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Users, customers, or audience – what do you call the people that visit your site?
5 second personality test
This is a just-for-fun post on the way that language changes our perspective on design. I've been thinking a lot about these nuances in the way that it creates hidden assumptions on business models, how we treat our partners, our users/customers/audience, and other folks in the industry. As a result, I've come up with a one question personality test 
Here's the question below:
What do you call the people who are on your site?
- Users
- Customers
- Audience
Have your answer?
Read below for some quick thoughts on what your answer could mean.
Audience
Folks that use the word "audience" are likely to have an advertising and monetization perspective. Ultimately, companies with an ad perspective see the audience they are building into an asset to be sold to their "real" customers, the advertisers. And so I hear phrases like X wants to "target this audience" or that they're "aggregating the Y audience" or similar wordings.
As I wrote in Your Web 2.0 startup is actually a B2B in disguise, the process of generating all those millions of pageviews is just step #1, and step #2 is to actually sell them to the advertisers who want to target this audience. That's absolutely a valid perspective.
Customers
The view of the people on your site as "customers" has the strong connotation that direct monetization is occurring, and that usually happens on ecommerce properties. I think this implies both the highest value and best treatment of the folks visiting your site.
Interestingly enough, business like social gaming sites would be wise to use this type of terminology when they depend on virtual goods models. Social gaming properties are not much unlike ecommerce sites, and it would be wise to have the same focus on merchandising, having attractive shops, cross-selling and up-selling, as well as treating your customers like they will hand you money.
Users
At the heart of "users" is the idea of using a product, or utility, or other functionality-focused usage. At least in my world, this is the most common terminology I hear. On the plus side, it creates plenty of opportunties for discussion around featuresets and product-oriented business strategies. However, on the downside, it doesn't explicitly acknowledge the nature of the advertising business as "audience" does, nor the imply the treatment that calling them customers would.
For my projects, I am particularly interested in virtual goods models for monetization, and as a result, it seems wise to reserve the word "customer" to refer to the people we attract.
Any other labels I'm missing? Comments and suggestions welcome.
“Community.”
(Though of course this is a group noun, and its individual counterpart — “community members” — is inelegant.)
Steven Noble
3 Jun 08 at 11:00 am
Members?
It’s probably along the same lines as “audience” but earlier in the company life-cycle.
Community and social sites start by serving “members” and eventually graduate to serving their real customers (the advertisers) by harvesting clicks/views from their “audience”.
Tony Wright
3 Jun 08 at 11:09 am
Consumers?
what about “people?”
This is a great question and one I struggle with often.
Jonathan Mendez
3 Jun 08 at 11:22 am
I try to use “people”. I think when we use other terms, like “users”, we may not always think of them as human beings. I also wonder if we should be called People Experience Designers
Geoff A
3 Jun 08 at 11:30 am
“Readers”
This term implies that I’m not necessarily seeking monetary compensation for the services I provide, looking to target any group of people, nor making claims that those who come to my website are actively involved with shaping the direction and content. It is a blog where I do most of the writing and get occasional comments from other people. “Reader” not only says a lot about the kind of visitor to my site, but frames the kind of content I make available.
Bobby Bokista
3 Jun 08 at 11:52 am
Like Bobby…Readers/Visitors…I think most sites are in this category, not trying to monetize/aggregrate, get them to use anything or form a community.
PXLated
3 Jun 08 at 12:49 pm
Early on for Dogster and Catster we used the term user, but found it far to insincere. Since then we have used customer, even if they are merely a one-time site visitor.
When describing our customers we break them into visitors, members, and subscribers defined respectively by people we don’t know, people that have registered, and people that are paying members.
Honestly I think every business-minded website would benefit by refering to people who use their website as customers reinforces who you are serving and why you do what you do. Without them you would have no business so use the most respectful term you can to never forget that.
Ted Rheingold
3 Jun 08 at 2:40 pm
Ive been a big fan of members since working on Epinions and it is what we use at Boxbe. I dont really like the term users.
Im not the first to say it, but the only two industries that call its customers users is the computer industry and drug dealers.
Coincidence?
Cheers,
Randy Stewart
Randy Stewart
3 Jun 08 at 4:05 pm
Companies with a gaming DNA would often use the term ‘players’, which is like users but with an emphasize on entertainment, rather than utility
content-focused sites sometimes use readers (blogs etc.) or viewers (video) as a sub-category of sorts to audience…
Oren
3 Jun 08 at 5:58 pm
I call ours “Players”. That’s probably because our service is a game. Player is really just a more specific form of User. Of course Customer is implied by that.
Joe Ludwig
3 Jun 08 at 6:30 pm
“User” would be most common as it’s the only one that covers a wide range of business models. “Audience” or “Reader” only works if your business model is pure advertising. “Customer” only works if all the users are buying something. There are a lot of options in between, and “user” is the only description vague enough to cover all the types of user you get even within a single service.
Tom Clarkson
3 Jun 08 at 7:27 pm
“ART LOVERS” or “COLLECTORS”
People that comes to my regiaart.com or my blog regiarichest.blogspot.com they are all ART LOVERS… not clients, not customers, not readers, not audience.
Regia
3 Jun 08 at 9:21 pm
I try to where possible use the term community. Users has too many negative connotations and feels slightly derogatory. Customers feels transactional and audience is obviously one way. Feels like there is a gap in the market to describe someone who is a member of a web2.0 community.
Nigel Eccles
21 Jun 08 at 7:30 am
I am with Joe on ‘Players’. I like Customers, though, and dislike ‘Users’ for the reasons mentioned in the comments above.
Daniel James
24 Jun 08 at 12:58 pm
[...] Users, customers, or audience – what do you call the people that visit your site? [...]
To my first 10,000 blog subscribers: Thank you! | Andrew Chen (@andrew_chen)
19 Aug 09 at 1:59 pm
Ditto.
'Members' seems to encompass the entire group as well as each individual.
jonknight
16 Sep 09 at 12:49 pm
Ditto.
'Members' seems to encompass the entire group as well as each individual.
jonknight
16 Sep 09 at 7:49 pm