Hi! I'm a drawing of Catherine. She does most of the writing here, including this blurb. (Does this count as writing in the third person?) Catherine believes that websites don't really run on technology, they run on emotions. If you agree, then she wants to help you rock it out and be awesome online.This is part one of a series that will help you to understand and describe your needs for a website. The exercise will take you about 5 minutes to complete.
photo credit: geoftheref
For the love of all that is awesome DO NOT SKIP THIS EXERCISE. If you don’t have clarity on these questions you will never create an effective website. I know you’re busy and every single newsletter you get has twenty Important Questionnaires, but this is seriously the best advice I can give you about starting up a website. At the end, you’ll know what kind of website you want. You can describe it. You can get accurate quotes. You could take the results of this exercise to 20 different (competent) web designers and they would each produce 20 different websites, and every single one would suit you and your customers. The same with copywriters for your content. That is powerful stuff and a huge return on your time investment.
So even if you just think about the questions when you’re sitting in traffic or trying to wash your daughter’s hair, (actually, maybe not while doing either of those things; they can have horrible consequences if you’re not paying attention) or while you’re on hold or on the treadmill or scrubbing your back or something, do it. You’ll do better if you write it down or tell someone because then you have to make it understandable and specific.
What are the requirements of your customers?
List the attibutes a customer of your business must have. Start with the basics:
- They must be able to afford your product. Does that mean they must be wealthy, middle-class, or just have $3.50 in their pocket?
- If you’re a local business, do they have to be physically present in the area?
- Any other necessities: If you sell cars, your customers must have a driver’s licence.
Using our website as an example, our customers must:
- Have internet access (preferably broadband)
- Be interested in starting or improving a website
- Be able to afford our prices and pay via credit/debit card or bank transfer, in Australian dollars
- Understand written English
- Be willing to pay for coaching or resources
Create a persona
So far you have a checklist, but checklists are soulless and won’t help you make decisions. What you need is something that prestigious experts call a persona and I call the Mum Standard. You remember when you’d just moved out of home and you thought your place was clean enough (it wasn’t) but then your mum called to say she was coming over and suddenly you realise that the house is a disgusting filth pile and you spend the next two hours scrubbing things so she won’t cry and disown you? I still use the Mum Standard to determine whether my house is clean (it is, pretty much) because it’s both measurable: no piles of dishes, bit of dust okay, bathroom must be clean, don’t worry about making the bed, rubbish must be in the bin – and emotional, because I want my mum to be impressed with my maturity and such. It’s clear and I know what to do to meet the standard.
So you need someone to impress, a pretend customer based on your best customer or the kind that you’re hoping to attract. Take aspects from existing people: customers, acquaintances, that dude on the bus, and invent someone from there. Be specific and detailed. If you know any demographics about your business and industry use them, but make sure the person feels real. Include a few irrelevant details like hobbies and appearance.
Example: My persona for this website is called Karen and she owns a bike shop that’s doing pretty well. She’s 41, has ginger hair she wears in a ponytail and lots of demands on her time. She’s smart, started work after high school, and she hates it when people patronise her. She checks her email and does her accounting on a computer at the back of the shop with an old CRT monitor that has thirty pink Post-It notes stuck to it. She wants a website because there are a lot of lawyers and managers starting to cycle in to work nowadays and they’ve mentioned that she doesn’t have a website, and if ten are mentioning it then fifty are not coming in to the shop because of it. The whole idea of setting up a website sounds scary and probably expensive, though.
See all the concrete detail I put in there? Karen feels like a real person. My actual customers (you!) may have little or nothing in common with Karen, but it doesn’t matter. One of the benefits of me designing for Karen is that the website is written in very simple accessible language and full of resources to help you feel like this is something that anyone can learn if they want to. And that is a benefit that means something whether you’re a small business owner, a marketing guru, a professor, or a computer tech. I have nothing in common with Karen, but this is still the knowledge I wanted to access 4 years ago when I set up my first website for my hobby business.
[Catherine update, six months' later: Karen isn't my persona any more: the website changed and so did my target audience. This happens, and it is totally fine! Just re-do this exercise once or twice a year or as needed.]
So, you have a checklist of requirements and a persona. Next time, we’ll put that information to excellent use!