So this is probably one of the most fundamental reasons for building a website… to attract your ideal and perfect client to the site and therefore your business. You need to know how to design your website in a way which appeals to the senses and needs of your ideal customer, all the while keeping it minimal and slick in its layout. Once you have this down … you’re good to go! 

Now more than ever, it is so important to ensure that our businesses are targeting the right type of people, and that we can serve those clients for which our businesses are designed.

Before you start designing there are a few steps you need to take, such as actually knowing who you’re designing for.

The Ideal Customer Process

There is a step by step process in order to know which type of clients to attract, we want to walk you through it. The below is what you need to have covered before knowing who is right for you:

• Decide what work you love doing most - when you love the work that you do, you will work much harder at it!

• Decide what goal(s) you want to achieve from your website - what do you hope to achieve from this website? What is the final goal from this?

• Once the above two are complete, work out what your business niche may be (check out our other blog post) - begin to define what your niche will be - what unique business niche are you offering to your prospective clients?

• Build your tagline (more on this at the end) - take your business niche and build your sales pitch for your ICA.

You need to define what it is that you offer, before knowing who to offer it to, and who is going to benefit the greatest from it.

The Ideal Client Avatar (ICA)

The ideal client avatar is the person for which your business niche works best, and this is the customer for whom your website is designed. 

A good way to determine your ICA, is to look back on any previous work that you may have done with various clients, and start to compare and contrast their characteristics and personality types. Look at who it is that you truly enjoyed working with, and those who you wish … well, you never want to hear their names again!

Working with clients in the past, even the bad (very non-ideal) ones, has put you into an advantage because now you have some idea as to your ICA and have experience under your belt .. it is truly better late than never. However, if you’re starting from scratch and have not yet worked with any clients (perhaps you have not yet started your business, or are just new at the game), this is your opportunity to start deciding who you want to serve. Count yourself as lucky!

What Should you Consider for your ICA?

There are a few aspects you need to consider when it comes to deciding who your ICA is. Ask yourself the following:

• What is their profession - full time job? Entrepreneur? Business owner?

• What is their age?

• Marital/family status demographic? - are they married, single, do they have children or not?

• Interests and hobbies? - what do they enjoy/hate/love, are they introverts/extroverts?

• Geography - where do they live?

• What are their business pain points? What are their fears?

The whole point of figuring out answers to the above is so that you’re able to communicate well to your ICA on your website.

Minimal Homepage Design

You need to choose the various aspects of your site design to speak to and attract your ideal customers, to name but a few basics:

• Will you use formal/non-formal/slang language? (think of age, profession etc)

• What will the colour scheme be?

• What will the main image(s) be?

• What is the right font (check out our post - best minimalist fonts to use)?

Average Time Spent on Websites

Check out our other post on the average time spent on your website; here we discuss how your website has approximately 8 seconds to make a good (or bad) first impression on the site visitor. If this is the case, then the homepage of your website needs to be laid out in such a way that your ICA learns that your business is right for and will serve them.

Business Niche; Build the Tagline

After you have determined what your business niche is, this is what you need to clearly display on your website’s homepage (How to introduce yourself on your website). After all, this is the primary marketing method for your website, and is going to quickly grab your potential client’s attention (remember, you have about 8 seconds).

It is your unique sales pitch that will introduce your business, on your website. This is also known as your tagline! We are especially excited about creating an effective but exciting tagline, because it is the statement which shows off your unique niche to your ICA.

At Original Box .. we love the word ‘unique’!

The tagline should be composed of answers to the following questions, which you need to consider in order to attract your ideal clientele:

• Who are you?

• What does your business do; product or service?

• Where are you based? Is the geography of your business important?

• Who do you serve?

• What makes you unique?

By answering the above questions one by one, you can begin to come up with a really catchy tagline for your homepage.

A minimal website strategy will show off all the important content on the site, because you’re reducing all of the unnecessary content and clutter. This includes your tagline, which will stand out on the homepage of your website if you use a minimal layout with only that content which serves a purpose.

If you want to learn the fundamental building blocks of a minimal website - check out our free 10 page workbook below.