Don’t believe me?! Try to think of the last time you weren’t confused by something online. Whether it was trying to buy a product or navigating your way through a website to find an address on your smartphone. I bet that might have been yesterday… or the day before. No matter, if you think hard enough, you’ll remember a time.
With all the new technology coming out in the form of mobile devices, our expectations for things to work better, faster and easier have never been higher. Ten years ago one would have to wait minutes to load a low quality video onto their desktop computer. Today, frustration sets in within seconds if an HD quality video stalls on a smartphone.
In the race to become faster, better, more mobile, more optimized and more social we’ve almost completely forgotten about one key thing – that we’re human.
As human beings, it’s hard for us to step back to a place where we aren’t trying to design and develop technologies and experiences exclusively how we personally would like to have them. No wonder we’re not that good at it!!
Look at the myriad of websites, systems and technologies in existence today, and the vast number of platforms available to view them on. Each one of them is attempting to provide the best user experience possible – in their own customized, unique way, which is in essence… the “big mess”.
So knowing that we live in the “big mess”, and realistically that it’s only going to get larger and more complicated – the question becomes:
How do you design and build things so that the end user – who is very unique in his/her own right – can have a sensible, easy experience and ultimately perform the action(s) that you want them to take?
Have the exact answer? If you do, I’m guessing you can walk on water as well.
Why? Because again, what’s perfect for you, might not be perfect for the person sitting next to you. So the REAL question changes from “What are you building?” to “Who are you building it for?” Once you have that answer, you can design and build the experience for the needs of those particular people (not yourself).
You can call it a “Customer Persona”, “User Persona”, “User Profile” or whatever you see fit that describes the make-up of the person that you want to engage with your online experience.
Before you design anything, write a line of code or think about market, it’s absolutely imperative that you define whom you’re doing it for.
Because you can’t possibly tailor what you’re doing to every single individual’s needs, you need to define 3-4 types of people that are your ideal end users, and we’re not just talking about the basic stuff like age and gender.
Imagine how easy it would be to communicate with complete strangers if you knew absolutely everything about them ahead of time, such as:
Whether it’s trying to sell a group of people something, ask someone out on a date or simply convince someone to take a simple action, it would probably be a lot easier to get the result you’re looking for if you knew who they were ahead of time.
If you can get in front of the end user you’d like to be in front of, with the knowledge of who they are, you’ll be able to easier predict and anticipate the actions they’re going to ultimately take.
Large companies will go to great lengths to determine who their end users actually are, engaging in a research process that can take months and at a total cost that’s north of $100,000, according to UX Magazine. But don’t let that deter you if you’re a small to mid-sized business! The process of developing personas can often be much easier for these businesses as the size and scale of all factors involved – from product / service offerings to internal politics – is a lot smaller. Instead of having to create 30 personas for 10 different offerings, you may only have to create three personas for one singular offering.
However, it’s vital that you keep in mind that it’s not until you’ve actually interacted with your end user that you can know exactly what your online experience should really look like. The good news is that you’ll be a thousand steps closer to that goal IF you can can predict (ahead of time) who that end user might be and how they’re most likely to interact with you.
It always astonishes me that so much time, energy and money is spent on design, development, search engine optimization and content development without giving the slightest bit of attention to whom it’s being done for. This is even more astonishing considering the average human being will only usually care about 20% of what you have to offer.
Without a target, you have nothing to shoot at. No fancy design, complex functionality or great links to your site will get you past this reality. Period. In turn, you could have the most rudimentary website on the Web, but if that’s what will resonate with your end users, and you’re getting a high percentage of them to take the action you’d like them to, then you’ve done things the right way.
Despite all the time, energy and investment up to this point, once you launch to the world, you’ve only actually reached the start line. Now is where the real fun begins when real end users start engaging your online experience. Using tools like Google Analytics or paid services like ClickTale, take the time to follow and measure exactly how your end users are interacting with your website.
With all of this information coming at you in real-time, here’s your opportunity to measure and learn about what is happening with what you’ve built. Then you can constantly tweak and refine the experience until it’s getting the best results possible as they relate to your original goals.
Even at this point it’s important to remember that your work is never done. Staying current with that changing mess of technology while redefining your goals to be even higher, then repeating this process again and again will ensure you’re success online is a long-term deal.
Despite the big mess of technologies, information, platforms and devices that sit in right front of you, the person on the end is still a human being. Keep that thought front and center when you build anything online and you’ll win again and again and again.
That’s the benefit of working from user personas – they change your thinking. So instead of asking your team for their opinion – you’re looking to your personas for the answer as a team. Then when a future question comes up to add, remove or build something for your site – it becomes a question if it’s right for your users… which is all that will ever matter.
Social Media
Social Media Social Media