GUI - Designing for GUI Editors [LESSON]
Designing for GUI Editors
Web Design Decisions
When you start to contemplate a new website, you must make some design decisions. These are based on the purpose of your site. Why are you designing the site? Who are you wanting to use your site? What are the best methods to reach the target audience? The layout of your site, the colors, the fonts, the animation - everything will be decided by the answers to those questions.
Purpose
What is the purpose of the site? There are many purposes, but the list below gives a few of the most common:
- Blog – A place you can share your thoughts, hobbies, interests, etc.
- Portfolio – A place where you can share information about yourself and display your work – this is usually a more professional site as you are hoping to draw either potential employers or clients.
- E-Commerce – A site to sell something online.
- Business – This is usually a site for a business to give information or support for the business, not to sell the products.
- Informational – This can be a site to convey information like Wikipedia or History.com.
- Event - This can be a site for inviting people to an event, or giving event information (like a wedding site such as The Knot or Zola).
Target Marketing
Once you have decided the purpose of the site, then you need to determine who will be most attracted to your site. This means you need to determine your target customer.
You may ask, how do I know who my target customer is? You can figure this out by using market segmentation and customer profiling.
Market Segmentation
Segmentation categories are criteria used to classify buyers. The main types of buyer characteristics used to segment consumer markets are behavioral, demographic, geographic, psychographic, and firmographic.
- Behavioral – Divides people and organizations into groups according to how they behave with or toward products.
- Geographic - Segmenting buyers based on where they live.
- Demographics - Segmenting buyers by tangible, personal characteristics such as their age, income, ethnicity, family size, and so forth.
- Psychographics - Seeks to differentiate buyers based on their activities, interests, opinions, attitudes, values, and lifestyles.
- Firmographic – This is for B2B marketing, it divides the market up by business characteristics, such as size, location, revenue, or industry.
Common Ways of Segmenting Customers
| Behavioral | Demographic | Geographic | Psychographic | Firmographic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Benefits sought from the product | Age/Generation, Income | Region (continent, country, state, neighborhood) | Activities, Interests | Industry |
| How often the product is used (usage rate), Usage situation (daily, holiday, etc.) | Gender, Family life cycle | Size of city or town, Population density | Opinions, Values | Annual revenue |
| Customer status and loyalty to the product (nonuser, potential user, first-time user, regular user) | Ethnicity, Family Size | Climate | Attitudes, Lifestyles | Company size |
| Nationality, Religion | Suburban, Rural, Urban | Location | ||
| Social Class |
Target Marketing
Now that you have segmented the market, a specific group can be selected for a specific marketing campaign or plan. This is called Target Marketing. Choosing a select group of people to sell to is important because marketing strategies are directed at them. Without a target market, there is no focus in your marketing efforts.
- Target Marketing - The segment of a total population on which a business focuses its expertise to satisfy that submarket to accomplish its profit objectives.
Once you have determined your target market, you then need to go further and identify your customer profile. The customer profile is the specific customer that is your ideal customer (or viewer) for your site. This is very specific; you aren't saying this is the only customer you will sell to obviously, but you are saying this is the ideal customer and who you will target your marketing toward. For instance, say you have a site for a sporting goods store; your ideal customer may be middle-income, young males that are athletic and interested in fitness. Of course, you will sell to women, older people, wealthy or low-income people, and people that aren't athletic and aren't interested in fitness. However, most of your customers will fit somewhere in the customer profile. When designing your site, you will take this into consideration. You will make your layout, content, image choices, font choices, and color choices ones that will appeal mainly to the customer profile since they are your most likely visitors. This isn't being judgmental; it is being realistic about who your audience is and what their preferences usually are.
Positioning
Positioning is developing your site to appeal to your target audience. It is developing a site that will influence that group of people to think positively about your site and want to use it for its purpose. If you have an audience that is young and sports minded, then you would have a site that has colors, themes, fonts, and movement that would be attractive to that audience. Positioning is all about brand identity and influencing your users to think like you want them to think about the brand or site.
Marketing Concept
The marketing concept is the idea that you must satisfy a customer's needs and wants to make a profit. The target market must be analyzed and studied to determine what their needs and wants are, and then marketing strategies are used to satisfy what the customers want or need to buy. If a business stays in tune to the changing markets, technology advances, and customer profiles, it should be able to provide a product or service that can remain in demand, keeping the company profitable.
Websites are about marketing. Whatever the purpose of your site, you must reach your target audience to make your site successful. That is why it is important to figure out your target customer, because once you know that it will guide your design decisions. We’ve been building a portfolio site, who is the target market? Is it you? No, you aren’t the target. It is potential employers, clients, or even colleges. Does that change your design decisions? Are you building a site that appeals to you or appeals to these people? What are your plans after high school? Are you planning on starting your own business? Maybe you want to go to work and not pursue additional education currently. Maybe you plan to go to college. Those decisions should help you decide what you need to do with your site.
Designing for a GUI Site
Now that you have thought about your target market and market position, you now need to use that information to design for that audience. Your layout, image choices, colors, fonts, videos, and animation all need to be targeted to your target market. GUI sites make it easy; you can choose templates that are already available, you can easily add images, change colors ad fonts, add videos, animation, forms, tables, and so much more.
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