Are you focusing enough?

February 5th, 2008 · No Comments

Focus on your target market is one of the most important success factors for every online company.
When I ask webmasters “what is the target market of your website”. They often answer “everybody, who wants to buy online”.
Of course, this is the worst answer for building a successful E-commerce site.

In this article I will give you the answer, why.

When you want to find out who is your target market. There are also other questions necessary to answer about your customers. Questions like:

What do customers really want to buy?
What does your product or service do?
What is the use of your product or service?
What are the benefits of your product or service?

Let me explain with an example.

You are selling all kind of bikes, normal family-bikes, racing-bikes, off-the-road-bikes, etc. Customer A wants to buy a family-bike because he likes to go cycling with his children. Customer B wants a bike to loose his overweight of 40 pounds. He wants to be looked at by younger women. Customer C is a real sportsman and he wants an off-the-road-bike to improve his endurance.

All three customers want a bike but all three customers want another E-commerce site.

Customer A, the family man, likes to see pictures of happy families on a bike. He wants to buy happiness for his entire family. Customer B, the average guy, would like to know how much weight he will loose. Customer C will be compared with athletes. So he likes to see pictures of all kind of famous athletes.

It is hardly impossible to build a successful site for all three customers. All three need different information. You know what will happen when you put all your effort in making all three happy. They will immediately click away because they don’t recognize themselves in your home page.

Conclusion: Start defining your target market before you built your website

When you define your target market you also need to find out all kind of aspects about your customers. The most important aspects are;

Gender
Age
Demographic factors
Psycho graphic factors
Income

Why is this important?
When you are building your website and you know most of your customers are older than 40 years. Don’t make your site too flashy and put your effort in usability.

Knowing your customers is is not only important for building your website. It is also important for other uses, for example;

Organizing your buying process
Contact forms
Web-text
Ads
Choice of media

How do you investigate what your customers really want?
ASK THEM. If you want to find out what your customers really want, what they like and what they dislike. Just ask them. Of course you can look to other websites. But who tells you that they are right.

Conclusion