How a Customer Persona Can Boost Your Website Conversion

Understand your customer: craft design and copy directly to them and have much better usability, and much more importantly - higher conversion.

What is a persona?…

A descriptive profile of your specific market.

Incorporates age, social position, environment, aspirations, personality traits, skills and personal details. The persona character ought to have a name and ideally a photograph to bring it to life. Basically a vignette of your customer that might be employed for design and copy direction to make sure you appeal directly to your customer.

A persona just isn't a stereotype or a customer profile. A stereotype is merely a caricature and like an illustration is at risk of the reader inserting their own interpretation. A customer profile is a generalisation of demographic ie; tweenager or mid-lifer and not detailed enough for persona requirements.

The persona ought to be realistic and credible; so that you are able to envisage dialogue and interaction.

The perfect persona will probably be an A4 narrative of your customers personality and life. Considering Maslows heirachy of needs you will address; physiological, safety, belonging, esteem and self-actualisation needs.

How a persona can benefit your website

Frank Long's research paper, Real or Imaginary: the effectiveness of using personas in product design: highlighted the importance of guiding design towards the user and not simply the designers objectives:

"The results showed that, through using personas, designs with superior usability characteristics were produced. They also indicate that using personas provides a significant advantage during the research and conceptualization stages of the design process."

How is it achievable to encourage a user to buy a product when you do not know who you're talking to? Having a apparent definition ensures you speak their language and emotionally appeal to them in your brand.

"Speak to the dog, about what matters to the dog in the language of the dog." Jeff Eisenberg, Call to Action.

A web site that has been designed and targeted with the aid of a persona will likely be more appealing to your consumer; simply because it's designed directly to them.

The standard designer will make choices that contribute to a site that appeals to them; possibly not what appeals to your consumer. Designers want to create web pages with the objective of peer acknowledgment; a website that wins design awards. Who's much more crucial: what your designer thinks or what your customer thinks?


Application of on target personas can have a distinct influence even upon existing key brands: Staples' online revenue went from $3 billion to $4.9 billion within two years after a significant website redesign that included the development of seven personas and a decision to design primarily for the two most crucial ones. Taken from an write-up by Elizabeth Gardner of internet retailer.


A Persona can be inexpensive and simple to produce, you just need time and enthusiasm. The returns from using a focused brand and website will certainly pay off with greater conversion rates. Part 2 of How to create a persona for your website shows which questions you have to ask to produce a persona for your enterprise.

ShellShock UK is an online marketing blog for small businesses who want to improve their website. If you want to develop your business online: read about online marketing strategies for ecommerce.