How to Target an Audience with Web Design

The goal of any online business is to attract and retain customers. To do that, you need a website with great web design. But defining exactly how you want your site to acquire these customers, sell them on a product or service, and turn them into a loyal following is always harder than it sounds.

The truth is, there’s no one “right way” of accomplishing all of these goals. Online marketing team strategies change with the times, shifting and changing as new technologies and trends arise. However, there are a few things to follow when designing an effective website to convert your audience into paying customers.

Here’s what you need to do to design an audience-focused website:

Define Your Target Audience

The first step in designing an effective website is defining your target audience.

How and where are you going to target this particular audience? How many people make up this target market, and how much money do they spend yearly? What other experiences or websites have these people been exposed to? The more information you have about your target market, the better prepared you’ll be when designing your site.

You should also conduct research into the target audiences of your competitors’ sites as well. Although their approach may not be designed to target your target audience specifically, it gives you an idea of what’s already proven successful with certain groups of people. Take note of what works — and, more importantly, why.

Develop Customer Personas

Customer personas can help you target an audience by allowing you to see the world from their point of view. To effectively target your target audience, it’s important to understand how and why they think.

By developing customer personas for your target market, you’ll be able to see what content is most effective in speaking to these people. What should the copy on your site say? How do they react when they visit a website? The more information you have about your target audience and who they are as individuals, the better off you’ll be when designing your site.

This helps increase focus on which specific elements and features will appeal best to this target group; i.e., a middle-aged working man may not be impressed by the same things as a 23-year-old male.

Conduct Competitor Research

Competitor research is probably one of the most important things you’ll want to do before designing your website for your target audience.

If their websites contain elements that already target your target market, it may be a good idea to incorporate these into your site. You can then take other pieces from various competitors and create a personalized approach for engaging with your target audience. It should be unique enough to stand out among others yet familiar enough that visitors won’t feel lost when visiting.

Are the features on their sites effective at pulling in potential customers? What type of content are they including? Is this content also targeted towards an existing customer base or new visitors? This allows you to find out what kind of copy and graphics work best — allowing you to target an audience more effectively in your web design.

Understand Your Target Audience’s Needs and Behavior

You want to think about how people will behave once they land on your site. Is there something specific that you can target or involve them in? Are there specific elements that will appeal directly to their needs? How will they react when they see certain types of content or features (e.g., a signup form)?

By developing personas and conducting competitive research, you’ll be able to target an audience with web design by thinking about what they want — instead of just what you think they might want.

Focus on Content Rather Than Features

Focusing on the target audience alone can help you create a website that speaks directly to this market. This can sometimes mean fewer features but more effective content focused on your target audience.

It may also mean more advanced features targeted towards a specific target group (e.g., someone familiar with the site will require different training than a new user). However, it’s important not to focus so much on the number of features that your target customer feels confused or overwhelmed with extra bells and whistles.

Think About What the Site is Supposed to Achieve

What’s the site supposed to achieve? Is it there to provide information or encourage a certain behavior amongst target customers? What specific target group are you trying to target with web design? This helps develop an effective identity and brand for your target audience that sets you apart from other competitors and allows them to feel like they can trust you.

A target audience-focused web design will help create a unique selling point for your business; i.e., if this is all designed around my target market, what does that mean specifically for me as a customer?

Thinking about this right from the start helps ensure that your target audience is engaged and feels like they’re getting the most for their time on your site, which increases the effectiveness of your target marketing.

Keep Your Site Simple but Compelling

When it comes to target marketing, you want to focus on a few things that really make an impact. Too many distractions or features can confuse users and distract them from what you’re trying to sell or get them to do.

Keep in mind: It’s easy for people to feel overwhelmed by web design — especially if you have too much going on at once and don’t keep a clear, consistent message throughout your site. Keeping your target audience in mind when designing the website will help ensure that each feature is carefully thought out and adds to the overall target marketing strategy.

Narrowing your target audience down can also help you create a more compelling brand image reflected in your website design and how people perceive the business.

For instance, If you’re only trying to target parents attempting to market to their children, you wouldn’t focus on creating a seamless payment system or fantastic e-commerce features (unless this was already a need from target customers). Your core focus would be on what kinds of toys would excite their children. Or perhaps parent testimonials and reviews could help encourage target customers to buy certain products based on real success stories from other target groups.

By keeping the target audience at the forefront of your mind during the target marketing process, you’ll know exactly how to target an audience with web design — creating a website that speaks directly to target customers.

Are You Targeting the Right Audience?

Now that you’ve identified your target audience, it’s time to ensure that you’re targeting them effectively.

Remember: Many factors go into defining a target audience — whether it’s their age or gender preference, location, or cultural background. When defining this target market online, these preferences will often define not only what kinds of features and content they’ll be looking for on a site (e.g., does the target customer speak English as their primary language?) but can also affect how they’ll react to some of the target marketing strategies you employ.

For instance, if your target audience is a certain age group (e.g., teenagers) and you’re trying to target them with web design on their terms — perhaps through social media channels or in videos. But this target audience group might not feel as comfortable with the idea of creating an account on Facebook or posting videos online due to different cultural norms that have shaped them over time.

So when it comes to diversity and target markets, what this means for you as a business owner is that you should take into consideration factors like gender, ethnicity, and even location when defining who *exactly* your target market is before designing around them and trying to target an audience with web design.

Define What Success Looks Like

When you target an audience with an effective web design, there is typically a clear vision of what ‘success’ looks like. This means that defining your target audiences will also reflect on the success you want them to achieve while using your site — whether it’s purchasing or registering for certain forms, downloading free information, or even just connecting socially and sharing content.

For instance, A site intended to target high school students might offer e-commerce features as part of their target marketing strategy if it has been proven in past campaigns to help drive tangible results they can measure (e.g., registrations, sales, and lead generation). However, this same target marketing strategy might not work well for an online business trying to target college students since many are not of legal age to make purchases or sign up for things like email subscriptions without a parent’s permission.

You’ll want to solve the target audience’s biggest problems while still getting them what they need to accomplish their goals — and target web design is all about figuring out how exactly you do that.

Target an Audience with Web Design from K2 Analytics!

At K2, we help our clients define target market groups as part of the overall online strategy for their company or organization so that they can focus on target customers’ needs and requirements through target marketing strategies like website development, web content writing services, and branding. Contact the best web design company in Las Vegas today, and let’s get you an awesome website!