Narrowcasting1 – communicating with small groups of people who have an interest in you.
Broadcasting1 – communicating with huge groups of people in hopes that a few will be interested in you.
Broadcasting used to be the only way you could get your word out. Even if you had a one shop business in a small town, you had to broadcast via your local newspaper, radio or tv in hopes that your message would reach the few that have a need for your services. Over a century of broadcast design has evolved effective design practices for broadcasting.
Most websites are not broadcast media. They are narrowcast media. Broadcast design is plain wrong for most websites. Yet most designers still design websites as if they were broadcasting media.
Broadcasting designers create glitzy, attention-getting websites. They hope to get visitors to take action. Narrowcast designers know they already have visitors attention and are concerned with how to engage it. Their audience has already taken the action of visiting the site.
Broadcast designers want to impress visitors. Narrowcast designers want to accommodate visitors by seeing to their needs. The site is structured to fulfill the purpose that brought visitors to the site.
Broadcast designers have to work with advertising messages, which no one in their right mind trusts. Narrowcast designers work with factual information which builds trust.
Broadcast design is focused on “cool site!” Narrowcast design is focused on useful site.
Unlike with broadcasting, designers can test their work as narrowcasters. They can conduct live testing with real people. They can A/B test different pages. They can test different version of the same pages. They can conduct poles.
Broadcast designers accumulate what they deem to be exciting and interesting content. Then they broadcast it and hope for the best.
Narrowcast designers continually gather information about the visitors to their sites and continually endeavor to improve user experience.
Broadcast designers focus on the selling process. Narrowcast designers gather information about site users and focus on the buying experience.