Who is Your Site for Anyway? Use Personas to Guide Your Customer-Centric Journey

Who is Your Site for Anyway?

Use Personas to Guide Your Customer-Centric Journey

Anyone participate in online communities or social networks?

The Enforcer

•Also known as your mod team

•Stand behind the policy of the company / community

•Accepts members, bans bad behavior, and ensures community is safe

The White Knight•Comes to the rescue

•Always defends people / brands

•Righteous or optimistic

The Devourer

•Consumes information in massive quantities

•Participates in many social networking communities

•Sporadic participation

•Recycle information

The Lurker

•Reads, listens, or watches content within the community

•Never contributes

•Visits often

Your Personas Won’t Be as Stratified By One Feature or Attitude

Agenda

What are Personas

What Personas are Not

Why Personas

Approach to Creating Personas

User Lifecycle

Applications of Personas

Persona Examples

WHAT ARE PERSONAS?

What are Personas

Not based on one individual - but a conglomerate of data

Personas are NOT real people

However, personas ARE based on real information -attitudes and behaviors of real users

Understand Your User

• Motivations

• Goals

• Needs

• Decision Making Factors

• People / Influencers

• Expectations

• Preferences

• Demographics Information

• Brand Attitudes

Basic Anatomy of a Persona

Quote

Needs / Objectives

Web History

Demographic

Description

WHAT PERSONAS ARE NOT

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Differences Between Market Segments and Personas

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PersonasMarketing

Sell to people

Age

Income Gender

Otherdemographics

Goals

Behaviors

Attitudes

Understand how people

will actually use the site

Usage

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Differences Between Market Segments and Personas

Offline Target

Audience

Web Users

Those who use your product offline are not always the ones using it online

What Personas ARE NOT

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PersonasMarketing

Market Segments

Personas CAN BE

Segment A

Segment C

Segment B

Segment D

Encompasses attributes of

Segments A & C

Persona 1

Encompasses attributes of

Segments D & B

Persona 2

Combinations of

cross segments to

encompass all

functionality and

content needs

WHY PERSONAS?

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Allow You to Focus on Things That Matter

Allow You to Come to Consensus

Allow You to Be More Efficient

Personas Lead to Better Decisions

Personas for DesignInformation architecture, interaction design, visual design,

content development, user testing

Personas for MarketingFramework for marketing campaigns, branding,

messaging

Personas for StrategyFramework for business decisions,

offerings, channel usage, features

APPROACH TO CREATING PERSONAS

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Direct Methods of Gathering Data

• Surveys

• Intercept Studies

• User Testing

• Interviews with Users

• Field Studies

Talk to your users.

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Indirect Methods of Gathering Data

• Server Logs

• Customer Service Reps

• Support Logs

• Web Analytics

• 2nd Hand Research

Not as good but better than nothing.

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Qualitative vs. Quantitative

• Need Qualitative and Quantitative Data

• Quantitative = Numbers

– Identify trends and narrow your data

• Qualitative = Focus

– Provide anecdotes to bring your personas to life

Source: Molecular

Segment Personas by Priority

Segmentation by Goals

• What are different people trying to do on the site?

Segmentation by Behaviors and Attitudes

How do users differ based on what they do or how they think?

Behaviors:

• Frequency of visits to the site

• Internet experience

• Use of competitors

Attitudes:

• Knowledge about subject domain

• Motivators affecting users’ likelihood

of converting or not

• Perception of the company/brand

USER LIFECYCLE

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Example Cycle for Traveler

Based on Interaction with Website

Planning (research)

Shopping (compare)

Booking (purchase)

Post Booking / Pre Travel

Active Traveling

Post Traveling / Evangelism

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Map Needs to Cycle

• What are the User Needs at Each Cycle?

– Website Needs

• Content

• Functionality

• Social Media

– Internal Needs

• Goals

• Tasks

• Influencers

APPLICATIONS OF PERSONAS

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Features & Functionality : Brainstorming for First Time Buyer

Home Buyer’s Goals:

• Learn about the home-buying process

• Find out what she can afford

• Discover what areas of Atlanta are desirable

• Find a house that matches her criteria

Business Objectives:

•Visit the site often

•Register for email alerts and newsletters

•Subscribe to premium services

•Recommend the site to others

Possible Features and Content:

• Introductory how-to articles

• Glossary of jargon

• Videos and podcasts

• Success stories

• Q&A with experts

• Message board

• Blogs

• Rent vs. own calculator

• Local experts to call/meet

• Checklists to print

• Interactive quizzes

• Common mistakes

• Animated cartoons

• Book recommendations

Structure

• Sitemap

• User Scenarios

• Workflows

• Wireframe

• Content Mapping

Structure: Sitemap

Structure: User Scenarios

Search for Houses

Level: User goal

Primary actor: Francis the First-Time Home Buyer

Preconditions: Francis arrives at home page or House Search landing page

Main success scenario:

1. Francis enters city and state or zip code.

2. System uses auto-completion to show options below search field as Francis types. System shows up to 10 matching city names in order of number of homes for sale in each city. Francis can click a city name to select that city.

3. Francis selects minimum and maximum price values from drop-down menus.

4. System validates selected values.

5. Francis selects number of bedrooms and bathrooms from drop-down menus.

6. Francis submits search.

7. System validates required fields before submitting query.

Diagram

Stories

Work Flows

Example Discovery Phase DeliverablesStructure: Workflows

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Structure: Wireframe

Content

•Articles or Product Descriptions•Instructional Text•Documentation and Help•Error Messages•Imagery•Sound•Video

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Content Mapping by Persona

Design

• Themes

• Imagery

• Color

• Font

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Professional

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Feminine

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Trendy

In Summary…

Personas Should…

• Explain Key Differences Observed Among Users

• Be Different Enough From Each Other

• Feel Like Real People

• Be Described Quickly

• Cover All Users

• Clearly Affect Decision Making

Questions?

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