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How effective buyer personas help to grow your business

Our speciality is delivering high-quality marketing and web design in Teddington, Richmond and the surrounding areas. We have been doing this for 20 years, so it is hardly surprising that we have learned an awful lot about what attracts and retains website visitors during this time. One of the things we have discovered is that an effective buyer persona is absolutely essential if you want to grow and develop your brand. What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona represents your vision of your target customer. Each buyer persona is carefully created so that you can ‘speak’ to them with the most appropriate tone of voice and use of language, so careful research is needed to establish the type of customer that tends to buy your products or services.  How old are your customers? Where do they live? What hobbies do they enjoy? What is their approximate income? Where do they go on holiday? These are just some of the questions you need to find the answers to if your website and marketing material are going to strike the right tone and ultimately draw them in. Depending on your business model, you may opt to have just one buyer persona or you may decide to create several. However many you choose, the key is to ensure they accurately represent your target audience. Why does my business need buyer personas? Today, we don’t just walk into a shop, browse a few products and make our selection. Thanks to the internet, we are much more likely to browse a variety of websites at our leisure, comparing products and prices. We will decide on a supplier based on a number of factors, not all of which are connected with price. This is a trend that is being fuelled by social media. We like to engage with brands on a more personal level than ever before, so we are hardwired to choose sites and brands that chime with our own beliefs, principles and lifestyle. If your goods and services are aimed at young millennials but you use language and imagery that relate more to an older audience, you are likely to put off high volumes of potential purchasers straight away. Creating a buyer persona gives you a ‘virtual’ customer that you can directly tailor all your marketing material towards. You can source images and text that speak to them directly, drawing them in and ultimately making it almost impossible for them not to go ahead and make a purchase. If you are looking for superb marketing and web design in Teddington - or anywhere in the UK, for that matter - get in touch with us to find out the extra value we can add to your business. We can help you to attract customers who won’t be able to resist your products and services.

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Web design turn-offs you should be avoiding

Building a business and making sales through the internet is a highly competitive market. There are so many other companies out there spending money on web designers and SEO optimisation that it is harder than ever to get users to visit and stay on your website. 

Given that it is so difficult to get new visitors onto your website, it may be time to think about your user experience. Providing a positive user experience will make sure that hard-won visitor will stay on your website, so let’s look at the bad habits that will put visitors off and make them frustrated enough to leave your site. 

Slow loading times

It is rare to find someone without a smartphone these days. With the rise in gadget sales, the modern consumer has become used to instant gratification when browsing the internet. We can have any answer at our fingertips within seconds and contact people from across the world in an instant. We are completely spoiled by the responsiveness and speed of the online world. 

As a result of our need for speed, it has been shown that if a visitor has to spend more than three seconds waiting for your site to load, they will leave; in fact, more than 53 per cent of visitors will abandon the site if the loading time is slow. Investing in great web design in Teddington will ensure you have fast loading speeds. 

Not mobile-friendly 

It is still very common for businesses to treat their mobile sites as an afterthought. Badly-designed mobile sites feature strange formatting and misalignment, which will signal to your visitors that your company does not value its mobile users. 

Creating a mobile-friendly site is not about catering to a certain niche; instead, it is very important. Web design in Teddington can help you to make your site mobile-friendly. More than half of your website traffic will come from mobile phones, making desktop browsing the less-used way of visiting your website.

Media that autoplays 

A huge web design no-no is autoplaying media. This something a lot of websites do by featuring a video that starts to play as soon as a visitor enters the site. These videos are often irrelevant to the content on the page and will cause a visitor to navigate away from your site rather than searching for the source of the annoying noise. 

Overuse of animation 

Animation used properly on a website leads to smooth transforms and a better appearance overall. The key to using animation is to do so sparingly. If you overdo it, it becomes completely distracting. Use animation to draw attention to your call to actions and to key content within your page. 

These problems are all the result of bad web design habits. Remember to invest in reliable web designers and keep anticipating the needs of your customers to optimise your site for better conversions and leads.