How to make your website appeal to your ideal clients

So you’ve decided to build your own website. That’s great news but before you jump into your site-building platform of choice, there’s one thing you absolutely must do. And that is to make sure that your website appeals to your ideal clients.

Without that, your ideal visitor may land on your website and leave shortly after without subscribing to your email list, reaching out to you or buying anything you offer.

But how do you actually make sure that your website appeals to your clients? Well, you have to understand who your ideal clients are. In other words, you have to define your ideal client.

If you’ve never done this, I’ll walk you through my process of defining your ideal clients. And if you have done this, stick around anyways because I do things differently when it comes to ideal client avatar exercise.

Plus, I’ll share tips on how you can use the exercise to make your website an absolute dream destination for your dreamies. One last thing before we dive in — since I primarily work with online service-based businesses, this exercise is largely targeted towards them.

If your business is heavily focused on serving a local audience or you have a product-based business that caters to a very specific audience demographic, you can still use this process but you’ll need to account for those demographics and specific details.

How to Define Your Ideal Client

First, let’s start at the beginning. There are plenty of ideal client avatar exercises that you can do online and there are even workbooks and worksheets and templates galore to help with this.

The problem with all these exercises is that they have you focusing on things that (in my opinion) are not that important. For example, how often did you have to fill out things like age, gender, sex, location, relationship status…etc.

Step 1: Ignore The Demographics… For Now

Personally, I don’t think you need to get THAT specific with it — unless your business is working in a very specific, very narrow niche where that type of information actually makes a difference.

For example, if you’re making gothic bridal jewelry, then it makes sense to specify certain demographics mentioned above.

But if you’re teaching online yoga classes for busy moms, are you going to reject every mom that isn’t married or doesn’t have exactly 2.5 children? My guess is probably not. So my advice is to ignore the demographics… for now.

Step 2: Focus On The Pain Point First

The most important thing you need to know about your ideal client is what they struggle with and how your business can help solve that problem.

To give you an idea, let’s take our yoga instructor example above. Their ideal client might have lower back pain and wants a way to relieve it — without exercise taking up a lot of time.

After all, she has her hands busy with her kids and everything else that comes with running a family. She might also work from home or part-time or maybe she has her own business.

Just from those few sentences, you already know that her biggest pain point is not having enough time to exercise to relieve her back pain.

Now, consider how that pain point is impacting her life. Maybe she can’t pick up her youngest son anymore like she could before. Maybe she has a hard time bending down and picking up toys scattered around the house.

Maybe she is frustrated because she has to wear flats or tennis shoes everywhere even though she really wants to get into her little black dress and her favorite pair of hills.

Now let me ask you this — Is she starting to feel real yet?

Do you see how quickly I was able to come up with something that I could actually use on my website to make busy moms who suffer from lower back pain feel like I’m inside their head?

And all of that without knowing how much money they make, the exact number of kids they have, what they like to eat, where they shop, what color their eyes are, and so on.

Step 3: Where Are They?

And by where, I don’t mean their physical location (unless, again, that does matter for your business).

What I mean by this is where do they spend their time online:

• Which magazines or online publications do they read?

• Which websites do they visit?

• Who do they follow online?

• Which groups are they in?

• Which social media platforms do they use?

The reason why this matters is because this helps you determine which marketing platforms you should use for your business. It also helps you get a sense for their general aesthetic.

Step 4: Can They Afford You?

This may sound crass, but let’s be honest for a moment. If your ideal audience can’t afford your services, then there’s some tweaking to be done. Either you have to find a different target audience, change your offer, or you have to rework your pricing.

Again, you don’t have to know their exact income but knowing their background helps. If you’re targeting scrappy startup entrepreneurs, you might have to cut down on some of the features of your offer or offer a DIY version of it.

Step 5: Get More Specific

Okay, so by now you know what they’re struggling with, you know where they like to spend their time online, and you know that they can afford your services.

Now it’s time to get a bit more specific. What do they care about and why? Let’s use the yoga teacher again. Given that her ideal clients are busy moms, we can infer that they care about convenience.

It’s important for them that they can do the workout from the comfort of their home in the little pockets of time that they have available throughout the day.

One more thing you want to get specific on here is to understand and list the objections they might have about buying. What could make them hesitant that their investment won’t give them the results they need?

Again, in the case of our yoga teacher, her ideal clients might be hesitant because they’ve tried a program before and it didn’t give them the results they wanted.

Or maybe they’re worried they won’t be able to keep up with the exercises consistently.

Step 6: Mix In Some Demographics

So now we finally get to the demographics part. But don’t worry, we’re still not going to get super ultra pro max specific like some cell phone companies do.

What I want you to do in this part is to consider someone you know online. Maybe you’re in the same group or maybe you’re friends on Facebook or another platform.

Or maybe, you don’t know them personally but you’d absolutely die for the opportunity to work with them. (Yes, you can think about your favorite internet-or-otherwise-famous person. After all, it’s not like you’re going to shout it from the rooftops!)

What matters is that they share some of the personality traits that you’ve identified above.

What do you know about them? If you had to describe how they look, what would you say? What do you know about their life?

This information helps you find connection points that you might share with your ideal client. For example, maybe both of you enjoy skateboarding or both of you play a guitar. Or maybe chips and salsa are your favorite movie night snack.

It also helps you visualize your ideal client and give them a name which makes it easier to write all.the.copy in your business.

Alternatively, consider you from a few years ago. This is especially useful if you started an online business from something you enjoy doing. For example, I know several coaches who help their clients overcome problems they themselves faced at one point in their life or career.

What pain points and struggles did you have? What was your life back then?

The thing is — our ideal clients are often people very similar to us. So it makes sense to at least consider some of our pain points, struggles, lifestyle preferences, and frustrations to get a better understanding of who we’re trying to attract.

How to Make Your Website Appeal to Your Ideal Clients

By now, you should have plenty of information about your ideal clients. Armed with all that info, how do you put it to use?

First off all, most of this information comes in handy when you’re writing copy for your website. More specifically, you’ll use information you discovered in steps 2 and 4 to write the copy for your website.

This allows you to let them know that you understand their pain and what they’re struggling with. It also helps you position your offers as the perfect solution for their problem. It’s what’s going to make them feel like you’re inside their head.

The answers from step 3 help you create a similar aesthetic for your website. Think about what all those websites that they visit have in common. What colors do they use?

You don’t have to hunt down the exact color codes but a general evaluation of bright, pastels, deep jewel tones, minimal black and white, etc. can help you craft a similar color palette.

Similarly, what style of photography is prevalent on those websites and publications? Bright and colorful? Airy? Dark and moody? Color overlays? Text on photos or no?

What tone is used on those websites? Casual? Reassuring? Hip and trendy? Snarky? Professional?

The idea here is not to copy their design and aesthetic but rather to create something similar and familiar but unique to you.

Step 5 will help you overcome any objections that they might have when it comes to purchasing decisions. What can you do to reassure them that their money will be well-spent? How can you make your website more trustworthy?

Perhaps you can share the details of your process? Add testimonials? Showcase logos of places and publications you’ve been featured in? Do you have awards that are relevant or press mentions?

And, finally, as I’ve mentioned earlier, the demographics help you visualize your ideal client so you can keep them top of mind when you’re working on your website.

After all, it’s always easier to design for one person than trying to design for hundreds of abstract people.

Final Thoughts

And that’s essentially it. That’s how you can make your website appeal to your ideal client (and create an awesome ideal client avatar to boot!).

And if you still need help with your Squarespace website, why not watch my free training that will show you five elements of a client-winning website as well as how to DIY your website super quick.

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