subject: Web Design - Understanding Your Audience [print this page] It's the most important thing to understand the kind of people who come to visit your website, because that information could be used to develop a website which suits them. The reasons for that are pretty simple as everybody wants visitors coming in as often as possible.
Ask yourself few question such generation age and kind of knowledge that the audience has. What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? Some random layman of graphic design may hang around on your website for a while whereas a graphic design professional searches for websites that have specific quality of information. It is easy to understand that a simple man will not be interested in a website focusing on Roland printers, but a well educated printer will find your site interesting.
Take your audience's emotional state into consideration when building your site. If there is a random visitor seeking for a solution and comes across your website in a sea of others he is expecting to find the answer for his question straight away. In that way he/she builds a trust to your website and he/she will remember it as a source of useful information. That is a moment when a trust develops and you can make use of it by offering products and services that relate to your website's subject. Because of your information and solutions are highly appreciated your website may become popular and produce more visitors that could turn into customers.
The design and layout your website design is based on must relate to specific characteristics of your audience. Is the generation visiting your website a generation of young of older people? What exactly they are looking for? Is it a product, service or a piece of information? My advice is to design something that can attract people in a way that can be remembered. Also, stay consistent across all pages within your website.
Websites rely on returning visitors that account for a major part of their traffic. It is easier to convert a returning audience into paying customers as a result of the more often they tend to return to a site, whether it is a blog or an online shop, the more trust they gain on each visit.
Try to develop a style of writing that when applied to the website it can create a relationship between you and your visitors. This method can surely build a trusting link, which will come extremely helpful should you want to make money through your website.
