User persona

A persona gives a team a shared picture of who they are designing for, so decisions are argued in terms of a customer rather than personal taste. The important words are research-based. A persona built from assumptions in a meeting room is a stereotype with a stock photo, and it can lead a team confidently in the wrong direction.

Personas are different from marketing segments based on age, income or location. Useful design personas focus on goals and behaviour: what the person is trying to get done, what worries them and what situation they are in when they use the site.

How it works

A team gathers evidence from customer interviews, sales and support conversations, reviews, analytics and search data. It looks for patterns in goals and behaviour and groups them into two to four personas. Each persona gets a name, a short description of their situation, their main goals, the questions they need answered, their objections and the device and moment in which they typically arrive.

Personas then feed customer journey maps, user flows, content decisions and usability testing, where participants are recruited to match them. They should be revisited as the business and its customers change.

For a small business, the research does not need to be elaborate. Reading the last few months of enquiry emails, noting the questions asked on the phone and going through reviews, including competitors' reviews, often reveals the main customer groups and their worries. Analytics adds which devices and times of day they use. To check whether an existing persona is useful, ask whether it has changed a decision recently; if nobody refers to it, it is decoration.

Example

A dental clinic's research shows two main groups of new patients. One is a nervous adult searching on a phone in the evening, who needs reassurance about pain, prices and whether the dentist is gentle. The other is a parent booking check-ups for children, who cares about opening hours, parking and whether the dentist is good with children. The new site gives each a clear path from the home page and answers their questions on the relevant pages.

The research also turns up a smaller third group: people in pain who search late at night and want one thing, to know whether they can be seen the next day and how to call. Rather than writing a full persona, the clinic adds a clear emergency line to the header and a short emergency page. Not every group needs a persona; some need one well-placed answer.

Why it matters for your business

Personas help you spend design and content effort on the customers who bring in revenue, and they settle debates faster than opinions do. They are most useful when several people shape the website or marketing and need a common reference. For a very small business whose owner talks to every customer, a simple list of customer types and their top questions often does the same job. Personas based on guesswork can cost more than they save.

Common mistakes

• Inventing personas from assumptions instead of real customer conversations and data.
• Filling personas with irrelevant details, such as hobbies, while leaving out goals and objections.
• Creating so many personas that nobody remembers them or designs for any of them.
• Writing personas once and never updating them as the business changes.

Questions people ask

How many user personas should a business have?

Most small and mid-sized businesses need two to four personas covering the customer groups that matter most to revenue. More than that becomes hard to remember and use. If two personas would lead to the same design decisions, merge them. Each persona should change how you design or write something, or it is not earning its place.

What should a user persona include?

A name and a short description of the person's situation, their main goals, the questions they need answered before acting, their worries and objections, how and where they find you, and the device they typically use. Include quotes from real research where possible. Leave out demographic details that do not change any decision.

What is the difference between a user persona and a buyer persona?

The terms overlap. A buyer persona, common in marketing and sales, focuses on purchase decisions: who buys, what influences them and which channels reach them. A user persona, common in UX design, focuses on how people use a product or site and what they need to complete tasks. Many small businesses combine both into one profile.