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Who
are your audience? Your existing customers? A particular demographic?
Knowing your audience is one of the most important factors in
any marketing exercise, but when it comes to web design, it
is crucial.
I
love showy sites - ones that use the latest version of Flash,
Quicktime, Shockwave or whatever. It's amazing what you can
do on the web these days, and there are some stunning sites
out there. But then, I only recently managed to get a computer
that could cope with the high-end stuff. When I was a student,
I had a four-year old computer with a hard-drive so small that
I could barely fit on the basic apps - I certainly didn't have
room for anyt`ing frivolous. And from colleges,
workplaces and net-cafes, often proxy servers and firewalls
can cause problems with high-end sites.
My point is that you may be limiting your audience far more
than you intend unless you keep your site as functionally basic
as possible.
For
every factor that your designer uses which may limit audience
accessibility, be aware of that loss and make an active decision
about whether it is worthwhile. One of the most common factors
is use of frames - these can cause all sorts of problems, especially
in older browsers. If you choose to use frames, be aware of
this. Make sure that it's worth it - often you can achieve the
result you were after without using frames.
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