Website content and design should be customized to appeal to your target audience. Your website is designed for your customers not for you, so that is how you need to think when designing. You must take into account their needs, tendencies, likes and dislikes. Consider their age, income level, sex, reading level, sophistication, existing knowledge of your service or product offering, etc. before deciding on content, choice of colors and fonts, page structure, and graphics. Designers take all of these things into consideration to deliver a positive overall user experience.

Designers like to narrow the thinking down to a specific individual that is highly representative of your ideal customer. Insight into your ideal customer’s behavior comes from experience working with them in your business interactions. Additional insight can be gained from informal or formal interviews of prospective customers which often lead to surprising results. These results can give you a valuable edge over your competition. Researching the competition is always a good way to learn about new trends in your industry.

As you run across customers that have chosen to use your products or services and those that have not, it is a good practice to ask why.  What was the main reason they chose to buy from you? What information did your site provide that was helpful in making their decision? What information were they looking for that they did not find? You can also gain insight into your users and their behavior on your website through site analytical data such as that provided by Google Analytics. The important thing is to keep looking for feedback and use that to update your website’s design and content.