Why Your Website Needs A Customer Persona (And How To Create One)

Defining your customer persona, also known as a buyer persona, is super helpful in reaching future customers. When you know your ideal customers, their wants, and needs, it becomes easier to craft a website that grabs their attention and creates engagement. 

It also becomes much easier to execute your marketing and communication. Rather than "guessing" what people want to read or watch, your persona will help you talk about relevant topics. And it will also help you remove content from your website that simply takes up space and dilutes your expertise to solve specific problems.

In this write, let's discuss what a customer persona is.

What is a customer persona?

A customer persona is a detailed description of your target or ideal customer. That means you can work out precisely what your ideal customer does, and where they come from and what their motivations are. 

As a side note, most of our motivations are rooted in the 6 Human Needs that drive decisions we make.

We are also in the pursuit of:

1. Certainty
2. Uncertainty/Variety
3. Significance
4. Connection/Love
5. Growth
6. Contribution
   

And so customer personas will help you understand how to get your message across and give you some idea of where you should make changes in your website and marketing. 

If you don't know what a customer persona is, it might be easier to get a better idea of where to start. A good starting point is to think of your ideal customers' hobbies, interests, and pain points. And it's okay to have multiple customers personals. 

At Webodew, we have three customer personas that help guide our communication and outreach plan.

People pay to have their problems solved and they tend to choose to work with someone they can trust and doesn't come off as arrogant.

Website benefits of having a customer persona

Customer personas help to improve your website metrics in ways including time spent on site, retention rate and ultimately your conversion rate to new customers.

As you know more about what your ideal client is needing, you'll have a better idea of website content to create that will help drive traffic from search engines.

And once your customers have arrived to your site, they're more likely to feel that your content is directed to them, which creates a sense of trust.

Another benefit of customer persona is that it helps to remove unneeded content on your site and double down in areas that matter. Coming up with new blog posts and ways to connect with customers can be time consuming, but knowing your customer persona will help save time.

How to create a customer persona

It takes time to define and build a persona for your website, but I feel that it's one of those essential things you should do for your business.

Once you have your persona, you can even consider printing it as a poster and hanging it on the wall to look at and get inspired throughout the day. 

On my wall, I have personas and quotes that inspire me to think more positively and new solutions that will help. 

To get started with creating your persona, I recommend first spending time to think about your previous customers and try to identify common things they had.

1. Common needs they shared and why they hired you?
2. Common demographic details about them? (Age, gender, location)
3. Common feedback about working with you? What is a common theme why people enjoyed work with you?
4. Common hesitations or questions they had before moving ahead?

Another recommendation would be to ask previous customers for a feedback interview where you can ask questions to help develop a customer persona. What I found through interviews is that this helps you to speak in the words of customers rather than yours, which is much more powerful! 

Some questions I'll ask during interviews include:

1. How would you describe yourself when you needed my service? 
2. Describe your experience working with me?
3. What did you like most? What did you dislike?
4. Recommendations you would have for me?
5. Regarding my website, anything particular you think I should highlight or add to reach more potential customers? 
   

Customer persona will take your further

Owning a great product or service will get you only so far. 

To sell your product or service and sell it well, you have to focus on what matters most to your customers. 

Knowing your ideal customer or buyer persona is key to creating content that will sell and convert.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read my thoughts! 

I love hearing from you, and so please send me a message if this struck an idea or if you have some follow-up questions.

Until the next one, rock the week!