Copywriting Basics:

       Defining the Target Audience and Goal of Your Website

Picture your average, ordinary online reader as a heat-seeking missile -- they fly through your site at super-sonic speed, zoning in on things that are relevant to them, while ignoring everything else. The only thing on your reader's mind is: how do I get the product or service I need, as quickly as possible, and at the best possible price (preferably free)? Like the guided missile, your prospective client will disregard all other material on your site that does not address those concerns. Plus, if they don't find what they want fast enough, they will click off your site altogether, in hopes of finding what they want somewhere else. So the bottom line is that you have to write and design your website to address your client’s needs or else you've failed the game.

Basic copywriting rule number one: define your target audience and the goal of your website.

Before you write one word of copy for your website, you need to sit down and do some planning. First you need to define your target audience -- what is the age, gender, and social background of your target audience? And what are their problems and needs? Next, you need to decide what the goal of your website will be -- what is the purpose of your website? How will you be solving the problems of your target audience?

For example, my last client decided that the target audience of his sandwich shop’s website was going to be the office workers in his local neighborhood and that his goal was to increase lunchtime catering sales to this group. Once this was decided, the website was written to address this audience and further this specific goal. With a precise target audience and goal in mind, his website had a direction to go in. It also had a way of defining its success (increased lunchtime sales).

Business owners who are launching their first websites are usually a little overwhelmed by the process and sometimes try to put in content that shoots off in too many different directions. They try to cover too many goals, address the concerns of too wide an audience and end up spreading themselves too thin. It’s better to be specific and set your sites on a particular goal and audience than to try to be all things to all people.


Once you’ve defined your audience and goal, the next challenge is to keep every page on your website geared toward that.

It’s sometimes easy to get lost in all the details of writing. Sometimes you can fall off track without realizing it. After all, as you write a website, you’re constantly doing research, pondering on grammar and the mechanics of writing, trying to learn about products and services, and if you are doing SEO, then you are also preoccupied with keywords and density. Sometimes it’s easy to get lost (especially if you are working on more than one website at a time.). So it’s a great idea to write down your target audience and the goal of the site on a post-it note and stick it on the wall beside your computer to remind you to stay on track. That way you will forego adding irrelevant material to your work and will write 'killer copy' that hits its target every time.

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