How UX Persona Research is Beneficial When Pitching to Clients

Studies show that 93% of product designs are a result of research. Showing that you’ve done your research on the user for the product or service you’re pitching, is an indication that you’re working toward creating what people need.

UX persona research lets you understand who the users are and what they want. This data might be in relation to their behaviours, feelings, actions and habits. Ultimately, these insights can be used to identify solutions and create usable products and services.

This type of user-centric research can help improve the customer’s experience if done properly. This guide will expand on what UX persona research and solutions are and how they can be beneficial to creating a product or service. You’ll understand how to create user personas and how they can be useful for future pitches.

What is UX Persona Research?

UX persona research provides the data that a business needs to understand the customer’s motivations, and needs, and how they approach the product or service. This helps the business to be clear about what the problems are and provide a suitable solution.

When businesses are not getting the desired results, they should go back to the drawing board and see if they did proper user persona research. For example, a team might wonder why their website isn’t working or delivering the expected number of conversions. If a thorough investigation is conducted, it might be discovered that the website isn’t really meeting the users’ needs.

There are a number of ways that UX persona research is conducted. How you conduct your research largely depends on the information you’re looking for. For example, a survey may be all that is required to get the relevant data. On the other hand, you might want to explore qualitative research by constituting focus groups, which may be more insightful.

You can have one or multiple personas for a product or service. The number of personas needed for your research will depend on the nature of the product or service. What is important is that the personas cover every possible user of the product or service.

UX persona research is meant to help focus on what matters most in order to create usable products, convert leads to customers and drive sales. A customer’s experience, after all, is very influential to the success of a business. Research shows that 32% of customers would leave a brand after just one unsatisfying experience.

What are the benefits of UX Persona Research?

There are certainly many benefits of conducting UX research, particularly when it comes to identifying user personas. It’s not only beneficial for those pitching but it can also help the development teams working on the design of the product or service. The following are some of these benefits.

Identifies your target audience in more detail

When you’re creating a product or service, knowing your market is critical. Without proper knowledge of your target audience, it would be difficult to create a solution for their problems. With UX persona research, you get to discover who your users are more succinctly. The information gathered from the research will equip you to develop an accurate solution to their problems.

Provides direction when it comes to design decisions 

User persona research can help to better shape the designers’ solutions. With a deeper understanding of user behaviour and what is deemed necessary or not from the viewpoint of the user, designers are likely to produce more products that are appealing to the target market.

Equally, it can also help designers and those responsible for the development of the product avoid pitfalls in their process. When you know exactly what your target audience needs, there’s less likelihood of failure occurring.

Helps with pitching presentations

Data is integral to a successful pitch. Clear data on user personas and how your product or service can cater to their pain points makes a lot of difference in pitching presentations. When you’re presenting your pitch based on good user persona research coupled with the use of nice presentation templates, you’re likely to get more favourable results from your presentation.

Creating User Personas 

To use UX persona research correctly, it’s essential to know how to create user personas in the first place. Before you start implementing UX persona research in your future pitches, it’s useful to understand how a user persona is formed.

In this section, you’ll learn how to create a user persona effectively.

1 – Collect the information on your users

First up, conduct user research to get more information on your audience’s mindsets, vision, expectations, motivations for buying, and general purchasing behaviours. The more accurate these pieces of information can be, the better. The user persona is more realistic if you’ve got sufficient data to represent your potential users properly.

This collection of information can be done through interviews and surveys, for example.

2 – Identify the behaviours from the data

The next step is to identify common behaviours from the research data, as well as unique behaviours that might reflect multiple personas. Finding patterns in your research will help group similar types of users.

Create personas and rank them according to priority

Next, assemble a user persona based on their behavioural patterns. Avoid personal details and instead, keep it broad when it comes to elements of their persona. For example, avoid classifying users as 18-24-year-olds and instead mention them as being young. To provide more insight you could always check if personal data like their date of birth is available so you can identify them as millennials, Gen-Z, etc.

You’ll then want to prioritize your personas based on how important they’ll be to you in selling your products or services. Some may be more important and therefore be prioritized when it comes to spending money on targeted marketing and advertising.

Tie the user personas to a scenario

User personas require meaning, rather than just being a clump of data. With that in mind, you’ll want to tie the user personas to scenarios where your designers will be able to identify their needs so that a solution can be provided.

Designers can utilize a variety of scenarios that are given to these user personas in order to create design solutions you can rave about in your pitch.

A Step-by-Step Guide To Using UX Persona Research in Pitches

Once you’ve got your user personas and you’ve identified how designers can use their scenarios to create the best design solutions, you can then incorporate the data into your pitch. Here are steps you can take in using UX persona research in your pitches.

1 – Identify the data that’s most relevant to the pitch

Firstly, identify the data that’s relevant to the pitch you’re giving. You’re more than likely to find that some user persona research and solutions you’ve provided are general findings that don’t specifically relate to the new product or service in question.

Find the relevant data and then whittle it down to a handful of scenarios you can share with those reading the presentation.

2 – Keep your explanations short and sweet

Keeping your explanations short and sweet is the best way to approach data sharing. Be detailed but don’t waffle on about the small stuff that isn’t really necessary.

Presentations or pitches don’t need to be pages long and even if they are, they are only likely to be skim-read by those you’ve sent them to. Save you and your team time and money by keeping it short and to the point.

3 – Put yourself in the seats of the audience

Whether it’s the stakeholder that’s investing in the new product or you’re pitching your products to a reputable stockist, it’s important to place yourself in the seat of the audience. Have you answered all of the questions that this individual or organization would need? If not, then what else can be added?

The more you can deliver, the more satisfied your readers are going to be when it comes to the pitch.

4 – Reuse the same formula when it comes to successful pitches

Where pitches have been successful with user persona research and solution, take a look at what you did right and then use that as the baseline for your future pitches. It will help ensure you’re hitting the criteria required every single time.

Utilize the power of UX persona research and solutions in pitches

When pitching, UX persona research and the role it plays in creating solutions for your users is essential. UX persona research helps identify users in more detail, gives direction for design decisions and is effective in pitching presentations.

To create user personas, you need to collect information on your users, identify their behaviours, create the personas and rank them according to priority, and tie the user personas to a scenario.

Utilising user personas in pitches is quite straightforward. First, identify the data that is most relevant to the pitch. Next, keep your explanations short and to the point. Third, put yourself in the position of your readers or audience. Finally, reuse the same formula for successful pitches.

About the Author: Natalie Griffiths

Natalie Griffiths is a Freelance writer for many clients across multiple industries, providing copywriting services for websites across many industries. She’s also the owner of two blog websites and a YouTube content creator.

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