You are Not Your Target Market

Posted: October 8, 2009

Way to often I hear statements such as:

I don’t click on ads, I bet no one does
I wouldn’t do that; therefore, I’m not going to market that way
Why would someone search for our products that way?
Of course our site is easy to navigate, we have conversions
What do you mean we are a bad judge of our website?

These statements tell someone that you are not looking at things from the customer point of view; but your own.

In every Google AdWords seminar, I end up going on a rant about about how most people are bad judges of their website. Once you know something so well, you do not think about how to use the product; you just do it by instinct.

Have you ever driven to work and could not remember actually driving?
That does not happen when you take an unfamiliar route
When the familiar is routine, we cease to notice the small details

The same can be said for your website. You know that your phone number is in the upper right hand corner inside your navigational banner. Ask someone to find that same phone number, and there are times a searcher stares at the page and says they can’t find it.

You know that to access your shopping cart, there’s a small icon at the top of a page. I’ve been on sites where I added something to the cart, and then couldn’t figure out where my cart was.

This happens because often designers create a website for themselves.
Or they create it for the marketing team.
They are not always creating websites for the consumers.

While these are basic principles, we all forget them sometimes. A good designer never forgets this principle.

I have 6 different Firefox profiles on my computer and often have 3 Firefox profiles open, all with different plug-ins and navigation, along with Chrome and IE. To me browsers are a tool to be customized so each one helps you become more productive. I don’t think about saying something like, “Make a new Firefox profile that just uses GTD & the Better Plug-ins and then layer over a Grease monkey script based upon your email navigation preferences and then you can have have a dedicated email browser for your hosted apps so that you can be more productive.”

I said that a couple weeks ago to a very techie audience, and more than half of them stared at me blankly. I’m not my target audience.

I would guess that more than 90% or more of people who read this blog know what a browser is. However, what about your audience who is wandering the streets of New York City? Do they know what a browser is – the fundamental access point for the web?

Here is an enlightening video that asks those on the street a simple question: What is a browser? For many of you this is your target market. The answers might surprise you.

If you’d like to see all of Google’s videos; and our favorites such as the above video - subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Share and Enjoy:

Related Information:

« Everything you need to know about Google’s SK Tool via Video Tutorials

links for 2009-10-16 »

Written by Brad Geddes aka eWhisper · Filed Under Blog, Usability

Comments

4 Responses to “You are Not Your Target Market”

danielle on October 8th, 2009 4:32 pm

i love the guy’s answer of why he uses Firefox. LOL hardcore anti-IE friend for sure! i love firefox!
CT Moore on October 23rd, 2009 7:33 am

Gawd, in the future, I’m just going to send a link to this post rather than argue with clients.

May favorite is when you do a usability review, the client takes it personally when you critique their site, then they only implements 25% of what you recommended, and when conversions are still down, they then try to tell you that didn’t know what you were talking about.

Man, I guess you just can’t help a client that doesn’t want to be helped.
October ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts on November 1st, 2009 9:24 pm

[...] Brad Geddes/bgTheory: You are Not Your Target Market [...]
The SEMMY Nominations are Out – 2 More Nominations for Brad Geddes | bg Theory, LLC on January 17th, 2010 7:00 am

[...] http://www.bgtheory.com/blog/you-are-not-your-target-market/ [...]