Creating a website that not only looks great, but that is fully functional too, relies a lot on data and research. Especially when it comes to planning and developing a brand new website for a new company. And one of the key considerations has to be the target audience. After all, the main focus of your website needs to be the users. And these users will go on to form part of the data, that helps you develop a deeper understanding of your target audience. Here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester, we are Manchester’s leading web design professionals. As a result, we have produced this guide to web design and target audience personas.
Web design and the target audience
When it comes to creating a website that really resonates with the users, you need to fully understand your target audience. Through research and data, you can create an image of your target audience. And from that, create a persona. Depending on the scope of your business, you may develop more than one target audience persona. But the aim and purpose will be the same. To help you create a website, and a user experience, that will both meet and exceed, the expectations of your target audience.
By focusing on the target audience in such as way, especially during the planning and design phase of your website creation, you are much more likely to keep users interested, and engaged on your website. And as a result, you will have more opportunity to convert more users into paying customers.
Determining a target audience persona
So how do you figure out a persona from all your user data? Well, in the simplest form, a persona is simply a description of a type of person. And in this instance, a type of person that visits your website, buys your products, or uses your services. You are simply trying to build a picture of who your target audience is. For example:
- the target audience persona for a plumbing business could be: A stressed out parent, with no plumbing experience, who needs urgent help with a leak.
- or the persona for a kitchen fitting company could be- A young professional couple, with no dependents, looking to get involved in home renovation for the first time.
As you can see, for either of the above examples, there could be countless other personas that would fit the target audience for that business. That’s why businesses use the existing data they have to construct an accurate persona.
Web design and target audience personas
So, once you have established your target audience, and uncovered your personas to aim at, you can begin to apply what you know to the web design process. Information about your chosen personas will influence all aspects of the web design. For example:
- The navigation bar- when choosing an optimal navigation system for your website, you need to make sure it will be useful to your target audience. In general, a younger audience will be able to make sense of a unique and different navigation system, simply because of their experience and understanding of all things web. Just take a look at this website for a unique navigation option. But if your audience are slightly older, they might find it more complicated, and be more likely to bounce.
- The colour scheme- just like your colour scheme needs to reflect your company branding, it also needs to be suitable for your users too. If your company is catering to a specific target audience persona, you will use different colour combinations to reflect this. For example, artists and art appreciators, might be more open to stretched colour combinations, that other audiences would not respond well to. Take a look at this website for a great example.
For more information or advice about designing a website for your specific target audience, or for more help understanding your target audience persona, get in touch with the experts today, here at Pumpkin Web Design Manchester.