A persona is a fictional character that describes the needs, goals, attitudes and behaviors of a segment of your audience. It is a tool used to provide a clearer picture of who visits your site or uses your services, what they expect to help or find answers to. The insights you get when you create your personas help you make better decisions and communicate sharper.
There are different ways to create personas , depending on whether they will be used to communicate more efficiently or when creating a new website, your personas can have a little different structure and content. But the purpose is always the same, to give a clearer picture of your target groups, what they need and how to support them in achieving their goals.
1. The analysis lays the foundation for your persona
As with many other things, basic work is most important. Your personas are only as effective as the research they are based on. In order to create as realistic representatives as possible of your prioritized audiences, you should therefore spend time collecting and analyzing data. A mix of qualitative and quantitative surveys gives you many valuable insights. In addition, you usually need to fill in with qualified guesses. Some ways to retrieve data are via:
- data from Google Analytics.
- communication and contact with existing customers, such as newsletter newsletters.
- interviews with customers or user surveys, such as on the website or in connection with purchases.
- sales team experience, or other groups with customer contact.
2. Segment all data in different personas
A persona represents the overall image of a segment of your audience, not your entire audience. Therefore, after collection, you need to review and group the information. A related question is – how many are needed? The general recommendation is to create three to five personas that represent your target audience. There are enough to cover the majority of your customers, while being limited enough to distinguish them from each other.
3. List demographic information
Simplest is to start with demographics and here you can get many insights from Google Analytics , provided you associate it with your site. You’ll find information about where your visitors live, their gender, age, and the technique they use to visit your site. Use these insights together with the basis of surveys and interviews. In addition, you usually need to make a pair of qualified guesses that fill in any gaps. This section may include:
- Name
- image
- Age
- Sex
- Relationship status (single, cohabitant, married, child)
- Job title and possibly short information about the company (size, type of company, etc.)
- Income
- Residence
Name and image should be the easiest, but it’s actually easy to get caught and overlook these parts. Try not to make it too difficult for yourself, you can choose any name as long as it feels like a real person to refer to. “Well, Malin would not want it, she’d rather …”.
4. Describe the person’s background
The next step is to describe the person’s background. Here is the rule “more is more” at the beginning, write down everything you know and then look what’s relevant. This section may include:
- responsibilities
- Training
- Previous career
- Values and attitudes
5. Describe cards for driving forces and challenges
What is important for the person, connected to role, career and / or industry? Defining goals is important because it gives you an insight into how your customers goals and goals can meet you. Another perspective may be to list the accessibility needs of the person who visits your site. Then describe what drives and motivates your persona, what makes them frustrated? It gives you a picture of what you should do more to facilitate your work and what to avoid because it does not give the right effect. This section may include:
- Goal
- Needs
- driving forces
- challenges
- Crucial factors for purchase
6. Add skills and personality traits
To quickly get a sense of who your persona is, add a quote about what matters most to them in relation to your business. You can also add other relevant information, such as distinctive features, social networks, and digital maturity. In the interviews with the target audience you have probably begun to get a sense of who they are and how they act. For online dating, reports from statistical companies are also available. This section may include:
- quotation
- Identifier, thus distinctive character features
- Social networks
- Onliebeteende
- Technology, digital and social platforms
7. Visualize your persona
The last step is to put everything together in a personal description. You choose whether you want to create more simple personas in PowerPoint / Key Note , or spend more time designing them , for example, using InDesign.
