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10.30.03
 By
W. L. Wilder
You have a great product, fantastic website, financial backing, and
the undeniable urge to succeed, but you are not making any money through
your website. Why? The answer is you haven’t directed your product
to the people who are looking to buy it.
Every store specializes in something that is its selling
point, its profit maker. There are shoe stores that sell handbags
and socks, but they specialize in shoes, and that is what you’ll see
displayed up front. Then you have shoe stores that sell athletic shoes
along with athletic equipment and clothing, but they specialize in
shoes.
How do you know what a store specializes in? Just look around. Do
you see more teenage-oriented shoes, clothing, and jewelry, or are
the items geared more toward the 25-35 year-old age range?
What keeps these stores going is the fact that they know whom their
audience is, specifically who they are selling to. They know their
demographics. Do you know yours? |
Demographics
A website is no different than a storefront. You place your best products,
aimed at your target audience, in the display window to draw in your
customers. Then you show them your “other” products, possibly fulfilling
other needs that they may not have considered.
For example, say you sell athletic shoes. You intice a customer into
your store by placing images of the newest and hottest shoes on your
index page. You then add a blurb saying: “Freedom is faster than the
wind when you wear such-and-such shoes.” They click on the blurb and
are instantly taken to the page that provides the details for that
shoe.
But wait! On that page, you add images of your top-selling shorts
and items with the American flag imprinted on them. Your visitors’
patriotism has been psychologically invoked by the word ‘freedom’
and running by the phrase “faster than the wind.” You’ve made them
consider multiple products simply by adding a blurb and image.
Is that all it takes? No. Anyone can sell a product using this method,
and they are likely to be successful, to a point. Everyone who sells
any kind of product knows this, but what makes some companies stand
out and others just get by? If you took those same shoes and built
a whole page in a style that appealed to single women, age 25-35,
with no children and a love of country and nature, you’ve created
a site-specific sales market. You have pinpointed exactly whom you
want to sell your product to.
Athletic shoes are not just gender or age specific, and that’s partly
why I choose them. The same concept can be adapted to a male audience,
teenagers, sports enthusiasts and your everyday consumer. It is all
a matter of changing the demographic styling of the page. This can
be as simple as adding baseball bats, footballs, and jerseys to intice
a male audience. There is more to it than simply changing the items
you offer, color, sizes, and images have to be considered as well.
You wouldn’t display a pink and gray shoe on a page aimed toward men.
Let’s take a deeper look at demographic profiling.
Customer Profile
Your customer is the person who will be buying your product. They
are not always the people who will be using your product. For example,
parents buy toys, but the children are the ones who will be playing
with them. The challenge is to think about how to reach both parties.
What will appeal to each of them? A toy that is known to be hazardous
to children is not likely to be purchased by an adult. This is common
sense. Its salability decreases with this knowledge.
One important area that will need to be defined is: will you be dealing
with individuals or businesses? Who is your product truly geared toward?
Individuals
When defining your individual customers it is best to answer the following
questions in as much details as possible.
1. What is the sex of your customer? Are they male or female?
2. What is the average age range of your customer? 13-22? 22-32?
3. Is the product aimed at a younger customer but bought by
an older customer?
4. Is the product aimed at an older customer but bought by
a younger one?
5. What is their average income level? Less than 14,000 a year?
More than 15,000 a year?
6. Is there a specific career or aptitude the product relates
to? (i.e., is it aimed at the medical profession, legal profession,
etc.)
7. What other interests could this demographic group possibly
have? Do you have other products that might be relevant?
Businesses
When defining the possible business customers, similar questions come
into play.
1. What is the industry you will be selling to?
2. Is there a specific sales level?
3. Who are the top names in that industry? Locally? Nationally?
World Wide?
4. What would be relevant data in the industry?
5. What else do you know about the businesses you will be selling
to?
Geographic Profile
Thanks to the Internet, all businesses can now reach the world and
not just their backyard. This can sometimes make geographic profiling
hard, but it also makes it very important. Remember that Chevy sold
very few Novas in Spanish speaking counties because “no va” means
“no go” – quite an unintended message. Unintended messages can pop
up rather easily if you do not define your geographic sales area.
What does it take to define your geographic sales area? Let’s start
with the basics.
1. Where are your customers located? Will they be in your backyard
– within your town, county, or state? Will they be in your country?
Or will they be worldwide?
2. How many customers are there in your market? Are you marketing
to a specific group or does your product have mass appeal?
3. What is the dollar value of the sales that occur in your
market each year? Is it possible to make the income necessary for
your lifestyle?
Other Considerations
Basic demographics can often be fun and interesting, because you learn
more about your product, your customers and the way your customers
think and perceive your product. Sometimes the basics are enough to
increase your sales potential and yet, there are times that the basics
provide to little information. The possibility of customers worldwide
creates the need for more information. Will there be shipping and
handling issues? Language, communication, issues? Cultural differences?
What will someone else see that we don’t?
Demographics are very important when it comes to site design. We no
longer live in the age where our backyard is truly our backyard, and
even when we design a site for our local area, the world has the option
to view it. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” didn’t
start with Neil Armstrong on the moon; it really started on the Internet.
About the Author:
W. L. Wilder is the owner and founder of Critical Thinking (http://www.thinkingcritically.net),
a website analyst company that researches user habits to make website
marketing more profitable.
Read this newsletter at: http://www.thedevweb.com/2003/1030.html |
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| From
the Forum: |
| php form submission |
 I
have an html form that is submitted to a php page. Along with
the form variables I would like to post a couple of hidden
variables, but I don't want these hidden variables to be seen
by viewing the source of the page. One thought I had was to
submit the form to the php page and have the hidden variables
on the php page and then have it automatically submit itself
with all the variables to another php page. ...
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