Content marketing continues to be a primary way brands promote the benefits of their products and services. How can you ensure your new website has compelling and relevant content to meet the needs of the many types of users of the website?
One effective way is by – in the very nascent stages of website design – beginning with developing personas to represent those different types of desired visitors to your website. Web personas are essentially fictional depictions which encompass the characteristics, preferences and demographics of the various internal and external target users of your website.
Why are web personas important? Web personas greatly assist in the web design process to ensure that what we are creating will attract our target audience, be intuitive for the user to navigate and locate the information they seek, and that we present the information in the different ways that the end-user prefers to receive it. Web personas, put simply, are the basis for intuitive navigation and well-thought out design. When done well, you – the end-user – should seamlessly find and navigate through our website design.
When creating website personas, there are several considerations based on the intended audience. When creating a B2B web persona, for example, the persona’s may include the person’s title or role, sales process, and how purchasing is done. For consumer sites, demographical characteristics such as gender, education, income, family and marital status rise in importance. And depending on the service or product the website is created to promote, there may be a myriad of other important facts that may need to be included – anything from are they bird lovers? What are their eating habits? Do they practice yoga? Really anything to get into the mindset of your specific persona profile.
Here are some additional factors for developing website personas:
- Identify Needs: Consider the audience’s reasons for contacting your business. What factors are they facing? It is for business or personal? What information are they seeking?
- Behavior-Based Profiles: Is your audience social media active? What type of activities do they partake in online? Which of your products would they be more likely to research? What are their interests online? How much time do they spend online each day?
- Identify Web Page Content: Based on this, identify what content you would like convey on your webpage. Areas to consider are: separate content in resource centers, segment blog content using tags, break out product content, and divide case study content.
- Segment by Demographics: Start by researching your existing consumer base to target the most common consumers per product/service. Then use this information to develop of relevant persona based on the information found on similar consumes.
- Create Custom Page for Personas: Creating specific pages for targeted audiences will allow marketers to feature certain languages, messaging, and video content to an intended consumer. This will also allow marketers to get an accurate reading of the effectiveness of each persona.
- Calls-to-Action (CTAs) for Each Persona: To optimize your website design for lead generation, you need to put some thought into conversion. Create call-to-action buttons that correlate with your persona-targeted offers, and include them on the pages of your website that are dedicated to those personas.
If you have further questions or would like to consult about creating your own website personas, UX (user experience), website design or development, we would be happy to help. Drop us an email or give us a call. Meanwhile, for more information regarding our website services, take a look here at our website service page.
{image: via doug palmer on pinterest}
