Getting Personal with the Audience

Compiling the ultimate tool list for audience research

[hairycoo]

Hello everyone,

I feel that it is not enough to use statistics (e.g. online travel bookings rise by xx%) or keyword tools in order to understand how to best organise information on a site and decide what content would best answer users' questions. I suspect there are real benefits in getting close and personal with the audience even though this may require a lot of time and effort.

So far I've come up with a list of tools (compiled from posts here and other resources) that could help the average webmaster get a better understanding of the targeted audience whether it's people interested in a certain subject/product/service etc.

• discussion lists, message boards, forums
  
• feedback emails on one's site
  
• public feedback on other related sites
  
• guestbooks on own or other site
  
• how people use searches at Ask Jeeves
  
• keyword tools: Overture, Espotting, WordTracker, Google Sandbox, etc.
  
• logs from own or other sites
  
• news sites
  
• published interviews
  
• statistics from govt or other sites
  
• surveys
  
• blogs
  
• specialist communities (would this be different to specialist forums?)
  
• online journals
  
• general communities like orkut, ezboard and then drill down from there
  
• groups and clubs such as msn, yahoo, google groups
  
• google answers
  
• chat rooms, irc
  

I have not tried many of them yet so can't say whether it's worth the effort or not. I would appreciate it if you could add to the list or give feedback on the above list.

[hairycoo]

3 days and no replies :(

[ergophobe]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld. I'm surprised that post went three days with no reply, but sometimes that's the way it is. Anyway, that's a great list.

What about polls? I've not used them, but am thinking of doing so soon.

Tom

[timchuma]

It's getting much harder to stand out on the web especially since most of the big things have already been done now.

One thing that I find to have worked on my personal site is to just add content that you are interested in yourself and let people find you when they want to.

Thanks.

[ergophobe]

But what about a site where you really want/need traffic? Even if it is just a personal site, if you put a lot of effort into it, it would be nice to actually have some visitors. Otherwise, why bother?

Tom

[hairycoo]

Thanks for the welcome. This place is great, I feel like home :)

One thing this sort of research could help with is organising information on your site.

Say most sites in your field opt for categories like widget1, widget2, widget3, categories the publisher feels are most important. But this type of research, through various means, might reveal that this sort of information structure is not exactly what the visitors expect to see; to them, other categories might be far more important.

The above is an example and I guess it could be done through usability testing as well. But does anyone know how many successful, content sites go to the trouble to do this sort of research and if yes, how it has affected the performance of the site?

[Robsp]

hairycoo

I know quite a few sites that run "exit surveys" when users leave the site. This can be very insightfull and let's you know whether users got what they came looking for.

[shigamoto]

Great list, actually going to print it for when I promote my new site.

Finding a website that is sort of the center in the particular field you are working in is also a good way to get a grasp on your visitors.

Often you find out that those sites miss certain functions or content and that's a way of making your site a bit special by adding those missing bits.