Design is an important element in the development of your website. How a site looks and feels can determine if a viewer is interested or not in your product or service. Usually the visitor makes that determination within 3 seconds. That's right, I said 3 seconds. That doesn't give you a lot of time to get your message across.

The first step in the website design [http://www.marcy.com/blog] process is to define your target audience. If you say that 'everyone is my audience', then you need to go back to the drawing board and refine your answer. No product or service is needed by everyone. In fact, you could waste a lot of time and money finding that out the hard way. So do your homework now by clearly defining your target audience. Here are some basic questions to ask yourself:

- Who does my product or service help?

- Am I targeting consumers or businesses?

- Local or national?

- Is it men or women?

- What is the age-group?

- Do they buy my product or service online?

- How often do they buy?

- Who do they buy from now?

- What are my projected sales figures for the first year?

- What is the total market sales for my product or service?

Website design begins with knowing your target audience better than anyone. And most of the data is available on the Internet. Your competitor's website can also provide a wealth of information. If you already have a website up and running, and you're not getting the desired results, then redefining your target audience can help.

Keep in mind that the smaller the target audience the better the results. Just like in archery, many people can see the target, but the most successful hit the bulls-eye. Next in this series about website design, we'll discuss how your competitors play an important role.

For more information about website design visit the Marcy Design website.