How to Design a Website around your Ideal Buyer’s Communication Style
Our company produces copywriting and customized websites for wedding pros. But that’s just what you see on the surface. The core work we do centers on how to communicate with your favorite clients.
That’s because effective websites are designed around your perfect buyer’s preferences. What motivates them to make decisions in life? With their wedding? With people who offer the services you offer? What triggers their desires – and their fears?
How do they process the world around them? How do they filter the 35,000 decisions they make every single day? Or the 35,000 marketing messages that come at them every week?
If you don’t know these things then you’re just putting words and images into the ether. What they gravitate toward is anyone’s guess.
And hope isn’t a successful business strategy.
Your brand is more than colors and fonts
We hear people in the wedding industry talk a lot about “rebranding.”
The way it’s used means changing the look of the marketing material. Fonts, colors and logos are always at the top of this list. Some businesses will go deeper and overhaul the look of the website, or even change the color story in their IG grid.
We believe the visual elements of a brand are important. They create and connect with your audience’s emotions, and can attract or repel in a matter of microseconds. Done well on a website, and they let visitors know they’re in the right storefront. Done poorly, and they’ll scare away potential clients before they ever enter.
But your brand isn’t just branding. It’s not just what it looks like. It’s also what you say. And not just the words, but also the messages.
Like visual branding provokes emotions in the eye of the beholder, your brand’s communication approach also leaves an imprint on people who visit your online storefront. Done well on a website, it can build comfort and confidence in visitors. Done poorly, and it won’t connect, making it easy for the potential client to bounce off the site without taking action.
How to communicate through site design
A fundamental tenet in our work with wedding pros is to identify your perfect buyer type and then design everything around it. (If you’re not familiar with the 4 buyer types we use in our work with clients, listen to this podcast episode on Weddings for Real.)
Here’s the short version: People’s brains are wired differently to send and receive data. We have a dominant way of communicating with the world, either through people, information, action, or ideas. In the wedding world, we see four primary buyer types.
Relater – Focus on people and relationships
Analyzer – Focus on information
Boss – Focus on getting things done
Dreamer – Focus on ideas and possibilities
Every vendor has a lot to share about what we do, how it helps our clients, and why couples should choose us over others. Before we start talking about these things, though, we want to shape the message and how it’s delivered around how your ideal client processes the world.
What you communicate and how you communicate it will impact your level of success more than the service you deliver. If you can’t get people to buy what you sell, they’ll never get the chance to see how incredible your work is.
In other words, if you can’t explain why they should pick you, you’ll never get the chance to do it for them.
“How” you share your “why” is the lynchpin to connect the two – and that’s your brand communication strategy.
Buyer type impact on website design
So, what does this all have to do with your website design?
Once you move past the style kit and branding guide, your site design focus should consider how you present the information. Images and copy are key, but for now I want to laser in on “wireframing.”
Wireframing is how your site is structured and laid out for users to experience. Basically, take out the actual selection for images and copy and buttons, etc., and what you’re left with are the placeholders for these to go into. It’s the outline for you to put in your content.
Whether you pick a template or custom-design a site, it’s crucial you structure the user experience around your perfect buyer’s communication style. But it’s not as simple as you’d imagine.
Here’s an example of how a certain buyer type prefers experiencing the first few seconds on your website.
Dreamers are motivated by status. They want recognition in their peer group and will create a wedding that’ll wow their guests because it fills them with esteem. They also want others to see them as fashionable and successful. When they communicate with others, it’s largely through visuals and without all the details.
Knowing this, you’d do well to create a home-page experience that immediately taps into this motivation.
Include a hero image with a fabulously dressed couple in a desirable venue or destination
Showcase awards or distinctions early and with badges, not words
Include a short testimonial from a high-end planner or venue, or from a wedding publication editor
Keep the copy to a minimum, use plenty of headlines, and make body paragraphs no more than two or three lines
Make call-to-action buttons easy to see and exciting to click
But Dreamers aren’t everyone’s ideal client. Many of you prefer to work with couples you can connect with, the Relater buyer type.
Relaters are motivated by meaningful relationships. They want to be with family and friends at their weddings, especially after a pandemic kept them separated too long. They can also get overwhelmed by decision-making and stressed out by group dynamics in wedding planning. When they hire vendors, they want someone who cares about them and their celebration.
This different buyer type needs a different wireframe for the homepage:
Include a hero image with a tender moment between the couple or the primary buyer and their parents
Include a testimonial about how comfortable they felt working with you
Introduce yourself early on the home page, and include a few personal details
Use copy with descriptive language that evokes emotions
Include a step-by-step preview of what it’s like to work with you
The Boss buyer type and Analyzer buyer type want something different than either of these approaches, but we’re not going to dive into those here and now.
The key to designing an effective website includes a beautiful style kit. But what your brand communicates is so much more than fonts, colors, and a logo. Plus, how you share what you do needs to be considered when you layout your site.
If you need help researching and identifying the psychographics for your ideal clients, reach out to us. If you want a site designed around how they prefer to process the world, reach out to us. If you want copy filled with messages that resonate with their motivations, reach out to us. If you want a complete site designed with all these in mind, reach out to us.
We’re here to help you communicate your brand to ideal clients.