Website Development
Just who are you developing your website for anyway?
Upgrading your online presence or developing a new website is a great goal but it isn't worth much if you neglect the most fundamental principle of business: your customer is always right. Basic objectives such as increased persuasion power, higher conversion numbers, more appeal to target segments and greater differentiation of brand should not be ignored in development, but in the absence of a coherent plan focused on your end-users, reaching your target audience will be based on hope, not strategy.
The first step to website development and/or redesign is to step away from the computer. Steer clear of the standard top-down approach to website development, pull out a pen-and-pad, and allow your customers to dictate your work. Reverse engineering for website development is a persona-driven approach to website marketing that starts by defining a series of hypothetical archetypes (i.e. "personas"). The approach inherently takes into account human decision making series and goes beyond demographics, gender or age. It ties the psychology of human decision-making processes and how they gather information.
Personas will allow for you to project specific scenarios for your ideal prospects to interact with your new website. For each persona, research their psychographic and demographic characteristics while always keeping in mind their decision-making processes and specific information needs throughout development.
Often, this will be an eye-opening experience in website development - especially when your marketing executives realize they were initially wrong in their pre-persona projections.
How can we help you figure out who your customer personas are? »