At Beech Web Services we’re often really busy during the summer months. Why is this?
While many clients are away on holiday, Summer can provide the perfect quieter opportunity to work on your business and your website in particular.
Throughout our Summer Supercharge series, we’ll be looking at ways to improve the effectiveness of your website and get ready to maximise sales when everyone returns.
Our first hot Summer Supercharge tip is to research your audience.
Who are you taking to?
Knowing who your audience is and exactly what they need is essential as a first step in creating a website that appeals to them.
Think of it this way… it’s really off-putting and dull to be stuck in a conversation with someone who only talks about themselves isn’t it? It’s exactly the same with websites. Contrary to what you might think, a website isn’t all about your business, the best ones are all about the target audience.
Rather than focusing on who YOU are, focus on who THEY are. Think about your ideal customer – bear in mind that they might not necessarily be your current ones. Your ideal customer is likely to be someone you enjoy working with, whose needs closely align what you provide, and who makes you the most profit.
Once you’ve identified your target audience you can consider questions like these:
What brings them to your website?
Here are some reasons people visit websites:
- To check something
- To learn or research
- To buy something
- To solve a specific problem
- To be entertained
- To find the ‘thing’ they’re looking for
Whatever the reason is for your audience, make sure you know what that ‘thing’ they are looking for actually is.
The next question you can ask is….
How do they behave online?
Many of you might be familiar with using a marketing persona to identify useful information about your target audience. For digital marketing you can build a DIGITAL PERSONA asking questions like:
Where do they hang out online and what websites do they spend a lot of time on?
The answer to this question can tell you what content and style of information they like to see, the tone of voice they respond to and the type of information that interests them.
How do they like to interact online?
This tells you what features to use on your website , e.g. live chat, contact forms, ecommerce, reviews, appointment booking and so on.
What questions are they asking about what you offer?
One tool to discover what people are searching for right now is https://answerthepublic.com/. View our video where Maeri Howard shows how to use this really helpful website.
Once you have answers to all these questions, take a long, hard look at your website. Does it clearly provide ‘the thing’ your ideal customer is looking for, the moment they land on the page?
What you want to achieve for them is that instant feeling of ‘I’ve come to the right place’ so they are one step closer to taking your call to action.
To summarise
Viewing your own website from your ideal customer’s perspective can be a revelation. Above all, make sure your website focuses on topics of interest to THEM, rather than YOU. If in doubt, ask an actual customer what they think. How could your website better address their needs? How useful and interesting is it to them? If you would like to speak to us about researching your target audience, we would love to chat with you.
