Of course, there are some who understand their target audience inside and out and ask for changes based on the knowledge of their target audience’s preferences and needs. The target audience of this article is obviously not those people.

More often than not, the provider of a product or service is NOT part of their own target audience. This means that research must be done to determine the target audience’s needs and desires. It also means that a design and its elements may not particularly appeal to the client.

This is not to say that the designs for the business should not reflect the owner. But it should, above all else, be appealing to its target audience and solve their problems.

What is a Target Audience, anyway?

Every bit of marketing that your company does must be focused toward a specific set of people, or it will be unsuccessful. Your target audience is comprised of the people who will be most likely to purchase your product or service.

When asked about the importance of a Target Audience, Angela Rohner (@rohner, owner of thebestdesigns.com) had this to say:

I have been a professional web designer since 1999, and I also run a CSS/Flash Gallery that I launched in 2001. Throughout the years of working for different firms on many different types of projects and running some of my own websites, I learned that one of the most crucial parts of an effective website is to understand your audience and to keep learning about your audience. It’s important that you keep up with the needs of your visitors and strive to make your website the best it can be. The user interface and content of your website should be tailored to best fit their needs.

If you start a business or a new website or service, it is usually started because you see a need for it. Somewhere in the world, there are people that may need or want your service or product. You need to find out who these people are and why they want to use your product or service. Are they an older or younger audience – or an even mix of the two? What part of the world are you targeting? Only a certain area or all over the world? What are they interested in? What types of industries do they work in? As time goes on, you will start to learn more about your audience – through polls on your website or feedback from your visitors – so that you can keep your website on track. You should always keep an open mind to change and listen to their feedback.

When I started TheBestDesigns.com, it was important to have smaller thumbnails of featured websites so that load times were a little faster and so that visitors could see more websites on a page at once. Since then, times have changed. Many visitors seem to like the larger thumbnails now. A couple of years ago, I added category tags so that my visitors could browse through websites based on their design style or design elements used. In recent months, I have been taking notes about some things that I am going to change and enhance during my next revamp. I also started a Twitter account for the site recently and have enjoyed interacting with my visitors. I have been listening to my visitors because I know how important they are, and I appreciate their feedback.

So how does one determine their Target Audience?

For some it may be simple: If you sell fishing lures, your target audience would be people who like to fish. However, this isn’t always the case, and for some, pinning down their target audience may be a difficult task. There is also something to be said for finding a niche. Maybe you sell fishing lures, but maybe there is something very special about these lures. For example, perhaps they only attract a certain type of fish. Then you will only want to target people who fish in a specific area that has that specific type of fish.

1. Make a list of attributes and benefits of your product or service. List those who would benefit most from it and from there make a list of attributes of those people.

• Where do they live?
• How old are they?
• What gender are they?
• What do they do for a living?
• What is their income level?
• What is their education level?
• What is their computer usage level? How much do they use the internet?
• Are they married?
• Do they have kids?

2. Do your research. Talk to people who fall within the parameters of your presumed target audience and find out what their needs are, and if your product or service fits with them or not.

3. Ask around. Talk to friends and family to find out who they think would be a good fit for your product or service. Talk to others online, on Twitter or on discussion boards. Many times there are people willing and eager to help.

I know who they are – now what?

When you have determined your target audience, get to know them. Find out how your product or service most benefits your target audience and make a note to focus on those benefits.

You also need to understand the size of your audience. A marketing plan for a small group of people is much different than that of a large group of people.

Do research to find out what is appealing to them and how to leverage your marketing and design to appeal to them.

Let’s say you want to create a community website like myspace, only it is geared toward teenage girls – allowing them a place to collect their thoughts and share with their girlfriends without the worry of having their teenage counterparts seeing what they are talking about.

Some may feel that the best color for this website would be pink. But would it? Many girls get irritated at the fact that the color pink is always instantly assumed as a girl’s color, and, especially at this age, teenagers are looking for some independence. This may not be the color that appeals to the most teenage girls. Ask around in that age range and find out what colors are liked and disliked. Something like this may change every few years. Can you make your identity something that will be able to easily evolve with it?

Now that you know who your target audience is and understand them a little better, you are one step closer to an effective marketing and design campaign. Once you have a better idea of your target audience, you will be able to understand why your designer may have designed something a certain way.

You should also include information about your target audience in Requests for Proposals to potential designers to aid them in crafting a better design and giving you a more accurate price. A good designer will do their research, but any information that you can provide makes their job easier, and also what they provide more effective for your business.

While there are many more things than this that can be an indication of a bad designer, I’ve tried to stick with things that are easy to recognize by clients, and not so much things that could be considered subjective. Dealing with design and what is good and bad can be very personal, and also relative to specific projects. So we’ll just be discussing objective skills and practices.

1. No Questionnaire or Q&A Process

I’ve spoken about how important this is briefly in other articles, but it really is one of the most important parts of the design process. There are vital questions that a designer must ask before they can begin to create anything that would be remotely successful. Even questions as simple as finding out your target audience and actions you want your visitors to take upon reaching your site. They should also be concerned with your brand and retaining the image you’ve already established. Check out our questionnaire walkthrough for an example of the questions that we ask.

If the designer you are considering does not have a questions and answers period, they are apparently not concerned with giving you relevant and successful results.

2. Awards Before Solutions

A good web designer’s sole purpose is to deliver solutions to their clients: Solving a problem like more sales, better business, or more phone calls. However, many designer’s sites advertise the awards they have won for their designs instead of talking about the solutions they provide to their clients.

While awards and being published are great prestige and a great way to tell if someone is good at making pretty things, pretty doesn’t always mean effective, and unfortunately, in a lot of cases it’s quite the opposite. A lot of designers whose main concern is to design something to win an award do not take the client’s or project’s needs into consideration.

At Camp Creative Group, we do each project completely for our clients and their specific needs. If, after the project is finished, we think it will be award-worthy or should be published, then we submit it. In fact, many of the projects we have submitted have been chosen to be published solely because they were excellent examples of designing for a target audience.

3. Everything in Their Portfolio Looks the Same

I don’t really feel like I’ve ever seen an exception to this rule (however, I am open to suggestions). As a client, you should look for a designer who is diverse in their design. This will mean that they will be better able to design something specific and relevant to your project.

Even if you are looking for a designer for something specific… Say you’re a construction company and you want to work with someone who works only with other construction companies. While the benefits to working with someone who understands your company inside and out are great, be wary if all the designs in their portfolio look the same. You don’t want your site to look like other companies in your genre – you want your site to stand out and be effective. Chances are, if they haven’t swayed yet, they won’t with your project.

4. Uses Templates

Sometimes it’s difficult to tell if someone uses templates, so this one is a little bit difficult to notice for the untrained eye (although it could be a good reason for #3 above). However, if the design just doesn’t look quite right for the content, or if colors look a little awkward, there is probably a good chance they have used a template design. I’ve even seen “designers” who use a template for their own website.

Some companies will be open about the fact that they use a template, they may even let you pick one out. Some, underhandedly, may not tell you at all and just use one instead of designing a site.

To have a truly successful site for your business, you will want to hire someone to design something to meet your company’s needs. Templates will never be able to solve problems because they were designed to solve someone else’s problems. Besides that, do you really want a website that hundreds and thousands of other unsuccessful companies have?

5. Bad Markup

Right click on the site you are on and select “View Source.” If there are lots of table “<td></td><tr></tr>” and font “<font>” tags, their coding is most likely outdated.

There are several reasons to use better markup. One being accessibility, another is that it greatly benefits SEO (however, it does not necessarily mean you will need that alone).

One of the best reasons is that when you separate your content from your design, it makes it so much easier to make changes to the design in the future. Which means that when you want to redesign later (the average website design lasts about 3 years) it will be most cost effective.

6. Your Browser’s Back Button Doesn’t Work While On Their Site

This means they’ve either disabled your back button, opened a new window, or built their website entirely in Flash (without taking necessary actions to make it work correctly). All of these things are done without consideration for usability. The back button exists for a purpose. Users need to be able to use it. If they have no consideration for users of their own website, they most likely won’t have any consideration for your website’s users.

7. You Can’t Figure Out Their Navigation

Or, it takes you a while to figure out their navigation. Navigation should be obvious. Period. There is no point to having it at all if it’s not. Users will leave your site if they can’t figure out how to get to the information that they need. There is no excuse for a designer’s website to be any different. They are trying to sell their service to you, which means you’re their target audience. If they can’t design something for their own target audience, how can you expect them to design something for yours?

8. No Biography, No Picture

The web can be a very impersonal place, but it is becoming very personal. With social media dominating, people want interactions. They want to know more about the company they will be working with and the key team members in that company. They want to see a smiling, friendly face. Most people want to decide who to work with based on the biography and picture they provide. When doing business on the web this is extremely important because normally there is not going to be any other way to invoke trust.

If someone doesn’t provide a biography or picture, I often wonder “what are they hiding.” I also wonder this when someone provides outdated “elementary school pictures” without providing at the very least a rollover change to a current picture. Instantly, I feel like I am unsure if I can trust them.

9. Banner Ads For Other Companies

While this isn’t always the case, most of the times I have stumbled upon a “web design” company’s website that has banner ads throughout it for other companies (or, worse yet, google ads), they have been hacks. Whether it is for something relevant, such as hosting, or something irrelevant. The main purpose of their site should be to sell their services. Ads on their site just show they are trying to get every little penny they can get – which shows a great deal of concern about making money and not delivering solutions.

Of course, if they have a specific hosting company that they recommend, it doesn’t mean they can’t have their affiliate banner where appropriate. However, most of the time this isn’t the case and the banners will be for several companies, and scattered throughout. The worst culprits are the ones that put put a huge horizontal banner ad right beside their own logo.

10. Splash Page

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The only place where a splash page is appropriate is on a website where you need to confirm your user’s age before they enter, or when they need to select a language. Even having an introductory video or animation is okay, but put it on the home page of your site with supporting content. If your designer doesn’t follow this rule, they are using completely outdated practices and it should be a big flag that they might not be able to give you the best advice and deliver results that will work for you.

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