Should Your Website Be Appealing To A Particular Age Group?

Feb 26
16:08

2009

Alex Cleanthous

Alex Cleanthous

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Now there’s something that not every webmaster will have thought of. There is no doubt that some websites appeal to virtually everyone. Think about sites offering information on wide ranging subjects, for example. Unless the subject in question is very much engineered to be appealing to kids, or to the elderly, or another very specific age group, the approach will be to the general population. But this doesn’t apply in every case. And if it isn’t something that has crossed your mind yet, you might want to think about whether the design of your website is alienating some of the people you are trying to appeal to.

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Now there’s something that not every webmaster will have thought of. There is no doubt that some websites appeal to virtually everyone. Think about sites offering information on wide ranging subjects,Should Your Website Be Appealing To A Particular Age Group? Articles for example. Unless the subject in question is very much engineered to be appealing to kids, or to the elderly, or another very specific age group, the approach will be to the general population.But this doesn’t apply in every case. And if it isn’t something that has crossed your mind yet, you might want to think about whether the design of your website is alienating some of the people you are trying to appeal to.When you are trying to make a living online, the concept of website promotion is obviously a very important one. But if you are attracting lots of people to your website and they don’t like what they see when they get there, that is going to be time and money wasted.What you need to do is to make sure your promotional efforts and your website match up with each other. If you are giving out the wrong messages to people they won’t hang around on your site for very long.It’s obviously necessary to understand your audience. Do you know the type of people who come to your site frequently and enjoy browsing its pages? No matter what type of site you have, you must be able to understand who your audience is. If you do, you will be able to design your site to appeal to that audience.So how does website design work in this sense?Well there are a number of things you need to think about. For example, colour could be a component here. Kids will naturally be interested in bright primary colours. If they are surfing and they come across a website that is dull and grey and doesn’t look particularly interesting, they won’t hang around to see what’s on it – even if it is giving away free games consoles!That is an extreme example, but you get the point. Online marketing is as much about making sure that final step of taking a look at your website is as successful as finding it in the first place.All websites need an overhaul from time to time, but there’s no better time than now to take a fresh look at yours. Are you really appealing to the right people? If your audience is professional and looking for efficient and truthful information, they are likely to appreciate an efficient and functional looking website.The more research you do in this area the better. It’s not enough to make assumptions about what your audience may or may not like. And of course you can always ask them how happy they are with your site as it stands. This will usually get you the kind of feedback that will enable you to make informed changes if they are needed, so bear it in mind.