Members of the Society contribute news and articles to, and receive regular information from the Society journal "Lancashire", so the decision was taken that rather than duplicate the resources available to  members, the Website should primarily serve the public at large. 

Whilst recognising that a wide range of people will be interested and potential members, the tone of the website leans toward beginners and the less expert.

The largest definable interest group appear to be those approaching retirement, so the style and grammar will be consistent with expectations of that more conservative age group (for example - terms such as "do not" and "could not" are generally preferred over the apostrophised forms of "don't" and "couldn't"). 

Geographically, the primary audience is the English speaking world. Other language versions of pages are not planned at the present time.

In a word, the website image is: avuncular.

Like a favourite uncle, it will be jargon fee, competent but informal, friendly but not cosy, reliable, supportive and encouraging.

One very important aspect is text line  length  (not to be confused with screen width) this is the length of text lines. 

The ones you are reading provide between 60 and 70 characters at the most popular screen resolution of 800 x 600. 

With a wider screen resolution of 1024 pixels, the character length goes nearer 100. 

Lines longer than about 80 characters become difficult to read for most people, so designers employ devices to limit line length to readable limits. This site uses a navigation menu at the left of the page, and a series of boxed highlights on the right to limit lines to readable lengths.

Also, writing for the web differs from printed media. It needs shorter paragraphs, ideally each with single concepts per paragraph.

Design style should allow for sufficient "whitespace" - the bits between text and images that contribute to avoidance of clutter and make the point easier to understand.

For something like family history, the focus should be on clarity and content at least as much, if not more than, on presentation.

Colours should be chosen to complement each other whilst having sufficient distinction between text and background to ensure easy readability. Harmony is probably the best single word description for the colouration.