Through the efforts of companies like Vertical Leap providing fully managed search engine marketing, your website is achieving great rankings and traffic increases from month to month.  Taking advantage of this qualified traffic means providing your visitors with a website that gives users content they searched for and leads them to hopefully utilize your products and services.  In other words how best to use this traffic to convert them into new customers and how to best appeal to a broad section of people.  Let's take a look at the four different personality types and how the design of the website satisfies each of those personalities.

Personality Types

There are four basic personality types:  Competitive, Spontaneous, Humanistic and Methodical.  The Competitive type is more business and power oriented and focuses on learning.  They want information presented in an efficient and organized fashion. The Spontaneous type is quick to decide and somewhat undisciplined in approach.  They want to see credible opinions and insist on immediate gratification.  The Humanistic type is also undisciplined but takes much longer to make decisions.  They prefer more descriptive explanations with superlatives included.  The Methodical type is very business-like and extremely detail oriented.  Their decisions usually involve the review of hard facts.

It's possible to appeal to all four personality types within the same website.  Based on your audience you may not wish to focus on all four types.  For example if your audience is in a scientific arena the website design may cater to just the Competitive and Methodical types.  Let's take a look at each type and how and where they prefer to have information on a website presented to them.

Website Design for Each Personality Type

Competitive:

Competitive types are the most difficult to satisfy.  They expect information to be provided that is honest, accurate and proven to be credible.  Don't try to pull one over on the competitive types because they can sense it immediately.  The information for the Competitive type must be at the top of the page because they won't scroll down to locate the information.  The good news is that typically the information provided for this type will also satisfy the remaining personality types.  The most important element for the Competitive type is what can your company do for me?

Spontaneous:

The Spontaneous visitors deal more with perceptions and appreciate a more personalized approach presented in an exciting fashion.  Presenting products, services or ideas in a traditional fashion doesn't appeal to this personality type.  Since this type is quick to make a decision they tend to read very little and prefer scanning.  Information for the Spontaneous type should be presented after the information for the Competitive type.  This is also an excellent place to explain your Unique Value Proposition.  The most important element for the Spontaneous type is why should I buy your product or service?

Humanistic:

Now it's time to address the needs of the Humanistic type.  Since they are slow to reach a decision they will take the time to read the information that you provided for the two types above.  They are willing to continue to read and prefer to learn more about the company, current and previous clients and read testimonials.  These types are definitely the touchy feely types and enjoy material presented with a personal touch that captures their emotions.  If you have testimonials now's a great time to add them.  Consider placing them along the right hand side of the page, which has become somewhat of a standard for placement of testimonials.  The most important element for the Humanistic type is whom have you sold your products or services to?

Methodical:

Like the Humanistic type the Methodical type is slow to decide.  They love to do research and insist on the hard facts presented in an organized and logical fashion.  Forget about the personal touch and just give them the facts.  This type will read everything before making a decision, which means they will certainly digest the information for the types above.  This type makes a decision only after completing an exhaustive review.  This information is certainly ok to place below the fold because this type doesn't mind scrolling.  The most important element for the Methodical type is how does buying your product or service solve my particular problem.

Summary

Catering to the different personality types within a website is certainly possible and highly desirable.  Understanding the percentage breakdown of the personality types that visit your website may not be possible. So by trying to design a website that meets the needs of your visitors despite their personality type ensures you won't be loosing a segment of the market and takes advantage of all the traffic to your site.