Think Like Your Audience
This post was made Oct 03, 2007 by Carlos del Rio
I have been bogged down trying to write an explication of the landing page that I built for the SEOmoz competition. I have been very busy lately with two very exciting clients and I have not been satisfied the results of my break down of the page so I am taking a different approach.
One of the most important elements in building usable content is offering a clear message to your viewer. Literally leaving a trail from entrance to action. To make the trail enticing you need to leave the right kind of trail. This means taking on a mindset that mimics your intended audience.
There are two comics that I think brilliantly display how to take on a persona — both authors are adults being kids:
Calvin and Hobbes – a six year-old living life with adult explanations. Calvin is a child in all actions and reaction, but his explanations of his actions all have the foresight of an adult. Bill Waterson invests the understanding of the world that an adult has into the real life of a child. That is our job, to introduce a compelling reasoning for a visitor to take the action. Giving them an excuse to feel supported in their decisions is one route to action.
Minus – a little girl with magic powers. Ryan Armand creates a world that is a very realistic interpretation of what an omnipotent child would be like; whimsical, short-on-attention, and guileless in it’s moments of destruction. As marketers we often forget that we aren’t, often, the thing we are selling. We are creating a picture around an offer; if we don’t create a perspective that entices the visitor we will end up like the balloon seller at the end of the Minus comic.
I feel the reason that both of these comics work is because both authors honestly invest themselves into living a moment as their character. You should invest a moment into being your visitor.
Interesting way to look at usability. What other ways of giving someone entrance-to-action paths are effective? Will you be discussing them in the future?
Images can be very effective. I intend to continue the series until I cover the rest of the elements of the competition page. Perhaps two or three more posts.