Anyone who has ever seen the phrase "one size fits all" advertised on clothing knows that there is no way one size will fit everyone. The same is true of your website. Beyond the obvious, not everyone is in the market for your product or service, within your target market there are specific subsets of prospective customers. The best, most successful, websites take this into account and design the navigation and visitor experiences accordingly.

Discovering the actual "who's who" of all your site visitors may not be possible but creating profiles of potential visitors is a good idea. Why? If you develop these "personas" you can then design the website to meet the expectations and needs of each type of visitor and that will lead to higher conversions. Like every business, getting to know about the different types of visitors is the best way to serve their needs.

To set up these profiles start by really segmenting your business. For example, if you provide marketing for a university you have new students, returning students, faculty, alumni, non-traditional students, and graduate programs. If you have an accountant you may have business and individual customer types. For each of these segments you can develop a persona of the prospective visitors. What is there age, their occupation; income; level of internet knowledge; prospective needs? Based on this information you can design the site navigation and flow through to bring these prospects closer to doing business with you.

The first step in the process is to show each group that your site has what they need in the form of icons or other navigation elements that call them "by name." Next, lead them to the right information with a landing page that speaks specifically to them. You wouldn't want to sit through a long presentation about intricacies of air conditioning repair if you wanted to buy a furnace - don't make your visitors do the same. Actually, if your site is set up this way you won't have the chance because your visitors will leave quickly to find a site that will recognize their needs.

When you've lead the visitor to the right information, it's time to answer their questions. Let them know that your company is the right choice by providing information that confirms their thoughts in terms of customer comments, awards, security seals and privacy information. Show them that you do understand their specific needs by anticipating the most common questions or objections and answering those on the site.

Remember, in any type of advertising you have to tell people what you want them to do and make it easy for them to take that action. Don't get in their way with unnecessary steps or by asking invasive information. Having a contact form, clear contact information and email address in the right location will let people get in touch without further searching.

Obviously this article is a broad outline of the process. The important thing to remember is that you have to identify your potential customers to know how to develop the plan for the site. If your site is already done you may need to make changes, web analytics can help you discover where the current problems may be and will help you test the changes you make. Knowledge is power and the more you know about your customers the more powerful your website will be in terms of visitor conversions.

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This article written by Teajai Kimsey Stradley, Internet Marketing Strategist, Ideas That Work - September 2008. It may be reproduced and reprinted provided the author's information including web link is kept intact.

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