Purpose, Target Audience & User Personas
beginner25 minLearning objectives
- Explain the four purposes of websites: eCommerce, information, promotion, entertainment
- Describe target audience through demographics and user personas
Learn
A1 — Why does a website exist, and who is it for?
Every website exists for at least one of four core purposes:
| Purpose | What it does | Example |
|---|---|---|
| eCommerce | Sells products/services directly | Amazon |
| Information | Informs or educates | Wikipedia, a school's exam-board page |
| Promotion | Builds awareness of a brand/product | A film's official site |
| Entertainment | Engages users for its own sake | Netflix, a game's landing page |
Many real sites blend purposes — Amazon is eCommerce and uses promotion (recommended products, deals) to drive sales.
Target audience: demographics vs personas
Demographics describe a group statistically: age range, gender, location, income, education level, typical technology use (mobile vs desktop, connection speed).
A persona turns demographics into a specific, realistic individual — this makes design decisions concrete. Compare:
- Demographic: "16–19-year-olds interested in fitness"
- Persona: "Jamie, 17, trains after college three evenings a week, mostly browses on their phone during a commute, gets frustrated by sites that are slow to load or hard to tap accurately"
The persona immediately suggests real design requirements (mobile-first, fast-loading, large tap targets) that the demographic alone doesn't.
Task
Pick a real website you use often. Identify its primary purpose (it may have more than one), then write a short user persona — with a name, age, context of use, and one frustration — for its likely target audience. This is exactly the kind of research PSAB Task 1 (A.P1/A.M1/A.D1) will ask you to evidence.