The importance of customer personas
Understanding your customer is absolutely essential to ensuring we develop something fit for purpose that will actually help you achieve your goals.
This question is at the heart of the project stakeholder UX workshop days we hold at Leighton. Usually, we gather 10 or more key people for our client’s business to help us discover more about them and, more importantly, their key customer groups.
Stakeholder attendees are usually made up of a broad range of staff members from many different departments in the business. All have a vested interest in the digital project, but they tend to have slightly different opinions on their customers.
Everyone has a good idea who their average customer is, yet when you discuss it in a group environment you’d be surprised at how diverse Mr or Mrs average customer can really be.
In reality, most organisations have more than one type of customer and ultimately these types of customers will come together to form your ‘persona set’.
At first, most stakeholders aren’t even aware what a persona is. Some will have heard the term mentioned before, but nobody really realises how useful they can be. AtLeighton, we consider them a vital part of any digital project.
A persona set should be a true representation of all audience members that will use a website. It should cover off all the major user groups who will view the site and will therefore usually be made up of a range of external customers or suppliers and internal employees or volunteers.
An accurately completed persona set follows some in-depth research, both with the stakeholders present at the UX Workshop, but also with other members of staff within the business in the days and weeks following the kick-off session. Together we identify all key audience groups, as well as any additional fringe audience segments, for example journalists – who might be after specific information from the website or app. We will also use research sessions with key staff and analytical data analysis to enable us to identify any gaps.
Each persona should be specific to an individual even if the subject matter covers abroad demographic range. Each persona should be based on outcomes and the journey they take to get there. It’s this approach that will allow you to start identifying duplicate personas.
It is vital that our customers end up with a sensible number of personas in the finished set as not only is this a more realistic representation of their customer base, but it also means we aren’t diluting the output too much by trying to cater for unnecessary nuances.
For each persona we will identify a single user and assign them a name, age, gender and user type. We’ll also assign them some background history to help our customers get a definitive idea who they are catering for.
Each persona should give everyone a clear picture of the user’s expectations from the brand, the company and current website or app to help us identify what they want from the new online offering. We also take the time to highlight some issues they have using the current digital offering as well as setting some goals that the new website should aim to surpass when it goes live.
A comprehensive persona set not only allows our customers to reference any decisions taken during the project against a ‘real world’ sample, but it also helps them to explore, and test added functionality against multiple user groups quickly and easily without having to commit to costly external user testing sessions. A decision or an extra piece of functionality is easier to justify if multiple personas ratify the decision – especially as the persona set is based on such thorough knowledge of the organisation.
A complete persona set not only allows us at Leighton to catalogue user stories for reference throughout the UX, design and development phase of a website or app build, but they will also go on to have many other benefits to our customers. They’ll help them in a wide range of areas, from evaluating any new features to ensuring the content for their site or app is written in the correct tone of voice. The completed persona set can also be used within the business moving forwards, across all digital platforms, marketing campaigns and in house material.
Understanding your customer is absolutely essential to ensuring we develop something fit for purpose that will actually help you achieve your goals.
This question is at the heart of the project stakeholder UX workshop days we hold at Leighton. Usually, we gather 10 or more key people for our client’s business to help us discover more about them and, more importantly, their key customer groups.
Stakeholder attendees are usually made up of a broad range of staff members from many different departments in the business. All have a vested interest in the digital project, but they tend to have slightly different opinions on their customers.
Everyone has a good idea who their average customer is, yet when you discuss it in a group environment you’d be surprised at how diverse Mr or Mrs average customer can really be.
In reality, most organisations have more than one type of customer and ultimately these types of customers will come together to form your ‘persona set’.
At first, most stakeholders aren’t even aware what a persona is. Some will have heard the term mentioned before, but nobody really realises how useful they can be. AtLeighton, we consider them a vital part of any digital project.
A persona set should be a true representation of all audience members that will use a website. It should cover off all the major user groups who will view the site and will therefore usually be made up of a range of external customers or suppliers and internal employees or volunteers.
An accurately completed persona set follows some in-depth research, both with the stakeholders present at the UX Workshop, but also with other members of staff within the business in the days and weeks following the kick-off session. Together we identify all key audience groups, as well as any additional fringe audience segments, for example journalists – who might be after specific information from the website or app. We will also use research sessions with key staff and analytical data analysis to enable us to identify any gaps.
Each persona should be specific to an individual even if the subject matter covers abroad demographic range. Each persona should be based on outcomes and the journey they take to get there. It’s this approach that will allow you to start identifying duplicate personas.
It is vital that our customers end up with a sensible number of personas in the finished set as not only is this a more realistic representation of their customer base, but it also means we aren’t diluting the output too much by trying to cater for unnecessary nuances.
For each persona we will identify a single user and assign them a name, age, gender and user type. We’ll also assign them some background history to help our customers get a definitive idea who they are catering for.
Each persona should give everyone a clear picture of the user’s expectations from the brand, the company and current website or app to help us identify what they want from the new online offering. We also take the time to highlight some issues they have using the current digital offering as well as setting some goals that the new website should aim to surpass when it goes live.
A comprehensive persona set not only allows our customers to reference any decisions taken during the project against a ‘real world’ sample, but it also helps them to explore, and test added functionality against multiple user groups quickly and easily without having to commit to costly external user testing sessions. A decision or an extra piece of functionality is easier to justify if multiple personas ratify the decision – especially as the persona set is based on such thorough knowledge of the organisation.
A complete persona set not only allows us at Leighton to catalogue user stories for reference throughout the UX, design and development phase of a website or app build, but they will also go on to have many other benefits to our customers. They’ll help them in a wide range of areas, from evaluating any new features to ensuring the content for their site or app is written in the correct tone of voice. The completed persona set can also be used within the business moving forwards, across all digital platforms, marketing campaigns and in house material.
Understanding your customer is absolutely essential to ensuring we develop something fit for purpose that will actually help you achieve your goals.
This question is at the heart of the project stakeholder UX workshop days we hold at Leighton. Usually, we gather 10 or more key people for our client’s business to help us discover more about them and, more importantly, their key customer groups.
Stakeholder attendees are usually made up of a broad range of staff members from many different departments in the business. All have a vested interest in the digital project, but they tend to have slightly different opinions on their customers.
Everyone has a good idea who their average customer is, yet when you discuss it in a group environment you’d be surprised at how diverse Mr or Mrs average customer can really be.
In reality, most organisations have more than one type of customer and ultimately these types of customers will come together to form your ‘persona set’.
At first, most stakeholders aren’t even aware what a persona is. Some will have heard the term mentioned before, but nobody really realises how useful they can be. AtLeighton, we consider them a vital part of any digital project.
A persona set should be a true representation of all audience members that will use a website. It should cover off all the major user groups who will view the site and will therefore usually be made up of a range of external customers or suppliers and internal employees or volunteers.
An accurately completed persona set follows some in-depth research, both with the stakeholders present at the UX Workshop, but also with other members of staff within the business in the days and weeks following the kick-off session. Together we identify all key audience groups, as well as any additional fringe audience segments, for example journalists – who might be after specific information from the website or app. We will also use research sessions with key staff and analytical data analysis to enable us to identify any gaps.
Each persona should be specific to an individual even if the subject matter covers abroad demographic range. Each persona should be based on outcomes and the journey they take to get there. It’s this approach that will allow you to start identifying duplicate personas.
It is vital that our customers end up with a sensible number of personas in the finished set as not only is this a more realistic representation of their customer base, but it also means we aren’t diluting the output too much by trying to cater for unnecessary nuances.
For each persona we will identify a single user and assign them a name, age, gender and user type. We’ll also assign them some background history to help our customers get a definitive idea who they are catering for.
Each persona should give everyone a clear picture of the user’s expectations from the brand, the company and current website or app to help us identify what they want from the new online offering. We also take the time to highlight some issues they have using the current digital offering as well as setting some goals that the new website should aim to surpass when it goes live.
A comprehensive persona set not only allows our customers to reference any decisions taken during the project against a ‘real world’ sample, but it also helps them to explore, and test added functionality against multiple user groups quickly and easily without having to commit to costly external user testing sessions. A decision or an extra piece of functionality is easier to justify if multiple personas ratify the decision – especially as the persona set is based on such thorough knowledge of the organisation.
A complete persona set not only allows us at Leighton to catalogue user stories for reference throughout the UX, design and development phase of a website or app build, but they will also go on to have many other benefits to our customers. They’ll help them in a wide range of areas, from evaluating any new features to ensuring the content for their site or app is written in the correct tone of voice. The completed persona set can also be used within the business moving forwards, across all digital platforms, marketing campaigns and in house material.
