This diagram might not make a great deal of sense without the context of what the sites are about or what the audience types are but I don’t think I’ve seen a diagram showing audiences in this way before so I wanted to share it.

Problem:

In an effort to clarify the requirements for a group of sites, I’ve created this diagram to address an assumed need to completely cater for a large number of audiences on numerous sites and therefore the replication of vast amounts of content on each property.

Solution:

I reviewed the audiences to understand their objectives and discovered there were in fact distinct needs on each site for different audience types. While audiences required detailed information for specific tasks on each site, content overviews would be sufficient for other site sections. I considered that through external links or search engines a person might find themselves on a site with overview, rather than detailed, information about their topic of interest so clear links will be provided so they can fulfil their goals at the site best suited to their task.

This grid allows me to:

• define a solution to provide content to audiences in the most appropriate setting;
• clearly see which personas and user journeys to focus on for each individual site as well as the movement between sites;
• see a simplified content structure for each site;
• reduce the amount of time spent on content maintenance (minor changes will happen on the primary audience sites only, major changes require a small adjustment across a number of sites + larger changes on the primary audience sites).

Although this example diagram shows 5 primary audiences for a single site, I hope you agree that that’s much more comfortable than 10+!

(The diagram was created using Konigi’s free wireframe stencils for OmniGraffle)