Today, a successful website must be based on more than design and content alone. It must be based upon the needs of its users. That’s why it is important to use Personas as a representative of your users.

A website is nothing more than a tool for the customer to achieve their desired goal. Be it the purchase of an item of clothing, or finding desired information, or to book an appointment/service. User Experience is relevant to all businesses who exist online as it has a direct influence on how you are perceived. Ease of use is hugely important in the digital age. You may have a great product and a great design aesthetically but, how easy is your website to navigate for your user? How easy is it for me to achieve my goal?

You need to create the right experience in order to be successful.

What is a Persona?

To recognise and ensure you have touched down on all bases, it is essential to use personas to test your the user experience.  A persona is a representation of a user. A good persona should be based on contextual interviews with real customers. Basing them on primary research ensures they are a reliable representation of a specific type of customer.  A persona can help design teams empathise with the user and appreciate the customer’s frustrations and difficulties.

Further, it is vital to test your website on a variety of different personas so that you can understand from a range of different customer viewpoints. This is as every user possesses different goals, needs and interests. By clearly capturing the objective of each persona, it then allows the design team to focus on a design target. Personas are designed to help simplify to design teams, why users act the way they do and to identify potential traps and falls. Essentially using personas helps you to understand your users’:

How do Personas Help me in my Digital Transformation?

Above all, personas help design teams think differently. They help you to think how the user would think as that can sometimes be very difficult when you know very well how to negotiate around your website. By using a method called ‘Red Routing’, you can consider the frequency and nature of your users visit to your website which is crucial to customer perception of your company and ultimately your success. Personas will result in a better design for your website, something which is key in digital transformation when it is essential to place the user above all else. They can be used to validate design decisions and prioritise feature requests.

Why then is this vital in achieving Digital Transformation for your business?

Today, you must keep an eye on your competitors in the market AND your customers. Now, more so than ever before the customer is dictating your business. The customer has high expectations which must be fulfilled if you are to be successful in securing a sale. Basic customer wants have not changed but HOW they want it has. Therefore, Digital transformation is so key and why personas are key to achieving a successful transformation. Constantly reviewing your customer base, creating reliable, research-based personas and testing them is vital to survival.

As users we are becoming increasingly lazy. We want the easiest, fastest option. The one which takes the least thought power. Successful UX will be exactly this, it will be so simple that the user barely needs to think. They want to arrive at the end in the easiest and quickest way available. If it is too complicated the user will just abandon the sale altogether. You need to always be updating and running checks on your website. Regularly check how you project yourself digitally to ensure it is aligned to your current customer.

Personas need to updated regularly to reflect the current situation so that your business can answer to the current reality and needs of the user.  Human behaviour is forever evolving as is the needs of the customer and your business needs to evolve with them. Personas are key to figuring out how to evolve correctly, in keeping both with your customers and with your surroundings.