There are more than 65 million people in the UK: that’s a huge market for any business. But it’s crucial to understand who your customers are to successfully anticipate and meet their needs. To succeed you also need to understand how, when and where your customers want to access your products and services. This will help you to reach new customers who previously couldn’t access your products and services online due to barriers like inaccessible websites that don’t work for people who don’t speak English as their first language.
Meet Generation X… Aged around 35 – 55 (born between 1965 – 1980), Generation X is the demographic group that came after the Baby Boomers and before the Millennials. They are sometimes known as the ‘MTV Generation’ because they saw the rise of music videos and the MTV channel. Active, happy, and keen to achieve a work–life balance, Generation X are often as tech-savvy as Millennials, having learned to use digital technology to their advantage, from Sat Navs to audio-books.
[Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/].
Meet Karen
Born 1978
Education: Karen has GCSEs and A Levels, as well as advanced language skills, a BSc (Hons) Marketing degree, plus an MSc Masters degree in Marketing at University of Bristol.
Career: Karen is a Marketing Director for a large public sector organisation. She has held various marketing and communications roles at different organisations, and has progressed the career ladder during a long period at her current employer.
Leisure: Karen is always active with work, family and social commitments so her leisure activities have to fit into her busy life. Because she’s always on the go she loves tech that works the way that suits her. For example, she’s a big consumer of audio books because she can listen to them whilst she’s doing something else like housework. She loves her mobile and her tablet, TV streaming on demand like Netflix, as well as classic 20th century media like CDs.
Personal: Karen lives with her husband and their children, and they own their own home.
Personality traits: Independent, flexible, hardworking
Meet Jamal
Born:1973
Education: Jamal has O Levels and a HND in IT. He also has a BSc (Hons) in IT, which he studied for through the Open University as a mature student.
Career: Self-employed IT consultant working for a range of small and large businesses across the UK. Having learned on the job in IT technician roles after he left school, Jamal has built his experience and gained qualifications to successfully work for himself.
Leisure: Jamal enjoys spending time with his family and friends, going out for food, watching sport and reading. He’s a very tech-savvy trendsetter who loves everything digital, including buying and trying out all the latest gadgets like Alexa. He’s a big user of his iPhone, iPad and iMac, which he uses in unison to organise his entire life through apps like Evernote. He’s also a big fan social media who is always posting on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, wherever he is.
Personal: Jamal lives with his wife and children, and they own their own home.
Jamal is colour blind, like approximately one in every 12 men (8%), whic means he looks for tech with accessible features, such as sufficient colour contrast.
Personality traits: Industrious, adaptable, entrepreneurial
5 things you need to know about your Generation X customers
- On average Generation X spend more than three hours online per day. (Source: OFCOM Report, pp68).
- On average Generation X spend more than two hours online on a smartphone per day. (Source: OFCOM Report, pp67).
- There are more than 17.5 million people in Generation X, making them the largest generational group of people in the UK. [Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/281174/uk-population-by-age/].
- There are 13.9 million disabled people in the UK, 19 % of working age adults are disabled (Source: Family Resources Survey 2016/17 – https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/family-resources-survey-financial-year-201617)
- The spending power of families with at least one person with a disability is estimated to be over £200 billion a year (Source: Department for Work and Pensions – https://www.gov.uk/government/news/high-street-could-be-boosted-by-212-billion-purple-pound-by-attracting-disabled-people-and-their-families)
Generation X tend to be busy managing work, children and elderly family commitments, so they need your website content to work for them wherever they are, at whatever time, on any device. They also love digital tech that helps make their life easier, ranging from voice activated tech, to apps that help them organise their entire lives.
Recite Me, the web experience your customers want.
