If you think that great looking models and a dazzling design alone will sell your website, think again. What happens if you’re not providing the content that user’s really want. That’s why making content that reaches your target audiences is becoming increasingly important. This is especially true as adult websites are facing increasing competition and a bleak economy, which is affecting all sectors including the adult industry.Creating compelling content is more than just getting a concept together and expecting users to buy it. If you want more long-term success, the best way is to make sure you understand your target user base.

For example, if you run a gay website, you might just think that your target audience is strictly gay males within a certain age group. But such content may appeal also to the following users:

• Bisexual men


• Men who consider themselves straight, but secretly enjoy gay content


• Women who enjoy watching two guys going at it

Understanding these user groups can help you target content to various audiences if you understand their goals and interests. To do that, a typical approach is to interview who you consider your target audiences. This is done through a series of interviews, either face to face or via the phone. Basically the process is to sit down with a user and ask them a series of questions to identify the following:

• Basic demographic information – e.g. age group


• Lifestyles – their sexual preferences


• User goals


• Types of content that appeals to them


• How frequently they would use such content


• Where they view the content

The outcome is to create user profiles known as user personas. A typical persona will help you shed light on who your target users are, their goals, motivations, and what types of content interests them. Think of the persona as a fictitious profile of a real user group.

Based on the above website scenario, here’s an example:

Linda is a college educated bisexual woman, 28 years old, who has a straight boyfriend. She is very open-minded and enjoys the company of both straight and gay males.

Since her boyfriend travels frequently, she finds porn to be a good outlet. But she also likes to release herself sometimes at work with the door closed.

Mostly she prefers to watch lesbian content, but also is fascinated with gay sex.

Linda prefers more romantic scenes, with lots of kissing, and nipple play. Cock size isn’t as important to her as the type of male she enjoys to watch. Larger size cocks seem less natural to her. Her favorite males are thin femmy types, who are clean-shaven. However, she also enjoys scenes with males being forced to serve other males. This could be at the hand of another man, or preferably woman. One of her biggest turn-on’s is watching a sub male be forced to eat his own semen or be instructed on how to suck cock.

She doesn’t mind subscribing to a website, but isn’t willing to unless she sees all the content that is available. Linda also wants a chance to suggest other content, and interact with other members.

As you can see, the persona covers a lot that is helpful for both the site’s content producers and designers. For example, if we know that Linda watches porn at work, it may be better to embed the video. That way, the sample clips aren’t downloaded to the computer.

Although creating a persona sounds easy, and is common in many business web projects, this may pose some challenges for adult websites. Let’s face it, most people don’t like to be open about their sexual preferences and experiences. For example, how comfortable is someone to say they like to masturbate watching a male eating his own semen?

Yet, if you’re planning to provide good content, you can’t assume that if you film it, people will come. Some users want more than just 10-inch dicks. You also can’t assume that just because you feature a midget or grandma, people are gonna buy it over and over. Granted, they may for curiosity, but with the tough economy, and free content, will they?

That’s why doing such user research is important to ensure that users are getting the type of content they really want. However, it also ensures that your website doesn’t lose out on missed content opportunities.

As an example, I recently discovered a female dom bondage site that has a superb collection of women who dominate males. It is marketed as a bondage site, which makes sense for the types of content they offer. However, the site also has a small but excellent selection of women who make men do such things as suck cock, get fucked by another man, and make the men swallow their own semen. And as we’ve seen in the above user persona, some women do enjoy the thought of such gay oriented content.

Now, if this site wanted to broaden its base, it could create a niche site that focuses only on the this theme – something that suggests males forced to suck cock and be a sissy whore. In a sense, it’s bondage with forced homosexual acts. The site would be marketed as both a gay site and bondage. That way, it would get people who like either or both. As a result, the site would benefit since they’ve reached out to a new target group. Doing the persona would have revealed this already. Or, if you’re operating a gay website, you may be missing out on opportunities to lure females since you’re not giving them the type of content they want to see.

How many personas do you need? It’s a standard practice to usually create 4-6 user personas that target all your expected user groups. Once you are armed with this information, you’ll be better able to develop content for these user groups and create a design that encourages users to buy and stay.

So, what’s the best way to create adult-based personas?

To be honest there isn’t much research or documentation available in this area. While there are books on user personas, none talk about it for adult websites. Notwithstanding, it would seem that adult websites could employ the same type of techniques as shown above. The challenge would be to find people who are open and willing to talk about porn, and how they’d use it.

Having conducted such interviews and persona’s for business websites, here is what I feel are the main issues you’d need to address:

• Confidentiality. Typically, a person reveals both their name and possibly occupation and place of employment. However, for adult-oriented topics, this might mean that the person doesn’t reveal their real name to the interviewer, or where they work.


• Comfort level. Sex talk between a male and female is not typical, especially among strangers. One approach would be to have a woman interview another female. Or, if it’s for a gay oriented site for a user who is not out of the closet, a woman interviewing might appear to be less threatening.


• Probing. In general, probing a person to get more information is common in a typical business user persona interview. However, for an adult-oriented topic, a person may still be reluctant to say what they want to. That’s why it’s important to the interviewer to make sure that they wait for the person to answer the question without being too forceful.


• Being non-judgmental. Before an interview actually begins, it’s common to explain to the person the reason for the interview, and what they hope to achieve. But you also need to set the record straight that you aren’t making any judgments on that person. One thing that I’d say to add during this section would say something like “now I also want to reassure you that what you say here isn’t being evaluated one way or another.” This is typical of any interview, but I think of even more importance here. You need to make sure you don’t react one way or another. If so, you run the risk of imparting your own opinion into the interview.