Categorising the Audience

We know about segmenting or dividing the audience by certain categories:
AGE
GENDER
RACE
GEOGRAPHIC LOCATION
LIFESTYLE CHOICES

But in the world of the internet, there are other ways to do this:

Categorizing Users by Role

A scheme for identifying users based on user roles or modes of interaction with the site is more useful for understanding the site’s audience.

An excellent example of a role-based classification of audience is the article “Designing Your Audience” by Jeffrey Zeldman.

Mr. Zeldman categorizes site visitors into three groups:


USERS are people who employ tools (software) to accomplish tasks: calculating, comparing, finding, outlining, writing, designing.

VIEWERS are people who seek entertainment. They want to be surprised, seduced, led along a path. Their goal is the journey, not the end result.

READERS are that rare (but growing) breed of web user who turn to a website as they might turn to a novel or magazine article.

How will this affect the way you target your audience?