It’s important to make sure that we understand who our target audience are to make sure that we design a product that completely and exactly meet their needs. In this case our product is the Buccaneer social network, which will be free for all to use.

Forbes magazine recently published an article in 2013 that detailed the importance of getting to know your target audience. There is a link to the online article given at the end of this blog post. The key comment they make is that “What you may discover is slight, but important, differences that will impact how the product should be pitched so a prospect can be pushed down the sales funnel”. At the end of the day, that’s what the network is aiming to achieve: profit.

If it doesn’t do what the user wants it to do, one of two things will happen:

1. The user will give constructive feedback detailing the functionality they would like to see, and will wait patiently until such functionality is implemented, after which they will use the system, as intended, perfectly.

2. They will write the system off as a bad job, go elsewhere, and tell all their friends (who are probably also in the same industry) the ‘Buccaneer Network’ is nothing more than applesauce.

We all know which one they will choose, don’t we?

The network is funded mainly by revenue from advertising on the website, so it follows that the higher the number of visitors, the higher the advertising revenue.

Who are our users?

There are two main groups of people who will be brought together by the social network that we are creating. The group are online marketers, and the second group are those who sell facilitating services.

Online Marketers

The first group of people are ‘Online Marketers’. These people market their products online. The product could take many forms; it could be a physical object such as a ballpoint pen. Alternatively, it could be a ‘soft’ product, where a company could offer training to staff of another company. This type of user usually makes risky investments that have the potential to make large a return.

Sellers of facilitating services

The second group we have identified are people who ‘Sell Enabling Services’. An example of such a services includes web design (as online marketers rely on websites to sell their products). Another facilitating service could be the management of a call centre, or the offering of personal assistants.

In most cases, this type of user sells to Online Marketers. In other words, online marketers use the services of this type of user.

Who are the abusers, and how do we deal with them?

It’s also important to keep in mind that not all users will be honest, and it is a sad fact that there will be several users of our system that will try to be malicious, deceitful, or offensive. This helps us to define two further types of user who are equally as important.

Community Moderators

Community members will be just that – members of the online community who have been elected based on the trust rating that the other part of our system has produced.

Community Moderators will have basic moderation rights. If a user of the site reports something they feel is not suitable for the forum we are creating, it will be referred to a community moderator in the first instance. The Community moderator will then be able to deal with the reported issue or refer it up the chain to the system moderator.

The advantage of having community moderators is that you don’t pay them; they are people who are pleased to do the work for free. If the only type of moderator was a system moderator (see the next section) then you would require more of them, incurring a cost which can be reduced with a community moderator.

The downside of having community moderators is that in some cases they may not make the same decisions as the System Moderator. However, by carefully designing privileges the impact of this could be reduced.

System Moderators

System moderators will be paid to manage the day to day running of the Buccaneer network. They will be members of the Buccaneer team, and will deal with the more significant issues referred to them by community moderators.

Closing Note

This brief look into the types of user will form the basis of a comprehensive stakeholder analysis, which will follow shortly.