Who are your customers and how intimately do you know them? Well, if you expect to be successful online you must know your customers very well. Doing the necessary research in the beginning, can save you a ton of money and heartache in the end.
When beginning the research on your target market, start with a general definition of your customer. This includes the demographical information:
• Age
• Gender
• Nationality
• Income
• Economical Status
• Geographic Location
The next step is digging deeper into their spending habits and comfort level with surfing the Internet and making online purchases. This information can most often be obtained by conducting a survey of the people who match the demographic criteria that you collected in the section above. Below are some questions to get your started with your survey, these questions can be asked in an online survey or passed out during an in-store survey:
• Where do they shop?
• When do they shop?
• How often do they make special purchases?
• How often do they make routine purchases?
• How important is price when they make a special purchase?
• How important is price when they make a routine purchase?
• How important is quality when they make a special purchase?
• How important is quality when they make a routine purchase?
• How important is availability when they make a special purchase?
• How important is quality when they make a routine purchase?
• Do they shop online?
• How often do they shop online?
• Where do they shop online?
• How important is price when they shop online?
• How important is availability when they shop online?
• How important is brand when they shop online?
• How important is security when they shop online?
• How important is online product comparisons to them?
• How important is selection when they shop online?
It is important to pay close attention to the silent signals your visitors are sending your. These signals can give you an even deeper view into what your customers expect from you, your website, and your product. For example, if you find through your website statistics program that visitors to your website are abandoning their shopping carts, you can make several assumptions:
• Your shopping cart may be difficult to use
• You may not offer the payment options that the visitor wants to use
• Your shopping cart may not allow for visitors to return to your store
• You may not offer the shipping options the visitor wants to use
Understanding your target market is one of the most important elements in designing and maintaining a successful website. If you don't know who your customer is, how do you expect to offer the products and services they need?
J.M. Davis is the owner and operator of The Site Therapist, a Website Usability Firm, dedicated to preventing Internet Suicide among websites. J.M. has almost 10 years of experience in the Internet industry. For more information about website usability or to have a usability analysis done on your website, visit J.M.'s website at http://www.thesitetherapist.com
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