Improve Website Conversion and Usability by Creating Personas

When a visitor comes to your site, they come there with a specific purpose in mind.  Even though it would be fun to just surf around the internet finding new and interesting sites, most of us have pretty severe time constraints.  Visitors need to know right away if your site is the place where they can buy the product they want, answer their question(s), or get them the information they need.

What does your Visitor Want to Know?

Your home page has to let the visitor know right away:

1. What you can buy on this site
2. What you can get on this site (answers to questions, research)
3. What you can do on this site (download a brochure or PDF)

Whether you’re an ecommerce site, a non-profit site, a business to business site…it really doesn’t matter.  You have about 2-5 seconds to make your pitch – why should the visitor stay on your site? Can they accomplish what they came to your site to do?

Sounds easy, but it’s incredibly difficult.

1. Who is using your site?
2. What types of people use your services?
3. What questions are they going to have?

Getting to Know Your Visitors by Creating Personas

You need to put faces on the visitors to your site.  There are probably more than 2 types of people, but realistically less than 10 types of people who could use your site and eventually convert into customers – and you need to reach as many of them as possible.  So what do you do?

You create personas – complete with names, personalities, and histories.  It’s fun, just like you get to know your favorite TV characters, get to know your 5-7 typical customers.  Suddenly you’ll begin to understand how they think, ask the questions they ask, understand what frustrates them and what motivates them. This understanding is key to how you will improve your conversion rate and increase your website’s sales.

A Persona Example

One of the personas we’re using for our website is named Julie.  She’s a 45 year old small business owner.  She’s married with 2 kids (both in high school).   Even though her husband doesn’t work with her in her business (he’s an accountant), she discusses the business with him a lot, and greatly values his opinion.  She has an ecommerce business (no brick and mortar location – only a web presence) and her current website was built several years ago.  Her business is growing and her current web shopping cart handles the volume ok, but she thinks it’s probably time to replace it, because she keeps getting calls from customers who get stuck during the checkout process.  She knows her conversion rate from Google Analytics, but she thinks that it should be better.   She is looking for someone who can give her recommendations for improving her conversion rate and making it easier for her visitors/customers to use her website.  She is price sensitive and nervous about costs.

How to Use your Personas

Now you’re ready to look at your home page.  You’ve created your personas, so now you know what your 6-7 visitor/customer types are going to want to get, buy or do on your site.  Answer these questions from their perspective.  You will positively impact their visitor experience and usability, which will then impact your conversion.

Creating personas isn’t just fun, it’s a powerful tool for improving website usability and helping increase conversion rates on your website.

What personas have you created for your website?