Distinction between knowing and understanding your audience

There is a big difference between knowing and understanding the audience of your website.

Knowing the visitors is hard as the number of visits that attracts the page in a period and focuses on decision making based on statistical objectivity, but meet customer requirements that is more focused on clearly understanding, as far as possible, people who are behind purchases, and learn as much as possible about their social by connecting to cultural strategy, longings, media consumption, etc. The audience means to make informed decisions regarding the target audience. Time spent meeting the customer is always a time that is well spent. An example related to the design of web pages I can see when setting colors, especially in cases of sites that have an international presence, from one culture to another, there are differences in preference thereof, to the connotation, meaning, etc.

The content is of high importance, the web is changing rapidly and markets have increasingly vied and audiences are increasingly separated and it is more laborious to attract the right customers.

Options such as Google analytics data only give us to know them but not to understand. Know where they come from to the landing page, how long they were on the page, etc. just throws us hard data.

Define a framework for deeper understanding of customers is of real importance. The first step is creating goals, it is helpful to categorize the information sought to analyze, for example, General, Lifestyle, and Media. General information will be categorized as gender, age, nationality, location, in the section of lifestyle could put information for education, occupation, socioeconomic status, health, religion. Finally, the media section could refer to different media consumption by customers such as printed newspapers, magazines, technology, TV, radio and of course through the smart phone that is connected to internet using WiFi or HotSpot.

Alludes us know what is the kind of newspapers they prefer, customers who buy magazines, which TV shows they watch, radio stations like, how long are on the internet and what type of devices are used. In this way, we can begin to put a picture of our audience as real entities and not as hard numbers.

The ways to get the information we need can be very different and can include questionnaires, focus groups, interviews, and direct observation. Each of these methods has their advantages and disadvantages so it is crucial to decide which method is best suited to our plans. Questionnaires are an inexpensive method that can give us good data but is relevant to the way the questions are set to avoid bias and also avoid open questions by difficulty in analyzing the information. There are some online services that allow us to use online surveys. Surveymonkey.com allows questionnaires and delivers the desired audience.

Interviews can give us a lot of valuable information and have the option to explore different issues more freely and improvise a bit. The focus on groups can be the more specialized tool that will require more knowledge on marketing issues, can be very useful if worn properly.

Once you obtained the information that let you understand and find meaning and relevant information, you can start the web design project, if you already have a website, should fix the issues based on the information that has been collected.

The audience does not move very rapidly but is altered and the behavior of the same can vary over time as well as change the customs on the Internet.

Finally, remember that the objectives and the frame of reference that were set initially must be geared to the needs and objectives of the clients business. Not only have to focus on what you want to find a developer or web designer but consider what is needed to find or understand the target audience and help the client achieve their goals. Thus, understanding our target customer, we can make informed decisions not only on statistical data but also with the client's interests in mind.

Knowing is valuable, but understanding is vital.