Accurate personas can have many business benefits. Personas can be a strategical necessity and even beneficial in gaining customers. There are some designers that see personas as essential and others that don’t. Regardless of which side of the fence you are on, the reality is that accurate user research data on personas is gaining traction (even outside of the traditional parameters of goal-directed design), and even though one designer might not use personas, they still could be used in different capacities within various areas of the same organization.
Generally, when we talk about personas, individuals are targeting various persona types, for example, the buyer persona (prospective customers or users), the marketing persona (users searching for specific product or service information and then reading website), various blog personas (users reading blogs gaining some knowledge) the UI design persona (users using the application), the customer service persona (users requesting help), and the list potentially continues to whatever customer touch point is available.
Digitalization and the effect data has on persona research
The persona enables the designer to focus on a specific set of user traits which enables the designer to manage the vast user information, instead of focusing on the information of thousands of users. However, a main problem is that due to lack of detailed knowledge of the customer or user base, personas are generally hastily done, or even completely theoretical, and only valid for one siloed area. Personas generally target one singular siloed touchpoint, and the persona knowledge across various user touchpoints in an organization, is generally not shared or utilized within that organization to the full extent that is possible.
With the emergence of relatively easily accessible data and various analytic solutions, for example, Google Analytics can give the designer relative easy access to actual data to back up their persona research. Google Analytics can monitor your web site, and once data collection has been activated and data collected, it can provide analytical reports. There are a variety of reports, for example, information on real-time location sources, demographic information, language, general audience, technology and device information. In an organization, this type of web site data might be collected internally by a digital marketer, but ensuring access to others inside the organization, for example, a blogger, UI/UX designer, is where there is potential for innovation.
Utilizing the persona data across the organization
There could be a wide variety of internal company stakeholders that utilize persona and user knowledge (as theoretically anyone could benefit from user knowledge as there should be a general awareness of the user base). By accessing persona research especially outside one’s own silo, stakeholders could gain understanding of their users across various touch points and then utilize that value in many ways, for example, even potentially extending the software functionality outside of initial design concept.
So once a persona for a certain user segmentation is defined, then it should be determined how that specific persona fits into the bigger picture and its data availability ensured to be accessible across silos. The persona could be utilized and accessed for designing (and potentially merging) functionality for various customer touchpoints. At the very least, it would give a frame of reference and basic user knowledge could be gained for all stakeholders. A persona map across the customer’s journey could be utilized, that showcases the persona evolution, from the initial buyer, to the user that searches in Google for a service and arrives on the web site, to the user that finds a web post that answers a question on the product or service, to the user that uses the application and has some service related questions.
Understanding the customer and user across silos, brings a holistic view to the customer and end user. It brings a competitive advantage to those developing the product, and can be an innovative source of ideas into future potential functionality and a user design direction that could otherwise be easily overlooked or neglected.