A good website should not only look modern and attractive. Most importantly, it should fit the people who use it. But how do we know what users need and what is important to them? One way to understand the target audience better is to use UX personas.
What is a UX Persona?
A UX persona is a fictional person who represents a typical user or customer. It is based on information about a specific target group and helps us imagine a real user more clearly.
A persona can include information such as age, profession, digital experience and personal goals. The needs, motivations and frustrations of the person are also especially important.
This turns a large and often very general target group into a specific person. Instead of simply saying “Our target group is self-employed people”, we can imagine, for example, a self-employed businesswoman who has little time and is looking for support with her website and online marketing.
Why are UX Personas important?
When creating a website, many decisions have to be made. What information should be shown on the homepage? How should the navigation be structured? Which content is especially important? And how easy should it be to contact the company?
UX personas can help answer these questions from the users’ point of view.
When we know the needs and problems of the target audience, we can adapt the website to them. For example, important information can be made easier to find, texts can be written in a clear way and suitable contact options can be offered.
The goal is not to design a website only according to our own preferences. The website should work for the people who will actually use it.
What should a UX Persona include?
A persona can be structured differently depending on the project. However, some information is especially useful:
- personal information such as age, profession and place of residence
- digital skills and online behaviour
- needs
- motivation
- goals
- frustrations and problems
Not every persona needs a lot of details. The most important thing is that the information is relevant to the specific project.
How do you create a UX Persona?
At the beginning, it is important to learn more about the target audience. For example, conversations with customers, interviews, surveys or existing customer data can be used.
After that, we can look for similarities. What goals do the users have? What problems do they often experience? What do they expect from a website or a company?
Based on this information, different personas can be created. Each persona gets its own profile. A picture and a name can also help make the person easier to imagine.
It is important not to create a persona only based on personal assumptions. The more real information we have about the target audience, the more useful the persona will be for the project.
A practical example
For a digital agency, several personas can be useful because not all customers visit the website with the same needs and experience.
One persona could be a self-employed businesswoman who wants to present her business more professionally online. She already has some digital experience, but she does not have much time to deal with web design, online marketing and technical topics herself. Clear advice, understandable information about services and costs, and an easy way to contact the company are important to her.
Another persona could be someone who is just starting their own project. He has an idea but does not yet have much experience with professional digital solutions. For this reason, he is looking for support and wants to understand which steps are necessary to bring his idea online.
Although both people could become customers of the same agency, they have different needs. This is exactly where UX personas show their value.
How do Personas influence Web Design?
The information from personas can be used directly when designing a website.
For example, if users find complicated technical terms difficult, services should be explained as clearly as possible. If quick contact is important, the contact button should be easy to find. If potential customers want to see which projects an agency has already completed, references or previous projects can be displayed clearly on the website.
The structure, texts and call-to-actions of a website can also be adapted to the target audience.
UX personas are therefore not only a theoretical exercise. They can be a practical basis for many decisions in UX and web design.
Conclusion
UX personas help us see the target audience not only as one large group, but also understand the individual needs of users. They show us the goals, wishes and problems of potential customers and what they expect from a website.
At econcess, user-oriented design also plays an important role. When developing digital solutions, it is not only about creating a modern design, but also about considering the needs of the specific target audience. UX personas can help plan websites and digital solutions that fit both the company and its customers.
This helps create a website that not only looks good but also offers real value to its users.
