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July 28, 2005
More about your target audiences
Last week the subject of our target audiences received short shrift as I waxed forth on the subject of goals. In revisiting this subject I want to emphasize just how critical it is to find the balance between our own goals and those of the people we wish to visit the site. Sticking with the cartoon theme I've used the example of Dr. Doolittle's "Pushme-Pullyou." One head represents the person producing the web content while the other represents the site visitor. In the movie this creature provided a navigational advantage when they were on board ship as it could...
July 21, 2005
Understanding your goals and your target audience
At this point you should have a fairly clear idea of the goals for your site. But have you considered this: are your goals related to the goals of your intended audience? To examine this issue let's pretend we are building a new website for the fictitious Department of Cartooning. As we see in my own feeble attempt at cartooning, our webmaster is pondering his goals. The first one, to recruit faculty and students is a goal common to academic departments. (How we create content to support such goals will be discussed in a later post) Here our target audience...
July 12, 2005
Kevin & Heidi's Move to Adelbert
This week Kevin and I have moved from Bellflower to [[Adelbert_Hall|Adelbert]] 14. Due to the fact that we are now switching to VoIP, our phone numbers have not yet caught up with us. During this transition please contact us by e-mail if you have any web development questions. You can reach us at kevin.adams@case.edu and heidi.cool@case.edu. Thank you for your patience....
July 01, 2005
So you want to build a website
This is the first in a series of entries on how to plan your website. Whether you are starting from scratch or rebuilding an existing site, I hope this will help you understand how with careful planning you can build a site that serves the needs of your target audience. Now that you've decided to make a site, you are probably thinking about colors, html and menus, etc. But just as one doesn't hit the ball in one's first tennis lesson, one doesn't start a website by jumping into the code. Instead, the first question you should ask yourself...