Designing a website for your business isn’t without serious thought and intention. This digital business card aims to put you in the way of the type of client or customer you want to attract. It has to appeal to their sensibilities to provoke them to take action; otherwise, you will lose out on valuable leads and sales.
There is no need to go into a fit of panic over where to start on your design. All it takes is a few tips and tricks to get you on your way to creating a website that will dazzle your ideal client or customer and get your business on its way to exponential growth.
4 Tips on Designing Your Website for Your Ideal Customer
It takes a potential customer 0.05 seconds to formulate an opinion about your business based on your website; that is a tiny window of opportunity to make a good impression. That minuscule timeframe is why you can’t afford to skimp out on any component of your site, no matter how minor it may seem.
You have to do the most critical work before you even begin dreaming about fonts and graphics, color schemes, and photos. Research may not be the most glamorous or exciting part of the website building process, but it will save you so much headache down the road when you realize that your site isn’t serving your target customer base.
Get to Know Your Average Customer
Since the website is all about your ideal customer, the first question you have to answer is, who is that? Who would your product or service best serve? Once you establish that answer, you can start to dig a little deeper into this person. What are their fears? What are their concerns or struggles? And how does your business confront or solve those issues?
Once you understand your ideal customer and their needs, you can incorporate that information into your design. Here are some tricks on how to go about collecting this vital data:
- Research reviews of your products and services or those of your competitors to glean information about your ideal customer (demographic, their likes/dislikes, concerns).
- Send out surveys to former customers to gain insight into your business and how to improve based on their feedback.
- Utilize social media to make polls and interact directly with your customer base.
Target Your Visual Branding
Now that you know who your business serves and have gotten to know them on a deeper level, you can be more intentional in the branding of your business. You want your customer base to connect with your design and see themselves in your branding–this encompasses everything from the color scheme to fonts and graphics.
Branding includes humanizing your business by giving it a face. Customers are more likely to trust and engage with your business if they can connect with the human element of your brand. Oberlo states that 81% of consumers said they need to trust a brand before buying from them.
Curate Your Work
Ensure that the content or products you are putting on your website coincide with your established targeted branding. For example, curating your work may mean creating a “best of” category and selecting only the top contenders. You want to ensure you are always putting your best foot forward, as your website is often your first point of connection with your customer base.
A trick to help ensure that the work you’re displaying is staying on-brand with your business is creating physical branding boards or virtual branding boards through Pinterest, so you can refer back to these if you have any doubts.
Create Engagement
One of, if not the, most crucial aspects of your website is making space for customers to interact with your business. Giving your customers a voice and community will instill brand loyalty. You can accomplish this through a Contact page, FAQs, a forum or message board, blog, social media links, or email subscription.
Make your customers a part of your journey. Speak to them directly and address their needs and concerns directly. Let them know how your business can help them in whatever way your product or service allows.
Conclusion
All in all, your website is about your ideal customer, and you can’t design it effectively until you know who that is and you become acquainted with them. Once you do, all the other elements will fall into place.
