Defining your Website Visitors

Jan 22, 2012 by Mark Fasel Design in Internet Marketing

When you start a business, you determine who your target consumers will be. The same is true when creating an online web presence or building your new website. The most important factor that you must look at is who will be using your website and what is your targeted visitor. Understanding this simple concept will not only lead to a successful website launch, it will also ensure higher conversions and greater return on your investment.

So how do you define your website visitors? This article will outline several key factors that will help you to define your audience and create the perfect web presence.

Creating User Personas

When defining your website visitors, we need to first create user personas. User personas are fictional characters created to represent the different user types within a targeted demographic, attitude and/or behavior set that might use a site, brand or product in a similar way, according to Wikipedia.

We create user personas as a way to understand our customers on a personal level and to create a user experience that we know will generate the buzz and popularity we try to achieve through an effective online marketing campaign and web presence. If we create a website that engages with a 25 year old male surfer, but our business model is geared to promoting our services to a 42 year old lawyer, then our website will not effectively market to our audience. We need to understand our users before we create a website to create the best experience for our audience.

Here are some key questions we can ask when determining our user personas:

Who are my users? What are their demographics?
Demographics are used to understand specific characteristics such as age, gender, income, education, etc. We want to build a personal connection with our users, so understanding everything about them will ensure this.
What are their web skills? Do your users have any disabilities or challenges in seeing or hearing?
Remember, Sarasota is a huge community for retirees and as such they may have some impairments that would require extra attention in the development of your website. Do you need to focus on larger type, that allows older users to easily read? We don’t want to make our users squint to read your content.
How often do they use the Web?
Are they frequent users or once a week, maybe once a month?
What type of technology will they be using? Do they use older computers and browsers? Do they access the web from smart phones?
How familiar are they with the task you will be requiring of them?

Now that we have a few general questions, we can brainstorm with pencil and paper and write down our user personas. Think about these points mentioned and write down who you believe your website users are. Some people may find it very pointless, boring, maybe a bit difficult and most people overlook this step in the web process. But clearly defining your users will give you a complete picture of where you will market your website and how you will go about driving traffic. Think of it this way, one million non targeted visitors (meaning not user targeted consumer) to your website is not nearly as effective as ten thousand targeted visitors. It’s easy to convert someone interested in your service or product, but a visitor that got there by accident will 99% of the time will leave and not think twice about your website.

If you do the grunt work up front and take the necessary steps to know who you are selling to, your website will provide a unique and engaging user experience. Remember, engagement is the key to online success and that’s exactly what you will be creating.

If you need some assistance, contact us today and we’ll be more than happy to help you define your website visitors and help you create a dynamic and interactive website.