Who is your website for? Who are you trying to market your products and services to?

The answers to these questions can be found in your buyer personas, and these data resources are crucial to tackling your web design project.

Refine your buyer personas

Businesses everywhere need web design that really speaks to their audience.

This is where buyer personas come in. But before you can use your buyer personas to support the design of your website, you need to make sure that these personas are well-honed and highly refined.

 

1. Recognise and leverage data capture opportunities.

There are more opportunities than you may think to collect data. You may decide to do the following:

        • Ask buyers to create member profiles.
        • Invite website visitors to comment on different aspects of the site.
        • Add extra optional fields to your mailing list sign-up forms.

2. Incentivise data collection.

Adding an incentive will lead to more buyers relinquishing their data. You may decide to provide special discount offers, or perhaps an asset such as a video or eBook in exchange for data

3. Analyse community behaviour.

If you have forums and comment sections, analyse the data you find here and use it to enhance your buyer personas.

4. Be active on social media.

Social media is another place where your buyers provide information that can be useful in crafting your personas.

5. Think outside the box when fleshing out your personas.

Your buyer personas need to address a broad range of different details. These include:

        • Buyer objectives
        • Buyer pain points and frustrations
        • Buyer household income
        • Buyer education background
        • Causes and values that matter to your buyers

Basically, you need to treat the creation of your buyer personas as an ongoing project in analysing buyer behaviour. You need to be adding to these personas all the time, and considering new ones that may be relevant to your organisation.

Use these buyer personas to optimise your website and achieve higher conversion rates

Creating a buyer persona is all about understanding your audience and recognising what they need.

With this in mind, buyer personas are absolutely critical to the success of your web design. So, how can you make sure that your web design project is conducted with these all-important personas in mind?

1. Start with objectives.

What do your personas want to achieve when they visit your site? How can you make sure that your site’s navigation and design support this?

2. Consider pain points and friction.

What challenges do your personas face? How are you making sure that your web design helps them overcome these challenges?

3. Think creatively.

You may be able to offer solutions to your buyers that they’ve never even considered. Refer to your buyer persona data and think about how you can stay one step ahead of these needs.

4. Humanise the data.

The idea of a buyer persona is to help you know your buyers on a personal level. Rather than viewing the persona in terms of data, consider their human needs and how these needs can be supported.

5. Test and appraise.

Keep searching for feedback and keep testing your website.

Keep striving to optimise conversion rates.

While you cannot get to know your buyers on a one-to-one basis, the right approach to buyer personas can help you to hone and refine your web design strategies, and get ever closer to that truly personalised experience.

Get started by defining your target market and buyer persona.