Target Audience Analysis Paper

In order to discuss target audience characteristics, I will be discussing the demographic for a hypothetical fashion and beauty website. This website will feature media surrounding current trends in fashion and beauty. It will provide insight into clothing, makeup, and hairstyling through the use of photos, videos, and written words. This website, by nature, will likely appeal to younger women (primarily between the ages of 18 and 34.) These women are considered “millennial,” grew up with the Internet, thrive on social media, and those who are not students are often partly or fully employed.

When seeking to define a target audience for a website, there are multiple aspects to consider. Firstly, one must consider the nature of media itself.

If humans are, by nature, energy saving, then it stands to reason that readers will not spend longer than necessary on any given task. If we look at the demographics for a similar organization – say, Cosmopolitan Magazine or Vogue, a large percentage of readership is employed (66.9% and 72%, respectively.) Most of these working readers are women, many of whom are also married or raising children. It is not realistic for these humans to spend energy on entire articles – rather, many of them are likely to skim and hit the highlights. It is because of this that the important information in an article must be easy to

This is especially true of younger generations, who have been raised on the Internet. 18-34 year olds (the target demographic for my fashion website) will have been influenced, in their formative years, by the internet. Things like hyperlinks, interactivity, searchability (keywords and tags) and multimedia (the inclusion of pictures and videos) can help appeal to such audiences. Their experience on the site will be influenced by their experience with the Internet, as well as their lives outside of it. As stated before, these millennial working women will not usually take the time to read an entire article, and even when they do have the time, their media-influenced brains will often prevent them from doing so. Instead, they will skim, attempting to take in as much information as possible while using as little energy as possible. Interactive sites will hold their attention longer, as they will have to generate action and the site will reward them for doing so. Multimedia will also hold their attention longer and implant more firmly in their memory. Things like photos and videos will be more appealing, and give readers motivation to stay on any given page for a longer amount of time. Searchability allows them to find the information that they originally came to the website for, as well as allowing them to find other content on the page they may be interested in. Hyperlinks will also