With almost everything being done online, nobody would have predicted that the birth of the internet in the late 20th century would have such a global effect. Want to buy a shoe? Hop on to an online shopping site. Need information about a certain profession? A search engine will provide that in a matter of seconds.

Everyone from government organizations to personal bloggers, business owners, and nonprofit organizations have websites that provide all the information, goods and services that one may be interested in. Unfortunately, despite how easy the internet seems to work, most of these parties fail to reach their intended audience due to poor graphic design target audience representation.

Your website needs to be optimized for the intended audience avoiding web design mistakes. It is critical that the choice of color palette, typography, web template, images and content appeal to whoever you intend the website to serve. Here is what to consider to successfully design for a target audience.

• Know your target audience

Before designing, you should ask yourself, “Who do I want to reach”? The choice of your target audience determines the design elements you will use, right from the color scheme, the form of navigation, the web layout, the structure of the template to the language of your site.

To get a clear understanding of your intended audience, dig deep into the demographics. Who are they? Approximately what age would most of them be? What location are they from? The more information you know about your audience, the better you can design the website to suit them.

• Create an audience persona

This involves putting yourself in the shoes of your intended audience and making a connection with your marketing campaign. What would they be looking for from your site? How easy would they find what they want? What issues would they encounter when navigating your site? This information helps you to narrow down the most important aspects of design for your site, such as the ease of reading and navigation from one page to another.

• User interface over personal preferences

Sure, you would want your website to have the latest web template and design offered in the market today. However, dwelling too much on that may cloud the whole purpose of the site. You need to strike a balance between what you personally want for your site and what your target audience will appreciate from the site. A good design is created from a user’s perspective, not your personal preferences.

• Borrow from your competition

If customers are not clicking on your site, they are clicking on your competitor’s site. It is not a crime to borrow a few pointers from the graphic design of a competitor’s website. The whole point is not to do exactly what they are doing, but rather to see what works for them and how you can implement that in your graphic design target audience optimized site. You should always know the right time for your website redesign.

• Optimize for smaller screens

Is your choice of design optimized for smaller screens? Today, there are more smartphones owners than there are people with computers. Your choice of design, therefore, needs to be optimized for smartphone use if you want to reach a wider targeted audience. For instance, a parallax form of navigation may be visually appealing when browsing on a desktop but it could hurt the accessibility of sub-menus for a user browsing using a smartphone. A hamburger menu is a great choice for a smartphone optimized site.

These few tips will help you reach your target audience and boost your conversion rates. Also remember that it is advisable to go for professional designers rather than designing the website yourself. After all, they have the technical know-how to successfully design your site to appeal to the intended audience. Make the smart move of investing in one and start your website on the right footing!