Newspaper reporters are taught that to write a compelling story they need to focus on the 5 W’s: who, what, when, where, and why. If you want your web site to be successful you might want to apply the same criteria to your planning.

Consider these ‘Ideal Website Visitor’ Questions

1. Age, gender, sexual preference, religion and whatever demographics fit.
2. What attributes do they posses? (Passion, consistency, committed)
3. What are they passionate about?
4. Where do they live? Where do they work?
5. What types of people, places or things do they like?
6. How do they learn and where do they like to go to learn?
7. What do they read? When do they read it? Where do they read?
8. What shops, Web sites, etc. do they purchase products from?
9. What meetings, groups, and classes do they attend?
10. What type of people are you attracting to your business?

A helpful exercise is to take this information and write a micro story describing your ideal client. Name your client. Make it personal. For example:

Mary is 40+ and has an above average income. She has a professional job and live in the city. A little bored with her everyday life, she reads upscale “lifestyle” and travel magazines. She wants a little romance in her life and is willing to give herself little treats to get a taste of feeling special. When I market my lavender soaps and oils to her I want to capture that sense of romance and maybe offer a hint of the South of France, where lavender fields adorn the landscape.

You may think that this is getting too specific, that you don’t want to limit your appeal to single individual. Actually, you do. If you try to appeal to everybody, you’ll appeal to nobody. By selling the romance of your products to Mary, you create a strong brand, that can set you apart from your competitors. And, with a clearly defined image, you will appear more desirable to people who don’t fit your profile than you would if you remain generic.

Now it’s time to evaluate your current website. Ask yourself: Is this something my ideal client would want, need, enjoy or purchase? Will this attract my ideal client to this organization? Can I add something or change my site so that it will attract my ideal client?

Over time, your Ideal Client Profile will change as your business evolves. To be prepared for yearly re-evaluations, take note of who you are really attracting to your web site: who is not coming back and why, who is staying, and who is subscribing to your newsletters. Keep track of these things over time, analyze the patterns you see and use the information to your best advantage when deciding on, and marketing to, your ideal client.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 20th, 2006 at 6:20 am and is filed under Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.