Before you even think about the design of your website, you should consider the most important element to any website; its visitors. Your site should appeal to the people who are using it, and should compliment and hold the content in a way that makes sense.

Your Audience Determines Your Content

You first need to find out who your visitors are. Your visitors are your audience and your audience decides what your content is. Let’s say you want to write some articles about home repair and your audience consists of new home owners looking to save some money by doing small tasks themselves. Your articles should be about simple things like toilet repair and they should be written using language that is easy to understand. Complicated language and non-useful content is only going to scare away your visitors.

Visuals

Every visual aspect of your site down to the color scheme should appeal to your audience. New websites should be neutral in format and color. This is your best bet for a website with an unknown audience. Unless you are 99.99% positive that your audience will like a non-neutral and very heavy tone, don’t even try. For example: If you have a site about death-metal bands, then you should probably not have an off-pink background. The pink color belongs in a site with poems about flowers. This seems simple, but there are hundreds of elements you must pay attention to, your background color is just one.

Remember to Ask Yourself These Questions…

§ How big or small is the worldwide view of my audience? Your site should appeal to the lives of the visitors of your site. If your site is for international business, then it should give the appearance of always looking forward and up to success.

§ What language do they use? This is not just their country, but more importantly it is the way they use language. You want to speak the language of your visitors to make them feel comfortable.

§ Who and what do they surround themselves with? To make them feel even more comfortable, find out what colors are found in their environment that make them feel relaxed and not nervous. Believe it or not; but clothing color is a good place to start.

See Part 2 of this series to learn how less is more…