When working on the development of a website, it is not only important to focus on how beautiful and easy to use it is. The goal is to create something suitable for the people who will use it, and therefore it is necessary to immediately empathize with their needs and thoughts. In this article, we explain how to do this with the kit for building personas.
What does the audience want to get from our website?
At ARS, we always design our online pages starting from an in-depth analysis of those who will use them. We immediately question the people, the context, and the content, and from there we build the best experience for our audience. The MANTRA is: the right content, designed for the right person, that fits the right context. If you are interested, we have written an article on how to create effective websites in 7 steps.
What should be done to design the ideal experience for our users?
Let’s first focus on people: they are complex, real, full of contradictions, each with their own peculiarities. Everyone likes different things and behaves in a special way. The way the target audience uses a site or a product is often different from what is expected, which is why designing the user experience is neither trivial nor immediate. We must immediately ask ourselves who our audience is; how old they are; where they come from; what their goal is; what their state of mind is. We must be clear about the problems and needs of users even before they communicate them to us, to anticipate their needs.
To gather this information, it is necessary to conduct research, analyze data, and speak directly with people. We often overlook this aspect, thinking we already know everything about them or that our opinion is sufficient, but beware: we could easily get the strategy wrong.
Let’s trace the profile of our audience as the first step of the web project, giving a face and a name to our users: personas are fictional profiles that represent the essential traits, needs, aspirations, behaviors, and interests that can be generalized for a category of users.
Every site could have several reference personas.
To build our profiles, we start from the observation of real users (through questionnaires and interviews), but also from the observation of the results of our web and social statistics. The information collected is generally age, gender, origin, income, interests, and needs.
Profiles do not necessarily have to be super detailed; the important thing is that they help us define the reasons for one or more actions. At the end of this article, you can download a practical kit for building personas.
Why use personas?
Once the reference personas have been identified, we can create usage scenarios for our site that will allow us to empathize with the user and design a stimulating and empathetic browsing experience for them. We will effectively respond to their needs and, at the same time, achieve our related business goals.
Are you ready to build your personas?
Give your audience a face right away by filling out the persona building kit we have prepared for you!
The creation of a Buyer Persona
As mentioned previously, buyer personas are imaginary profiles that represent stereotypes of users who interact with your company.
Creation consists of combining characteristics, dreams, hobbies, fears, goals, and desires of your typical customers. This allows you to combine behavioral information, thanks to target analysis, with psychological information, to understand “how” to best communicate your product/service.
To define the profile of a buyer persona, you can base it on these elements
1. Character traits: these concern the character of your typical customer, such as whether they are shy, emotional, generous, and so on.
2. Activities: what hobbies do they practice? Are they sedentary activities like reading or do they require movement like the gym? Do they practice any sport alone or in company?
3. Interests: these are deeper aspects than a simple passion, enough to influence one’s actions, such as an interest in environmental protection or financial investments.
4. Opinions: this refers to what your ideal customer thinks about any topic, such as free shipping, reviews, or the price of a product.
5. Behavior: how does the individual react in response to a particular situation or stimulus? If a person is particularly generous, when they have to buy something as a gift, they may be willing to spend more than necessary to make a loved one happy, whereas they would not buy the same product for themselves as it is simply considered “expensive”.
6. Habits: does your typical customer perform repetitive actions like reading before going to sleep or drinking a cup of coffee every morning?
A routine is difficult to influence, but it is always good to know it.
7. Lifestyle: it is very complex to define a person’s lifestyle because it is the combination of their ambitions, character, perception of self, and society. Is the typical user sedentary or do they love to move, do they smoke or not, are they religious or atheist?
8. Attitudes: this concerns the predisposition to respond to something in a favorable or unfavorable way. If your site’s app were to change graphically, how would your typical customer react?
9. Values: these principles regulate, consciously or unconsciously, an individual’s way of life. The ideal would be to align with those of the typical user as much as possible to avoid unpleasant situations.
10. Prejudices: a prejudice is an opinion formulated even before having all the elements to evaluate a situation. Being aware of any prejudices rooted in the person’s mind can help you improve your business.
11. Fears: it is a primary emotion (you can learn more about the topic in this article of ours) that influences the behavior of a living being, pushing it to defend itself. By using this lever ethically, effective results can be obtained in the short term. You have certainly read phrases like “Last products left” or “Only 3 rooms available”.
To obtain this information, you can use interviews, surveys, or specific activities such as focus groups.
Practical example of a Buyer Persona
Once you have obtained all the information for building your buyer persona profile, the last step is to put it all into practice.
Using the data from the target example mentioned above, we have:
1. Appearance: use an image that most closely matches the stereotype of your typical customer; this helps you in filling out the subsequent entries.
Name: Riccardo
Gender: male
Age: 36 years old
Status: in a relationship
Language: Italian
Educational background: computer science
Favorite colors: blue
Character traits: he is friendly, stubborn, and self-confident. He loves being in company.
Job: he is an employee in a company that configures and repairs computers. He lives in a situation of total stability.
2. Activities: he loves playing five-a-side football during the week with his friends and goes trekking on the weekend
3. Interests: he pays close attention to technological innovations across the board through dedicated forums, social media, and industry magazines. He follows all the updates of his favorite team. He is very careful about respecting the environment and tries to contribute starting from small things like waste separation or using aluminum water bottles during sports activities. He does not like reading books.
4. Opinions: he relies heavily on human technological progress to solve problems, thereby improving lifestyle. He believes that pollution is a problem that should be managed better. He does not believe in religion.
5. Behavior: he tends to buy products more for himself than for others. He considers physical appearance an essential element for falling in love.
6. Habits: he uses social media daily, especially as soon as he wakes up and before going to sleep. He follows a healthy diet, although he sometimes makes exceptions if he is in company.
7. Lifestyle: he is always on the move, loves being outdoors and in contact with nature. He hates smoking.
8. Attitudes: he has a positive approach toward novelties and changes. He tends not to give importance to others’ judgment and never asks for advice. When he makes a mistake, he tries not to repeat it again.
9. Values: he believes in mutual respect and family. He maintains that to be happy one must take care of oneself, which is why he tries to keep fit through movement.
10. Prejudices: he never buys from sites with a poorly maintained design because he does not consider them reliable. He believes that free shipping and reviews are the two main factors that guide him in his purchasing process.
11. Fears: he fears being without internet for fear of being “excluded from the world”. He is afraid of losing his economic stability.
This is a practical example of elements to consider for building your buyer personas.
Try to get as much information as possible to identify the various types of profiles that interact with your company. Once this is done, you need to use the information to optimize your communication!
If you are interested in the topic, we also recommend reading this in-depth look at marketing insights!
Do you want to conduct in-depth research on your audience?
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