Why We Create User Personas To Help Companies Double Their Growth

We act like we’re in the web development business, but we’re really in the business of helping entrepreneurs grow their companies, and turn their ideas into reality.

In order to do this effectively, we can’t just rely on beautiful designs and well-written code. While that’s a critical part of the software development process, it’s not where we start. In order for you (and your company) to really see a substantial change in revenue, you need to understand your customers. After all, you are selling to people.

Regardless of your specific B2C  or B2B industry, you’re selling to people.

Before you can effectively sell to someone, you need to understand who they are.

• What are they searching for?
• What are their pain points?
• What issues are they trying to solve in their lives?
• How do you help them solve these issues? How are your competitors helping them?
• What makes you different?

All of these questions are important.

Your product is great, but without your users, your product does not matter. Their habits, buying decisions, media influences, etc impact all of these what you do and how you must think about it.

This is why we start each software development project with user personas. We suggest you try you do the same thing.

It can actually be a fun and illuminating exercise for you and your team.

Step 1:  Get To Know Your Customers

What you will need:

1. A big sheet of paper.
2. Markers
3. Your Team

Learn About Your Customers

• How old are they?
• Where do they live?
• Where do they work?
• How much money do they make? This one is important. You want to figure out if they would actually spend money on your product.
• Is gender important to your product sales or positioning? If so, be intentional about how you fit this into your personas. Don’t pretend everybody is the same for the sake of political correctness (or any other reason).

Tip: Attach a photo here (you can find one online) to give you a sense of what they might look like. This makes the process more real.

Here are a few photos from our user persona mood board:

Our clients are passionate entrepreneurs who own mid-sized businesses and are looking for a software development team to help them take their business growth to the next level.

Step 2: Learn About Your Customers’ Habits

1. What do they read?? Blogs? Physical newspaper v. Online Publication? Tech Blogs? Lifestyle Blogs?
   This can help you figure out where they would actually find you. If they’re reading tech blogs and you’re trying to appeal to a lifestyle blog audience, then this may not be the ideal customer for you. If they don’t read at all, how should you be reaching them?
2. How do they spend their free time?
3. What kind of lifestyle do they live? Digital nomads? Stay at home parent? Single parent?

By now, your user persona should look something like this.

User Persona for Linking Arts Blog

Benefits of Creating User Personas

1. The user persona helps you identify who you are trying to connect with, i.e. who your customers are so you can do a better job of talking to them both on and offline.

2. The user persona allows you to pinpoint the problems your potential customers are having, and consider if your product and/or service might help them solve this problem.

3. The user persona allows you to map out user behavior and makes it easier for you to tell your brand story in a way that inspires your target audience. e.g. are they viewing your content while standing in a line? Driving (let’s hope not)? Or late at night when they have time to really digest something?

Before we write one line of code or do any design, we start with a user persona. Without this, we can’t understand who your target customers are. And without understanding them, we can’t help you tell them an inspiring and compelling story. Your online presence tells the story of your company and products, which then inspires users to take a call to action and buy, sign up or contact you.

Knowing who they are matters. Knowing what they need matters. And most importantly, knowing how you can help them satisfy their need is the key to business growth.

We want to see you grow. And we often use technology to help you get there.

Questions? Hit us up in the comments.