The reason it is important to know who your target audience is, is because you want to design the website for that group of people

You’ve got 3 seconds to tell whoever lands on this website what it is you do and how you can help them. The photos, design, and everything else on the website needs to help you do that.

There are a lot of reasons to create a website but to be successful you have to know how to get your target audience to react to that website. This means you have to know how and what gets them to react.

You also need to know your goals and what actions you want the website visitors to take while they are on the website?

And, of course you need to know how to get them to take that action rather it be to call, fill out a form, register, donate or just click a link.

You have to know how to persuade your website visitors to react to your website in the way you want.

It’s important to know what you want your website visitor to do, when they land on the website because the website needs to be designed to help you get them to do that. If you use WordPress for the back office you can set up some tools that will allow you to do split testing.

Split testing allows you to run two websites that are identical to each other with the exception of certain elements that you change. This allows you to fine tune and tweak the website to get it to do exactly what you want.

For example let’s say you wanted your website visitors to fill out the contact form.

This means that I do not want anything moving on the website unless it is that contact form.

First it was scrolling text, then flashing banners and now rotating banners all of which distract and pull your attention away from the area you want your visitor to focus on.

Anything moving on your website is going to distract from the end user that which you want him or her to do.

We have three brains!

One of those brains is designed to look out for you..

You are all it cares about. When this brain is active we will remember more than we will from the other two brains. It’s why when something terrible happens in our life we remember it so well.

But it doesn’t have to happen to us for us to remember it. It’s the reason we remember that scary movie so well that we saw when we were 10.

When something moves on the website it alerts this part of the brain and while that is a good thing, it’s not if it is alerting it to nothing.

You don’t want to alert this part of the brain to flashing banners, scrolling text, or any type of movement going on with the website that is not indirect relationship to what you want this person to do.

This part of the brain is all about you. It cares about you!

Something as simple as using the word you will activate this part of the brain. So what we want to do is activate this brain without distracting from our message.

In 1955 there was an experiment done where people were asked to estimate the length of a line. One of the things they wanted to study was how committed someone was to their answer.

The experiment included putting people into the group that exaggerated the length of the line. They wanted to know if people would stick with their answer or change their answer and go with something they knew was wrong only to fit in.

In one of the experiments they asked everybody to write down what they thought the length of the line was.

Group 1 was told to write down how long they thought the line was on a piece of paper but told not to sign it.

Group 2 was told to write down their answer on a magic pad so no one could see it and it was easy to erase.

Group 3 was told to write it down and sign it.

What they found was that people were five times more likely NOT to change their answer if they wrote it down.

We know we can change someone’s persona by getting them going in a direction that they normally would not go. The smallest commitment gets them there even faster.

If someone is on your website and you give them a gift, like a free e-book. In return they give you their email address. They have now made a commitment to you and do not even know it.

If you then follow the e-book with a series of newsletters then you are now building a relationship with that website visitor.

Eventually if this website visitor becomes a customer or even a friend, if  you can get them to write you a testimonial then you can put it on your website and link it back to their website, then they would now have made a commitment to you. If they ever need a service that you provide, they’ll be coming to you for that service.

Of course to make this work the quality of work, quality of information, and relationship has to stay the same or get better.

When we go to make a purchase two things are happening inside out minds. First the part of the brain we control, is trying to make a decision and weighing the benefits and disadvantages of making the purchase. If however the part of our brain that we cannot control gets involved then we begin to justify the purchase and we are no longer in total control of the purchasing decision.

One of the things that get this part if the brain involved is instant gratification.

Being able to see, feel, smell and touch the product as well as knowing we can have it right now, causes a part of our mind that we cannot control to get more involved in the purchasing decision.

We know this can work online and with websites, because the sex industry exits solely because of this part of the brain.

But can knowing this help us to make our own websites more effective?

One way would be by placing a banner above the product that says order this product in the next 10 minutes and have it delivered to house in 24 hours.

The idea is to engage the part of the brain that we cannot control.

Let me give an example of how this part of the brain could be engaged!

Let’s say you are buying a camera online. It’s a nice $3,000.00 camera. As you are making the purchase the website shows the camera you are buying with a list of things that other people bought when they bought this exact camera.

One of those items is a camera case and your subconscious mind says hey, we just spent $3,000.00 on a camera let’s get the nice $100.00 case to protect our $3,000.00 investment.

What’s $100.00 compared to $3,000.00?

Nothing, so you buy the $100.00 camera case.

However, if you purchase from a website that does not remind you that you need the camera case then it might be days later when you realize you need the case and return to the website to purchase it.

Now your subconscious mind is not involved and if nothing happens to get it involved then your conscious mind will pick a camera case by comparing benefits and prices and will most likely come back with the $9.99 camera case.

If anyone can think of some other ways we can get our subconscious mind involved in the purchasing process please post them here.

If there is a limited availability of something, we assume it is more valuable, and it causes us to want it more.

Think about the iPhone introduction?

When it came out for the first time, there were long lines to get one. Remember the 3G model came out a year or so later and again there were long lines.

Long waits.

You can order one, but who knows when you’ll get it. And Apple implied there might not be enough to go around.

The same thing with some hybrid cars.

There are long waits. Yet the orders keep coming.

Scarcity makes us think it is more valuable and more desirable and our desire to have it grows stronger.

The thing about scarcity is it works not just for products but for information as well.

We can read about trends in the web design industry online by searching for articles in Google. Or we can subscribe to a pricey series of reports that cost a lot of money and are only available to a limited number of designers.

Which source of information do you think is more accurate?

More valuable?

Which source will you use when it’s time to take action?

We think that information that is hard to come by is more viable.

Most people create websites for a reason. There can be a lot of different reasons but most websites are created for a reason.

The local grocery store wants to create an e-commerce website that will allow their customers to purchase products online.

The local attorney wants an information website that would allow potential clients who’ve gotten DUIs to contact him.

Your neighbor wants a website to compete with Facebook and your roofer is having a website built right this second to increase his business and hopefully allow him to stay in business.

There are a lot of reasons to create a website but to be successful you have to know how to get your target audience to react to your website. To do that you have to know who they are and what makes them tick.

What are your goals and what actions do you want your website visitors to take while they are on the site?

And, of course we need to know what makes our visitor react to the website. Rather it’s to buy something, register, donate or just click a link. What makes them react and do what we want them to do?

We have to know the best way to persuade our website visitors to take the action that we want them to take.

Remember in another article I wrote, I talked about how the brain has three parts to it?

I explained how all three parts of the brain play a role when a decision is being made. And that the majority of those decisions are made with the subconscious part of the brain.

This means we need to be able to engage all three parts of the brain when it’s time to make a purchasing decision: or the second someone lands on our website.

I’ll repeat that, the website that is able to talk to all three parts of the brain will outperform a website that is designed for one part of the brain any day of the week.

There’s a lot of science around this, what makes us react to certain things in certain situations, it’s just that most of that stuff has never been applied to website designs.