Knowing about your visitors will enable you to design relevant experiences, provide personal connections, and plan for a range of audiences. As visitor groups differ in many ways, it is important to have some understanding of your expected audience prior to designing interpretive content.

• How much time do they generally spend at attractions?
• What is the level of interpretation sought or expected?
• What do they already know?
• What are their previous experiences?
• What level of text will they be able to understand?
• What are their attitudes to various issues?
• What interests do they have?

Some of the suggestions already mentioned offer solutions for meeting the needs and interests of different visitor groups. Another common approach is to present information in layers so that visitors who only have a cursory interest in the topic can read the top 'layer' and quickly get the main message, while those wanting more detail can read subsequent 'layers'. Each layer should be distinguished in some way, such as size of text and use of subheadings.

It is important to remember that extra layers should provide further information and detail, but should not become more complex or difficult to read.