You know that having a fantastic website is crucial for your business to be successful.
Your website generates leads by directing people towards your business and clearly explaining what your company does.
But do you know how to design your website to match your target audience?
We’ve outlined why your website design needs careful consideration to fit with your target audience – and how you do this.
Identify your target audience
Your business needs to identify your target customer to be successful – and it’s the same when designing your website! To design your website to match your audience, you need to know who is buying your products / services.
Think about:
- Gender
- Age
- Income
- Ethnicity
- Location
For example, a home security company will have more middle-aged clients than customers in their teens, because teenagers are not homeowners.
Meanwhile, a smartphone company might encounter a much larger percentage of customers in their teens.
By deciding on your target customer for these five categories, you can design your website to match.
The location of your target audience is one of the key things you have to consider
Matching the older demographic
Different people look for different things from your website.
By identifying your target customer, you can work out what your visitor wants.
For example, if your customers are from the older demographic, they are more likely to want:
- Large, easy-to-read text
- Clear menu at the top
- Phone number to call
- A labelled side bar
- All pages to be in the ‘usual place’
Your website design is also determined by whether you are a B2B or B2C business. Most B2B SMEs are owned by middle-aged or older people.
If you are selling to them, you need to provide them with a traditional website design, even if it means that your site looks a bit ‘old fashioned’.
When targeting your website towards the older demographic, you need large, easy-to-read text, a clear menu at the top, and a phone number for your visitor to call
Matching the younger demographic
If your target customer is from the younger demographic, you are more likely to appeal to them with a ‘fresh’ website design.
Younger customers might view the above features as ‘tired’ or ‘outdated’.
The younger demographic may look for:
- A site that works very well on phones
- Fly-in / burger menus
- Lots of images
- Link to social media accounts
- Videos
- Blogs
- Text that references latest innovations
Companies serving older demographics can still have these features – but should not make them the priority. Instead, focus should be on making the website easy to use.
By doing these things, you make sure that your visitor can easily navigate your website. That way, they will be more likely to buy from you.
Labelling each of your webpages clearly is important to make navigation easy on your website
Make your navigation easy
Your website needs to do four key things:
- Give your visitors what they want
- Tell them what you need them to know
- Look professional, impressive and interesting
- Creates enquiries or responses
To achieve all these things, your website must be easy to navigate. It will be easy to navigate if it has:
- Large, easy-to-read menu at the top
- Menu separated into obvious sections
- Noticeable buttons linking to e-commerce section
- Links to ‘related’ pages on every webpage
- Clearly labelled webpages
- Text written lineally – not dotted around the screen!
Your website design is also determined by whether you are a B2B or B2C business. Most B2B SMEs are owned by middle-aged or older people.
If you are selling to them, you need to provide them with a traditional website design, even if it means that your site looks a bit ‘old fashioned’.
When targeting your website towards the older demographic, you need large, easy-to-read text, a clear menu at the top, and a phone number for your visitor to call
Attract visitors by improving your SEO
Now your website is designed to match your audience – so you need to make sure they can see your site!
There are many ways you can do this, including:
- Conducting effective keyword research
- Placing YouTube-hosted videos on your site
- Writing copy that repeats your optimising phrase
- Using industry-specific language (jargon-free)
If you want more information on how to attract visitors to your website, see our other article here.
Sometimes companies spend a fortune on making their website as high-tech as possible.
But often, those companies would be better spending less money on their website – and going for something more ‘traditional’.
If you want help…
- Identifying your target customers
- Understanding what your customers want
- Designing a website to match
… then get in touch with us at info@brollymarketing.co.uk or call 0203 026 6697.