Who is your website for?

Last week, we asked the question, “Why does your website exist?“. If you’re an entrepreneur or small business, it’s important that you can answer the “Why” question clearly and succinctly.

Now that you’ve hopefully answered the “Why” question, can you answer this question in under three seconds?

Who is your website for?

Breaking the “who” down

The question, “Who is your website for?” breaks down into two parts:

  1. Who visits your website now?
  2. Who do you want to visit your website?

For each of these questions, you don’t need to know the names of specific people, but you should have a rough idea of personas for both your current and intended visitors.

What are personas?

A persona is a fictional character that represents people in your intended audience. For example, if you’re targeting wealthy men, you might have a persona called “Richie Rich” who covers an income range. If you’re targeting entrepreneurs, you might have another persona called “Small Business Sally”.

Don’t worry too much about the names of your personas or precise demographics, but you want at least a rough idea of who is and who you want visiting your site.

3 minute homework

  1. First, can you fill in the blank in less than a minute:
    “I know who visits my site now because I’m ___”.

    • If you’re able to fill in the blank, good!
    • If you can’t fill in the blank, the good news is that you’re now aware that you need more information to know who’s visiting your site.
  2. Take two minutes to jot down three personas of who you want to experience your website. Don’t put “everyone” but try narrow it down to specifics, like:
    • Age range (Are you targeting children or adults?)
    • Income range (Are you targeting more or less affluent people?)
    • Employment (Are you targeting entrepreneurs or employees?)

Next week

We’ve covered the “Why” and the “Who”. Next week, we’ll address the “What” for your website.

Hopefully, reading this post and completing the exercise took no more than 3-5 minutes. If you’ve got 30 seconds to spare, please fill out my short survey to help me serve you with better content.