What customers want should drive the decisions you make. If you’re going to sell a product or service, you need to know your audience. To learn who that audience is, it’s important to to create a persona template that represents your customers. A good user persona is the key to understanding your user and their needs.
What’s a user persona?
A user persona is a representation of who your target user is. They’re profiles, but based on real people: your users.
User personas are based on research, factoring in the needs, goals, and behaviors of your target audience. Various types of personas emerge based on different needs. By establishing your user persona, you better make decisions when it comes to product strategy, design, usability, what your product demand is, and more.
The goal of a user persona is to condense expansive customer data into a single reference for businesses to use. They keep teams on the same page, working towards the same goals. The data gathered is streamlined into one, fictional character. The persona template of that character is a compilation of key personality traits, preferences and data relevant to your business.
Marketing personas and design personas
Marketing personas are idealized representations of a customer. They have similarities in buying preference, social relations, mode of consumption and demographics. This is who you’ll target your product towards.
Design Personas (or UX personas) are representations of users of a product or service. They have similarities in usage customs, product requirements, preferences and goals. UX personas are used more to identify the needs of potential users rather than who they are.
Marketing personas identify who the customer is. Design personas help developers focus on users during the function design, to make products that meet the needs and expectations of your audience.
What’s included in a persona?
User personas are data reference points that guide internal decision making. When you create a persona, start with the basics:
- Name
- Photo
- Bio
- Motivations
- Goals and pain points
The benefits of creating a user persona
Before you launch a product, you need to know who’ll use it. So it’s important to conduct research to identify the types of personas required. That way, you can pinpoint specific ways to make your product successful.
A user persona offers a reference point for decision-making across all teams working on your product. With a strong user persona template in place, you can be confident that everyone will be working towards the same goal. Essentially, a user persona template is the blueprint for all teams.
Persona templates are also easier to digest than raw data. By making decisions based on what’s best for a person rather than a document full of facts and figures, it can be easier to make informed choices. It’s also easier to determine the needs of one user than hundreds. That’s why it’s important your user persona offers an accurate representation of all your users.
A good user persona should help you:
- Know your audience better.
- Strengthen communication and cooperation across internal teams.
- Influence product features, user flows, and other aspects.
- Help guide marketing strategies.
- Help facilitate tests and analysis of products before release.
What are the elements of a good persona?
Name
An important part of creating a user persona is to make it something that everyone can relate to and familiarize themselves with. This all starts with a name. It can be a real customer name or something created.
Photo
It’s nice to put a face to the name, too. This creates a more authentic experience when it comes to visualizing your user personas’ profiles.
Bio
Your user persona shouldn’t be a stranger. Like your customers, they should have a backstory. What do they do and what did they do prior to becoming your user?
Demographics
A 50-year-old man is not going to use a product the same way a teenage girl will. So, when creating user personas, it’s important to assign demographics and organize user persona templates that way. Consider including the following elements:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Location
- Job title
- Marital status
Motivations
This helps you know how your audience thinks. By pinpointing motivation for exploring your products, you’ll be able to anticipate their needs, and help with acquisition/retention.
You’ll be able to better understand your user’s goals and pain points. This real user data is important in guiding decision-making, and establishing the foundation for your user personas.
How do I create my own persona template?
Conduct user research
First thing’s first. You need to figure out who your users are and what journey they’ve been on to come to your product. To gather this information, you need to conduct interviews, asking real people already using your product. There are some additional strategies:
- Website observation
- User questionnaires & surveys
- Product reports
- Collect and use whatever info that you can and already have on hand to analyze your audience
If you don’t have real users to interview to gather insights from, try a competitor analysis. Take a closer look at competitive products on social media and see what kind of people are interacting with them, and go from there.
Analyse data and identify patterns
After you conduct your research and gather data, organize the information and identify trends. Begin grouping profiles together based on overlapping trends. Each group should have a similar approach to your product. This is the development phase of your user personas.
Apply patterns and data to a user persona
With customers organized based by data results, it’s time to create your user personas. A persona will consist of four main elements:
- Photo: Use a photo to create a visual representation of your user. It’ll help your team better visualize your data when making decisions. It can be a real user (if you’ve gained permission), or a suitable stock image that captures the spirit of the persona.
- Name: Naming your persona will also help your internal team familiarize themselves with the target user group.
- Description: Where you summarize your personas. Include user demographics as well as a fictional backstory developed from data patterns. It should include user goals and motivations for using your products/services.
- Problems: Each user persona should represent a different set of problems. Each problem should be included in this section of your user profile.
Share your new user persona
Once your user persona is complete, share it. Members across all teams should familiarize themselves with user personas. They should be used for big decisions whether they be for UI and UX design, marketing or sales.
Keep testing and updating
People change, and so do your users. So it’s important to keep your user personas updated and reflective of new or developing goals, pain points, and changing needs.
How to create a user persona template
Ready to create your own user persona template? Picsart creative tools make the process fun and easy. Here are some simple steps to guide your hand, but feel free to explore the tools in greater depth at your leisure, too.
On the web
1. Open the Desktop Editor, select Custom Size and input your height and width values, then click on Create Design.
2. Click on the Background tool and select the Texture category.
3. Browse the available options and click on your favorite to fill the canvas.
4. Click on the Uploads tool and select the image you want to add to your user persona template.
5. Create sections for your user persona by clicking on the Elements tool and selecting appropriate shapes and adding them to the canvas.
6. With those sections in place all that’s left to do is add your data. Click on the Text tool, select from the sub-sections and choose your font style and size, then input all the information required. Repeat until your persona template is complete.
7. All done? Click on the Export button and download your work.
On mobile
1. Open the Picsart app and tap the plus button (+) at the bottom of your screen to start a new design.
2. Scroll down to the Backgrounds section and tap on See All.
3. Browse the background options and tap on the one you want to create your user persona on.
4. Don’t fret if the background isn’t perfect from the get-go. You can customize it in all kinds of fun ways. Cropping, for example.
5. Resize the canvas to suit your particular user persona needs.
6. Let’s go further and tap on the Add Photo tool.
7. Upload an image from your device, place accordingly, and tap on Apply to confirm the selection.
8. Tap on the Text tool.
9. Type in your user persona name. Customize the font, color, appearance, and more. Repeat the above steps to add the sections discussed earlier.
10. Download your finished user persona template for use again and again.
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