It’s very important to reflect on what customers plan to do on your site. Any business with an online presence needs to continuously learn about their various customer segments. Some of your segments could be more profitable customers, as well as customers coming for a sense of community or self-gratification. Your website needs to cater to both of these audiences.

Your specific customer segments will represent obvious categories which to profile customers within. The importance of this is to help you understand required features, services or even products your customers expect on your website. I call this “Thinking from the Customers Perspective”. This requires that you learn about everyone of your customer segments. And then provide a customer experience specific for  each of these segments. Over time, segments change and you should consistently be looking at the value your customers represent and in return offer them the online experience they expect. This generates loyal customers and generates steady traffic for your site.