Think About Your Entire Target Market

Designing a website is much like teaching school. When preparing the lessons for the classes you have to think about the abilities and needs of all the students. Not just the smartest student or not just the student with the least amount of ability, but all of the students. When designing a website you want to get the broadest appeal possible and to do this is going to take some thought on your part.

First break down your market by demographics. Are they male or female or both? What age category do they fall into? Are there any ethnic characteristics to your market? Do religious beliefs alter how you need to market your product or service? You need to closely examine who are your potential customers before you think about designing your website.

Although this is a bit of an exaggeration you do not want photos of Muslim men praying in a mosque in your website if you are selling books about Christian beliefs and values and the opposite would be true if you were selling books about Islam.

Unless you are selling pornography, (in that case nothing is offensive), you must also be sensitive as to what may be offensive or upsetting to any particular segment of your target market.

I had a customer once that wanted a website designed for personal grooming products that were targeted for males between twenty and forty years old. When we first talked about how he wanted the website designed he envisioned something bordering on pornographic. He did not want photos of nude girls but he did want photos of girls in bikinis in rather suggestive poses…

It took a couple of hours to convince him that this was not the way to go. Just because this appealed to him did not mean it appealed to all men between 20 and 40. If he had included these types of photos in the website he would have been excluding a huge segment of potential customers that would have found the site to be offensive.

It is important to think about your entire target market so as to not offend or upset any potential customer. You want your website to convey your message that the products or services you provide are the best at the best price and if the viewer is immediately turned off by your site then you never get the chance for your website to do its work and present your message.

Remember to keep an open mind when thinking about how to design and develop your website. Think about all the factors that affect your potential customer’s decision to purchase or not purchase your product or services. The rule of one hundred applies here. If one person sees your website and finds it offensive or upsetting they tell ten people and each of those ten people tell ten more and you have just lost 100 potential customers before they even look at your website. Negative information always seems to travel faster than good news.