Who are my customers and how do

they behave online?

Why is it important to understand the profile of your website’s target audience?

The more specific you can be about your target audiences and markets the more effective your website will be:

� Creation of interesting and engaging content

� Better messaging and calls to action

� Build better and more meaningful relationships with customers

� More likely to attract new customers who will care about products and services

What does ‘target audience’ mean?

A way of defining the group of people that buy your products and services via your website

It’s a segmentation of all potential consumers –grouping them by characteristics that identify them as being potential customers

Profiling your customers requires a good database

Customers

Consumers

Employees

Who and where Response and purchase

Values and motivations

Behavioural dataDemographic data

Attitudinal data

Webographic data – web experience, usage location, platform, frequency, social media use

B2CAge, gender, where they live, occupation, income levels

B2BPosition in business, location, size, range of products and services, tenure

Interests, lifestyles, goals and needs

Product/service type, channel, value, frequency, marketing response

Establish what customer data you already have

Contextual data

- Accounts - Transactions - Customer Feedback - Newsletter Sign-up

- Web Analytics - Social Media

DemographicSales data – data you’ve captured at

point of sale

Google Analytics – localisation and

language and audience profile

Facebook insights – details on

people that click on the Like

Facebook button. Age, gender,

location, marital status, interests

Email service provider – add fields

into newsletter sign up or Mail Chimp

SocialPro feature offers

demographics about your visitors

automaticallyGoogle Webmasters Audience Report

Establish what customer data you already have

Contextual data

DemographicLinkedIn provides demographics for individuals including Occupation, Industry, Skills and Expertise and for businesses the available insight includes Region, Industry, Company Size and Products & Services

- Accounts - Transactions - Customer Feedback - Newsletter Sign-up

- Web Analytics - Social Media

Establish what customer data you already have

Contextual data

Behaviour

Attitudinal

Webographic

Surveys

Ongoing customer feedback

Sales – online and offline via

which channel

Email – open and click through

Google Analytics

Social Media insights

Surveys

Google Analytics Dashboard

- Accounts - Transactions - Customer Feedback - Newsletter Sign-up

- Web Analytics - Social Media

Build your database including key variables

Your database should contain: name, address, email and telephone number together

with purchase history. It should also contain the contact names of people involved in the

decision making

Create web personas to complete the picture of your target audiences

A web persona is a summary

of the characteristics, needs, motivations and environment of a key type of website user

Creating web personas is a process which adds to the existing data you have on your customers – Attitudinal and Webographic

They enable you to design the best user experience for its website customers

Creating website personas First stage – collecting data

Complete the picture of your website users through a simple staff survey based on their experience and knowledge of customers

• Demographics – age, gender, type of business and size• Web technical knowledge/ability, usage location, platform, frequency, social

media site etc• Motivations to use your website, how did they find it?• Values and goals for your website, what they want to use it for, where do they go

for information?

• Obstructions/frustrations – what stops them choosing a service/product?

Your staff should think of two or three customers that they have worked with/on behalf of in the last two years and answer the questions with that person in mind

Example questions:

The questionnaire can be carried out face to face, via telephone, using a simple Word document or a more complex online survey….

More complex online questionnaire

Creating website personas First stage – collecting data

Survey Monkey questionnaire

Creating website personas Second stage – grouping customers

Survey Monkey reporting graph

Survey Monkey out-puts pie charts and graphs that summarise key data variables from your customer questionnaire

Creating website personas Second stage – grouping customers

Survey Monkey reporting graph

Creating website personas Second stage – grouping customers

Cross tabulation of the data on key criteria allow you to identify groups of customers with similar profiles

These groups of customers with similar profiles become your segments

Creating website personas Third stage – creating fictional characters

Start-up Sally – owner of an independent business in the arts

Corporate Christopher – CEO of financial sector company

Family Firm Frank – Manager at a family firm in manufacturing industry

Sally is has a solid business idea that is well researched and thought out. She needs a marketing partner over the long term but branding and a website to

get her started. She needs to spend her budget wisely. She found the Mackman website through a recommendation. She is concerned about price and the

possibility that her business is too trivial compared with Mackman’s larger clients.

Christopher is looking for a reliable marketing research company who will help him gain knowledge and solve a very specific problem that he needs to illuminate.

He is quite ruthless and is careful to choose an agency that he can keep coming back to if the job is done well. He references newspapers, friends and colleagues

for information and found Mackman through recommendation.

Frank has inherited a family business and needs help to bring it up to date. He is under pressure to turn the business around and prove he is worthy of leading the

organisation. He has little experience of marketing so will initially need help with his marketing strategy. He is well informed in his sector frequently reading

industry magazines. He wants to team up with ‘real people’ who share his values and have a knowledge of his sector

Creating website personas Fourth stage – applying personas to website content

Start-up Sally Case studies and examples of work for smaller clients and indication of price are crucial

Creating website personas Fourth stage – applying personas to website content

Corporate Christopher Simple browsing menus, plain speaking

information and easy to contact function are essential as he is not proficient with the internet

Creating website personas Fourth stage – applying personas to website content

Family Firm Frank Information showing the knowledge of staff and

quality of work is important. He is looking for a demonstration of multi media content as he is aspirational about making his business appear more forward thinking

Web persona summary guidelines

1. Build a number of personal attributes into personas• Demographic • Behaviour• Attitudes• Webographic

2. Remember personas are only models of characteristics and environment

• 3 or 4 usually suffice to improve general usability• Establish a primary persona

3. Involve all stakeholders in your business to create and sign off personas

• Ensure they are accurate representations

4. Ensure your personas become the language of your business• Bring them to life with pen portraits and display them

Creating website personas Fifth stage – measurement

By understanding what proportion of visits belong to which personas you can understand how well your website is catering for them

1. Keywords – identify personas by the key word they use to find your site e.g. for the Mackman website we could separate out who found us on a search for PR vs. Market Research

2. Landing pages – if someone lands on one of our ‘Marketing’ pages, they must be interested in one of our marketing services. We could separate out visitors who landed on ‘Marketing’, ‘Design’ vs. ‘Staff’ pages

3. Referring sites – may indicate a persona from the site they came from e.g. Twitter vs. Yell.com

You can build persona based segments using these dimensions and analyse them using Google Analytics Advanced Segments

Creating website personas Fifth stage – measurement

Advanced Segments let you isolate and analyse subsets of traffic

These can be applied to current and historical data - giving you greater insight into your data

You can use pre-defined segments such as ‘New Visitors’, or ‘Mobile’, or create your own. Our ‘East Anglia’ segment allows us to monitor traffic levels from Chelmsford, Colchester, Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds

Google Advanced Segments Overview Report

Using your web personas to improve the relevance of your customer communication

1.Make your website more relevant e.g. make sure that there is at least one case study on your site that will appeal to each web persona

2.Make your emails more relevant e.g. consider your web personas when devising your email content. Is there something of interest for your key web personas?

3.Make sure you are using the right social media platforms e.g. LinkedIn for B2B

4.Use your web personas to help identify priority prospects when enquiries are made

Over to you – what are your ideas?

Hannah Marshallsayhannah@mackmangroup.co.uk01787 388038

@MackmanGroup