Know Your Audience

Focus on these 4 external audiences when writing for the website. Whenever possible, avoid publishing content for internal groups.

For all three campus websites and the college site, the core audiences are:

1. Prospective students, residents and fellows

2. Prospective faculty and staff

3. Current students

4. Donors

You may create content for other audiences, but the websites should prioritize these groups. More content is not always better. In fact, the more content you publish, the more difficulty your core audiences will experience navigating the site. If you are considering creating a page for an internal audience, consider other distribution methods, such as newsletters, email, BOX, or intranet.

For Chicago website:

Content related to patients, clinical information, and patient services should not be hosted on UI COM website. Instead, this content is more appropriate for the UI Health website. We can provide a seamless transition to UI Health services by creating a single page titled "Patient Care" and directing users to the UI Health website.

Please reach out to Eric Pitt ([e-mail]) with the UI Health Marketing department for any further assistance with the UI Health website.

Confirm That Your Content is Useful to a Core Audience Group

When writing and publishing new pages to the website, ask yourself these questions:

• Who is your audience and what do they need?

• How will your content address this need?

• Is all of the information on this page necessary?

• Does this content already exist somewhere else?

You can also utilize a simple formula called a user story to determine whether to move forward with publishing. If you struggle to fill in the blanks for a user story, you should hold off on publishing. The user story formula is as follows:

As a member of x audience group, I want to do y, so that I can achieve z.

Some examples of a good user story might be:

As a donor, I want to understand what each fund supports, so that I can feel secure about how my money will be used.

As a prospective student, I want to see where graduates end up after finishing the program, so that I can choose a school that will get me where I want to go.