There sooner you understand who is visiting your site, the better you can guide them through the user experience. The better you guide them through the user experience, the more effective your site and ultimately your campaign will be.
Personas are an effective tool that allows you to internalize the differences between individual users. Jessica, a kindergarten teacher and mother of 4, who married her high school sweetheart and still lives in the same town where she grew up a half hour outside of Pittsburgh may visit Gilt Groupe, the same deeply discounted luxury brand website as Michaela, who recently graduated top of her class from Yale Law and is a young associate working 100+ hour weeks at Sullivan & Cromwell. While these two women are the same age and ethnicity, they have very different motivations for visiting this same site.
Jessica may be browsing pictures of pretty things and day-dreaming of a different life outside of the only one she has ever known. Michaela, on the other hand, is using her only free moment between 2 and 2:30 am to order that perfect dress for her best friend’s wedding that she is desperately hoping not to miss because she is tied up in depositions and at the bottom of the totem pole at work.
The sooner you segment the Jessicas from the Michaelas on your site, the more effective you will be in selling that perfect dress to Michaela and the perfect dream to Jessica.
1 comment:
I can see the positive effects of personas in that you can understand your customer segments better and customize their experience.
however, in my opinion doing too much of that poses a risk of fragmentation as too much choice will negatively affect a casual web-surfer that might otherwise be a potential customer.
Given that, how much segmentation is good segmentation?
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