When clients contact a professional web design company for website design, the service provider asks several questions like: what is the deadline? Which CMS do you want to use? Which one is your brand color? etc. The answers to these questions are crucial, but what most web design companies forget to ask about is the target audience. The first question you should ask a web design client is “who is your target audience?” and then try to gather as much information about them as possible.
When you have a proper idea about people who will visit your client’s website, you can easily take design decisions. Do not forget that as a designer, your duty is to make the end-users happy, along with the person who is assigning you the project. You have to think like a marketer whose primary goal is keep customers happy because as long as the target audience is happy, site owners will find everything perfect in your design.
Here are some of the questions you should ask the client about his target audience to have a clear idea about the people you are trying to impress with your designing skills.
- What gender are you targeting?: It is important to know whether you are targeting male or female audience, or your target customers belong to both gender categories. Once you know the gender, the color selection process become easier. Men and women react differently to the same color and thus, you should pick the color for website layout only after having a firm idea about your audience.
- Age group?: A young group of audience is always more-tech savvy than elderly ones. They have a different way of doing things on the web and have different expectations from a website. For example, Gen-Y may prefer a HTML5 powered dynamic website but elderly audience would rather opt for a simple site that may not look great, but helps them find any information very easily.
- What keywords are they searching for?: If you are aware of the keywords people will be using to find your client’s website, you can embed them in image alt tag, title tag and page URL to make the website SEO friendly. Make sure the keywords are placed at the right position and don’t use too many keywords.
- Why will visitors come to the site?: Every website has something to offer and people visit a site for some reason. So, ask the client why will people come to his site. Will he sell products? Will he provide breaking news? Will he provide legal information? Once you know what people will search for in the website, you can decide what needs to be highlighted, how the menu should look like etc.
- Why should visitors come back again?: You have to find the answer to this question on your own. No matter what your client wants to offer to the web traffic, there are several other websites offering the same content or product. A professional web design company conceptualizes a design that compels visitors to come back to the site regularly. You have to offer something very unique yet user-friendly to convince viewers that the website is worth their time and money.
- What do you want to highlight on the homepage?: Take the client’s feedback, but don’t follow his suggestions blindly. Homepage is the first web page that people will see after typing the website URL and hence, it must feature things customers would love to see. The homepage content depends on the business of your client. For example, if it is an e-commerce site, they may like to see “products on sale” and “newly launched” items, whereas if it is a news website, “breaking news” can consume the homepage.
- What browsers will they use?: This information helps you decide the technology for website design. While advanced browsers like Chrome and Firefox supports HTML5, IE6 can’t render a HTML5 website. So, if the target audience is going to use IE6, you have to opt for a technology that supports the backdated browser.
- What are the common screen resolutions?: Will viewers use large screen monitors or 11-inch notebooks? This information is useful because it helps you decide the width of the content area in the layout. If you make the main content area too wide and most of your visitors use MacBook Air, they won’t be able to see the extreme left/extreme right content properly.
Do you work in a professional web design company? What are the questions you ask your client about the target audience? Share your thoughts with us.
about the author: Aditi Datta
