We have recently witnessed strong advancement in the field of website layout and design. Everything evolves. Flash movies, gigantic animations and other graphic media have become increasingly widespread over the years.

However, in the effort to have the ‘coolest' website layout design, website owners tend to forget to whom they are creating their website for: their target audience.

The target audience consists of the people you want to visit your website. And this is one of the crucial areas to consider. Moreover, the goal is to increase visitors, make them stay for an extended period of time, purchase items or select your business' service, return to your website in the future, become a regular visitor or customer, and even recommend you to others.

The success or failure of your website is significantly determined by your audience. Hence, when designing for your target audience, consider the demographics of the people who you want to visit your site. These demographics include gender, ethnicity, race, age, education level, and even fiscal siatuation.

This is where market research is of help, to identify your audience.

Then, there are tools to determine the exact numbers and statistics once the website is launched, allowing you to see if you are attracting your audience as expected. These are tools like Google Analytics, Alexa, Quantcast, Goingup and others that provide detailed reports of the types of people that cover your REAL audience.

This is a great way to make sure your target audience is actually the audience that is viewing your website. You cannot always make everyone who visits your website stay or return, but when your website is concentrated on the correct target audience, then you increase repeat visitor chances greatly.