The User Is Always Right: Making Personas Work for Your Site

Making Personas Work for Your Site Steve Mulder

Business results depend on satisfying users You are not your user Learning about users requires direct contact Knowledge about users must be actionable Decisions should be based on users

Personas bring focus

Personas build empathy

Personas encourage consensus

Personas create efficiency

Personas lead to better decisions Personas for Design Information architecture, interaction design, visual design, content development, user testing Personas for Marketing Framework for marketing campaigns, branding, messaging, market research Personas for Strategy Framework for business decisions, offerings, channel usage, features

Creating Personas

The Landscape of User Research and Testing User Interviews QUALITATIVE (INSIGHTS) GOALS & ATTITUDES (ASPIRATIONAL) BEHAVIORS (ACTUAL) User Surveys Usability Testing Site Traffic/ Log File Analysis Eye Tracking Field Studies (Contextual Inquiry) Shadow Shopping (Shop-Along) Intercepts Customer Support Data Card Sorting Focus Groups Diary/Journal Studies Participatory Design User Advisory Panel Automated Usability Testing User Reports Collages QUANTITATIVE (VALIDATION) A/B Testing

Qualitative Personas

User Interviews
Cross-section of online customers, offline customers, non-customers, other audiences
15 interviews is a good starting point
Informal, loosely structured conversations

User Interviews: Topics
History with the company
Intro to company, usage/purchase history, early impressions
Domain experience and knowledge
Domain expertise, competitors, share of wallet
Goals and behaviors
Needs/triggers for usage, typical process , channel usage, feature and content usage, gaps, wish list
Attitudes and motivators
Description of experience, likes/dislikes, influencers, psychological drivers
Opportunities
Reaction to new ideas, features, content, improvements
Observation of actual behavior (field studies, usability tests)

Segmentation Goals Behaviors Attitudes

Segmentation: Marketing vs. Personas
Marketing
Sell to people
Personas Understand how people will actually use the site Age Income Gender Other demographics Goals Behaviors Attitudes

Segmentation by Goals
What are different people trying to do on the site?
Hierarchy of Goals
Other goals:
Buy commercial property
Find an apartment
Sell a house
Be happy Be independent Buy a house Understand process Learn about points Motivator Motivator Goal Need Task
Get a mortgage loan
Get insurance
Find a moving company

Segmentation by Behaviors and Attitudes
How do users differ based on what they do or how they think?
Behaviors:
Frequency of real estate activity
Frequency of visits to the site
Channel usage for various needs
Use of competitors
Attitudes:
Knowledge about real estate
Motivators affecting users’ likelihood to buy or sell
Perception of the company/brand
Etc.

Explore different combinations
Frequency of real estate activity Knowledge about real estate The risk-taker who thinks he knows more than he actually does The novice who needs a lot of guidance The pro who wants to use site tools and doesn’t need help The smart one who wants validation of what she already knows

FedEx segmentation
Level of preparation Desired level of personal interaction Me

Segmentation: The Tests
Your segments should…
Explain key differences you’ve observed among users
Be different enough from each other
Feel like real people
Be described quickly
Cover all users
Clearly affect decision making

Qualitative Personas with Quantitative Validation

Surveys

Surveys: Who
Cross-section of users
Goal: 100+ completions per segment
17,000 emails @ 3% completion rate = 500 completions
Incentives and reminders can boost completion rate

Surveys: What
Questions to gather data on segmentation attributes (dependent variables)
Goal for visiting site (buy home, find apartment, etc.)
Frequency of site visits for each possible user goal
Importance of each possible goal to the user
Knowledge of real estate
Previous real estate experiences
User’s self-perception of real estate expertise
Questions to test the segmentation against (independent variables)
Other behaviors (site/channel usage, feature usage, etc.)
Other attitudes (toward company, about self, etc.)
New features and content to test

Surveys: What
Recommended order of questions:
Current goals, usage, and behavior, including channel usage
History with the site and company
User of or importance of existing features and content
Satisfaction with existing features and content
Importance of new features and content
Psychographic questions
Demographic questions

Site Traffic Analysis
Entry pages
Referrers
Exit pages
Common paths
Feature usage
Search terms
Conversion rate
Duration
Frequency

CRM Data
Annual spending
Frequency of purchase
Products or services purchased
Channel usage
Customer support usage
Length of time as a customer

Quantitative Nirvana: Complete User Portrait
Survey data
What the user does
Site traffic analysis
CRM data
Self-reported survey data
What the user says What the user is worth
CRM data
Self-reported survey data

Testing the Segmentation
Cross-tabs (pivot tables) in Excel

Quantitative Personas

Quantitative Segmentation

Making Personas Real

Components of a Persona

Photo
www.sxc.hu www.morguefile.com www.istockphoto.com

Scenarios Francis and Michael have agreed that she’ll take charge of learning more about the home-buying process. She goes online, does a Google search for “Atlanta real estate,” and follows a link to the site’s home page. She sees that she can search for houses from the home page, so just for fun, she does a quick Atlanta search to see what kinds of houses show up. There are lots of houses in many different neighborhoods, and she easily narrows her results down to the area where she and Michael live, using a map. There are still many results, and she’s not quite sure which search options to use to narrow the search further. Then she notices a link for first-time home buyers and follows, it hoping for basic how-to information. The link takes Francis to a step-by-step tutorial that explains the whole process, and she immediately feels like she’s found the right site from which to begin her house search. She carefully reads some articles for first-time home buyers, taking notes as she reads. She bookmarks other articles she wants to go back and read later. She also comes across the site’s calculator and starts trying different combinations of numbers to find out what she and Michael can afford. She particularly likes the glossary of terms so that she can finally figure out what “points” are and learn more about different types of mortgages. After an hour and a half of reading, her brain is full, and she shuts her computer down for the day, feeling like she got an excellent start. The next day, she comes back to the site to look up information specific to Atlanta neighborhoods and finds lots of information on each. She’s able to focus on five neighborhoods that look particularly good. The fun begins that night, when she takes Michael through all that she has learned, and they set up a regular schedule for looking at online house listings.

Using Personas

Persona Document

Persona Cards

Lifesize Cutouts

Persona Cubicle

Other Ideas for Keeping Personas Alive
Posters
Tchotchkes
Day-in-the-life photos, audio diaries, etc.
Role-playing
Quizzes
Staple to documents
Email addresses

Business Strategy

Features and Functionality

Features and Functionality: Brainstorming
Francis’ 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

Features and Functionality: Prioritizing

Structure

Structure: Task Analysis
Search for houses from home page
Enter location by city and state, or zip code
Enter price range
Enter number of bedrooms and/or bathrooms
Submit search
View and narrow results
Browse first page of results: photo, price, address, basic stats, and description
Click to show results on map
Click map to narrow results to one neighborhood
Browse new results
Read tutorial
Click link for first-time home buyers
Read landing page for learning area
Click teaser for step-by-step tutorial
And so on…

Structure: Use Cases
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:
Francis enters city and state or zip code.
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.
Francis selects minimum and maximum price values from drop-down menus.
System validates selected values.
Francis selects number of bedrooms and bathrooms from drop-down menus.
Francis submits search.
System validates required fields before submitting query.

Structure: Information Architecture

Structure: Navigation

Structure: Site Search

Content
Articles or product descriptions
Instructional text
Documentation and help
Error messages
Imagery
Sound
Video

Content: Word Cloud

Design

Design: Mood Board

Design: Appealing to All Personas

Testing and Measuring Success
QA process
Usability testing
Log files
Survey
Predictive modeling

Steve Mulder [email_address]
PracticalPersonas.com
Thanks!

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The User Is Always Right: Making Personas Work for Your Site

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