One of the most important things you need to think of before designing your website is: Who is my target audience? This means tailoring your website to suit a specific type of person, not just yourself. Everyone has favourite colours, but certain groups will prefer red over blue, it’s up to you to find what your potential visitor is looking for, and ensure you target them properly.
It is critical that you understand, you will not please everyone, so trying to target everyone is near to impossible. For example, if you run a website about cats you need to ensure that everything in your site is relevant to cats. There is no point putting pictures of dogs or fish on the site.
The way your site communicates is important also. Let’s use the cat website example again. The obvious part is that your website is about cats, but you need to think ‘what do people come to a website about cats for?’ Is it a site that is interested in the breeding of cats, the selling of cats, toys for cats, do you want to encourage people to talk about their cats via a forum, do you want to teach people how to house train cats, the list is almost endless.
This is the most important aspect of your new site. By having a plan, a good web design company can show you how best to put your ideas into a format that is appealing to cat lovers.
If you have difficulty thinking of the things your website should focus on, then you need to do more research. You could go on to other general pet forums and find out the kind of questions people are asking, or you could speak to a local pet shop and ask them for advice. This is key to finding out the most important thing: Is there a market for my site?
There are certain things you should note as you define your audience for any type of website:
Education: What type of audience do you want to reach academically? Is your site aimed at the IT professional with a masters degree in computing science, or is your site aimed a primary school children
Technical knowledge: For people to understand the content of your site, do they need to be technically proficient? For example, a site on biomechanics is no use to a chimney sweep.
Medical Conditions: Does your website need to be specifically tailored for people with disabilities? Blind, deaf and people with other disabilities use the internet, if your site is about medical conditions, then you need to ensure this is implemented from the start.
Graphical Orientation: Does your site need to be filled with flashy images and videos to grab people’s attention, or is the content more text-driven? This can influence your visitors dramatically. Younger demographics accept flashy designs as the norm, how ever a more mature viewer my see it as tacky.
Ultimately, you want your website to appeal to the people you think will buy products or services from you, or just visit for specific advice. A little bit of research can save you a major hassle in the future.