Finding your content level : Rich vs Reach

Your target audience is a very important aspect of planning a web site. You need to know who you want to come to your site, who you expect, and also what technology they're likely to be using.

Platform

Most home and business users use a variety of Microsoft Windows® to browse the internet. The other major platform is Unix, which includes newer operating systems such as Linux.

Content

The graph below shows a rough indication of Rich vs Reach. 'Rich' is defined as the complexity of your web site, and 'Reach' is the possible target audience. It can be seen that the more complex the site, the less people are in a position to use it.

The labels A - F are defined as follows :

Some companies have particular reasons why they would wish to cater for certain groups, for instance a search engine needs to be available for the largest possible group and so normally only contains text and simple graphics - e.g. Google.com.

A marketing company may require their site to be an example of new technology and exploit many of the rich features that web sites can offer. They should then normally add a disclaimer on the site, informing that it can only be viewed with certain browsers, OR they should provide alternative content for people with older browsers. This alternative content may not completely duplicate the original content, but would at least provide pertinent information. Some sites such as BBC News on-line, provide a 'Low Graphics' service. This can be achieved but is far easier to incorporate into a new site rather than an existing one.

No-one wants to unnecessarily turn business away! Most sites target an audience between points B and E. This catches a wide audience, whilst still providing 'rich' content. This also means that any part of the site which is more technically demanding of the user's browser can be logically 'split' into its own area and labelled approprately.