting meeting with a client today. He had asked me to give him my opinion of his web site. After a short review, I responded with just three words - Me! Me! Me!

He knew exactly what I meant. The entire site was an advertisement for his goals and his companies accomplishments.

Folks, I have to tell ya - people are not interested in you, your great deeds, and your goals. They simply want  information on how you can help them with their needs, their goals, and their desires.

When designing a web site project , the absolute first thing I do is:

• Identify the target audience. Before finalizing any decision about the content of your site, it's important to consider the people who will be reading or viewing it.
• Refine your target audience until you have discovered a niche group that is interested in the product or service you are offering. So, just what is a niche? Well, the definition is actually quite simple. A niche is a certain segment of the population where you intend to concentrate your efforts.
• Simply go where they go. Once I have determined the niche group to be targeted,  I look through hundreds of forum posts to find the most popular topics. I attend group meetings and look for information in publications to find out as much information as I can on what my target audience is interested in. More to the point - what they want. This will determine the content of the site.
• Organisation. Once I have decided on the content of a site, I then need to work out how it will be organised.
• Planning a structure. I then plan the organisation for the site (for example, how to divide my content into sections) carefully. If I plan well, it should be clear (both to me and to my users) where each piece of content will be placed.  I can divide content into sections based on users or based on the content itself, or both. Remember, your main goal is to present information that will be well organized and help your targeted audience make an informed decision to  invest in your product or service.

Summary: The content of a site is its information (what users can learn from the site) and functionality (what users can do with the site). It is the most important factor that determines whether a site is useful or not.

When you plan content for a site, it can be helpful to consider, within your target audience, the different types of people who will visit the site. You can then ensure that your content is relevant to your users.

The content should be logically organised into sections (or some other appropriate structure). You can organise it based on the different types of user, or based on the content itself. The organisation should be clear so that users can understand both where they are in the site, and where the information they are looking for will most likely be located..

The point of all this: Take the Me! Me! Me! out of your next web site project, spend the time to determine who your target audience is, refine the target audience until you have a niche group of potential users that have an interest in your offering. Learn as much about this group as you possibly can, and above all give them the information they want.

Buck