Do You Know Who You Want To Attract?

Pick up a copy of today’s newspaper.  Take out one page from the sports section, one page from the business section, and one page from the lifestyle section.  Set those three pages down next to each other, and compare the advertisements on each one.  Chances are, you could have guessed which section of the paper you were looking at based on the ads alone.  The ads on the sports page are aimed primarily toward men, the ads on the lifestyle page are aimed more at women, and the ones in the business page are intended specifically for professionals.  It’s not just a question of what the ads are selling– there are obvious differences in the types of images used in the ads, in the language used, and in the way the ads are laid out.  You can see the same basic patterns in magazines, in television ads, on billboards, and in any other type of advertising or marketing material.  If you want to attract your target audience, you have to present yourself in a way that your audience will find appealing.

This isn’t a new idea, but it’s not the first thing most business owners tend to think about when they’re building a website.  Knowing your audience is critically important, so you should do a little research and figure out what is most likely to attract the people you want to attract.  Your web designers should know all of this already, but you should know it too, and you should make sure your designers know that you know it.

Attracting Professionals:  Think about all of those illuminated advertisements you walk past when you’re in an airport concourse.  They’re clean-looking, often with a lot of white space, and they get right to the point—they’ll tell you, for example, that a certain software package is used by 90% of Fortune 500 companies, or that a certain consulting firm has saved its client $50 million in the last six years.  The graphics imply action, progress, and strength.  Those ads aren’t aimed at the family from Cleveland on their way to Disney World.  They’re aimed at business travelers, and the websites of those advertisers will look and feel very similar to their airport ads.  The impression you get from those ads and websites is the same type of impression you want your own website to give, if your site is aimed at professionals.

Attracting Women:  It’s east to see the differences between websites designed to attract women and the sites intended for men.  Sites for women tend to have softer colors, calmer images, and a different vocabulary.  Proceed with caution, though—you don’t want to your efforts to appeal to women to make you appear sexist or condescending.

Attracting Youth:  Are you trying to attract children or teenagers to your site?  If so, you may need to put more emphasis on flashiness and style than I normally recommend for other business owners.  Take a look at some random pages on a site like MySpace to get an idea of what this audience finds appealing.  You’ll see a lot of bold color, animation, and loud music.  While those are just the things that tend to drive adults away from a site, they’ll actually give you more credibility with the youth market.  

Attracting Blue-Collar Workers:  Blue-collar workers, by definition, aren’t using the Internet on the job, but that doesn’t mean they don’t use it at home.  If these are the people you want to sell to, just remember that they may be a little less web-savvy and a little more hesitant to do business over the Internet.  You should avoid using a lot of Internet jargon on your site, and make sure that you provide detailed instructions for using the site.

No matter who you’re trying to attract, spend some time studying the other websites your target audience is looking at.  This will help you decide what your own site should look like, and if you find a site you really like, you may be able to hire the same designers and programmers to do your site.  Look for a “Designed By” link somewhere on the site, and use it to contact the designers.  If you can’t find a link, try a WHOIS search, either on WHOIS.com or on any of the big domain registration site like GoDaddy.  Often, the technical contact listed for a site will be the designer or programmer, or at least someone who can point you in the right direction.