ABOUT WEBSITE
Introduction
Older audiences are frequently removed from digital marketing focus with their potential business value excluded based on out of date assumptions and ineffective historical campaigns. Despite the largest influencers for our target audience may be their family members, the attention should enhance and support the focus on a 50+ aged person.
This project is created to support Dr. Phill Plates endeavours and create for him a website designed to give older, less tech-savvy individuals an accessible and informative read. It aims to harness the older audience’s growing interest in technology development and educate them on the latest inventions that are altering the way consumers, industries and businesses operate. By providing a collection of short reports on these emerging and disruptive technologies, made easily navigable with a menu bar and informative visuals, our website appeals to a wide range of the older population; from those who have only just begun cultivating their interests to those who want to dig deeper into the world of technology. The corresponding section with the technology reports is subject to regular updates, which will bring many other newly conducted reports to our website.
The implementation plan does many things to help the developer team – its main purpose being to identify goals and set a course for which these goals are achieved. Our target audience’s needs, desires and struggles hold a key position in this plan as they form the foundation for this website. Additionally, providing them with accessible information to build their knowledge of technology is our website’s primary function. Having discussed these goals amongst the developer team, everyone is on the same page and has a clear understanding of the tasks needed to be accomplished. Stakeholders involved with this project are also kept up to date with this plan and have given us constructive criticism which has been implemented to better the experience for an older audience and align with Dr. Plates’s goals.
Our audience
As was mentioned earlier, this project aims to comprehend new disruptive and emerging technologies and deliver them to the older audiences. To be more precise, those aged 50 and over.
Researchers report that older adults will learn new tech skills when they see a reason for it. However, overwhelming amounts of information can become convoluted and difficult to follow for older individuals who are just starting to familiarise themselves with the internet. Older audiences tend to consider customer service, personal contact and traditional communication in higher esteem. Once they receive that feeling of personal care and contact, they are motivated more to share it and seek to repeat it.
One of the most difficult challenges for older people is keeping up with the change. Many older adults respond to technological change with scepticism and being intimidated. This attitude is often accompanied by self-doubt and anxiety which inhibits them from trying out new technology.
As a result, one of the more significant parts is to consider our audience’s technical experiences and abilities to interact with the website. It is important that we keep everything clean and minimalistic to avoid confusion and making our visitors completely lost on the website. This brings us several points that were taken into account when conducting this site.
First of all, to make the distance between interface elements smaller and structure them logically so that it’s easy to navigate between sections in a sequence and to develop a habit. The next one is to ensure that all elements are visible and do not possess any confusion whatsoever. Older people may have vision problems and struggle to read especially tiny text. Therefore, this step focuses on increasing the font size, any clickable buttons on the page and properly highlighting headings to distinguish between topics to create this friendly environment for our users.
Moving on to the presentation of content, a few adjustments were made to fit the audience, mainly focusing on the delivery. The presentation was slightly enhanced by adding more visuals into the report to provide extra explanation and clarification from a different perspective.
References
Top 5 Challenges for Seniors Using Technology [online]. Carevision 28/04/2017 https://www.carevision.com/top-5-challenges-seniors-using-technology-2/ retrieved 31/05/2020
Wilson L. (2019) 5 Practical Ways to Effectively Target Seniors in Digital Marketing [online]. Search Engine Journal https://www.searchenginejournal.com/digital-marketing-to-seniors/312545/ retrieved 31/05/2020
Lindsay Kolowich 2015, 12 Critical Elements Every Website Homepage Must Have [Infographic], Hubspot, Retrieved 3 June 2020, https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/31097/12-critical-elements-every-homepage-must-have-infographic.aspx
The Digital Hyve 2017, Marketing Strategy Through the Ages: Appeal to Different Demographics, New York Digital Hyve, Retrieved 2 June 2020, https://www.digitalhyve.com/marketing-strategy-through-the-ages-appeal-to-different-demographics/