Whilst graphic and web design trends are constantly evolving, it can be easy to get carried away and forget about the most important thing:

Your target audience.

And your new, cutting-edge website will be a complete waste of resources if it doesn’t even appeal to the people who are going to be using it.

As a result, you will lose potential leads and customers because of the bad user experience they have when on your site.

For this reason alone, before you begin drafting ideas of what you want your new website to look like, you need to start with the end in mind. 

In other words, you must have a good understanding of what you want to talk to, what they care about and what they need from your site. Understanding this will help to decide what functions your site needs to meet their needs.

Here are our top 4 tips for designing a website whilst keeping your target audience in mind.

Identify Your Target Audience

It sounds obvious, but before you begin any design project – be it a website or even your logo – you must have a deep understanding of who it’s for.

Understanding your target audience is the most important factor to keep in mind when choosing specific design elements such as colour schemes, typography, layout and more.

At the same time, you need to identify your target audience’s demographics, like age, gender, location etc. as this will help you to understand what will make them engage.

So ask yourself: who are they? What are their values? Where else are they buying from?

Ultimately, the more you know about them the better you can create a design that meets their needs.

Create Buyer Personas

Now your exact target audience has been identified, it’s time to put yourself in their shoes.

So the next step is to create buyer personas. These are representations of what your ideal customer looks like based on data and research and help you to guide all marketing materials to meet their needs.

In regards to web design, whether you’re creating a new site or redesigning an old one, keeping buyer personas in mind will help to create the right user experience for all demographic groups.

And the best way to create a persona is to do some research on the target audience you identified in point one. Ask them about their perceptions of your business, what do they value most and if they would recommend you. There’s so much more you can ask and the goal is to collect as much detail as possible.

Although there is no specific number as to how many personas you should create, there should be at least 2 to 3 to represent the different user groups for your website and the maximum being 5 to 6. 

Put Your Personal Preferences Aside

Because your aim is to attract your audience’s attention, it’s important to put your personal preferences aside and choose design elements that will work for your intended audience.

Of course you should still be happy with how your logo looks or the layout of your site, but just because you really like the colour green it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good look for the business.

Therefore, always design with your target audience in mind, understand what works in your industry and how to capture your brand’s personality whilst at the same time showing your audience how you’re different from the competition.

With that in mind, always trust your designer to steer the website into the right direction that’s good for your business and resonates with your audience.

Check Out The Competition

Being competitive online is more important now than ever before.

Typically, customers will find and assess products or services first by comparing them to similar brands before they properly interact with a brand – first impressions really matter.

And even though you’ve probably heard it a million times before, it’s crucial to stand out and help potential customers along their purchasing journey.

Checking out the competition should be standard practice and as part of your long term strategy (not just a one off tool here and there).

Ultimately, to design a new solution you need to see what’s already out there, identify where the weaknesses are and how you can do better.

Concluding Thoughts

The whole purpose of design is to communicate something to your audience effectively, and this includes your website – it needs to help viewers move towards being customers.

Hopefully, these 4 tips above will help you to properly understand who your target audience is so that you can design a website they will truly engage with.

On a related note, if you would like to convert more of your leads into long term customers, please check our video below:

In the meantime, take a look at our Web Design services.