This article continues the topic of using persona to create content on your site that is most relevant to your audience. If you want to read the first article, open it by clicking here.
Creating a persona is like describing a character in a novel. The better you visualise it, the easier it will be for you to work with it. You will see how s/he reacts to specific situations, you will know what s/he likes and what s/he will not do. This will make it easier for you to adapt to his way of communicating.
How many personas should you create?
Depending on the variety of your offer, create the appropriate number of personas.
If you sell food for one animal species, your recipients will have common traits and one specific goal – feeding their pets. In this case one persona is enough to start with.
If you run a psychologist's office, like Jola, you offer your help to people with different needs and behaving in different ways. On the other hand, Monika's Norwegian language courses differ from each other. One is for Poles who came to Norway to work so it's learning from scratch, the other prepares them for the Norskprøve exams, so it is aimed at people who are already at home in this country. Now she is preparing an offer for employees of foreign companies who come to Norway on a contract and need to learn the language quickly.
As you can see, the number of created personas does not depend on the size of the company, but on the variety of the offer.
How to start creating a persona?
Start by imagining it:
How old is s/he?
What is her/his gender?
Where does s/he come from?
What language does s/he speak?
What does s/he do professionally?
What are her/his interests?
Imagine how your persona behaves.
How s/he finds out about your offer (from social media, paid advertising or search engine)?
How s/he navigates your site (reads the blog and looks for detailed information about products or would s/he prefer to go directly to checkout)?
How can Analytics help with this?
If you already have data in your Analytics, check if your assumptions match with the data regarding those who already visit your website. These reports can help you with this:
Demographics
Where is it? (Menu on the left) Audiences > Demographics > Overview | Age | Gender
Here you may find information about the gender and age groups of your audience. Note that the data covers only a fraction of the users who have viewed the pages of your website. This is because Analytics only collects them from people logged in to their Google accounts (information provided when creating the account) and from those browsers that transmit DoubleClick advertising cookies.
Note: In Universal Analytics, this report must be enabled separately. If it doesn't work for you yet, see [manual] here. Data in already operating accounts will appear after approx. 24 hours. Data in the new service must collect from about one hundred sessions to be aggregated information and prevent identification of specific people.
Geo
Where is it? (Menu on the left) Audiences > Geo > Language | Location
Here you may find information about the languages used by your audience. Remember that these are web browser settings, not data collected from someone's voice 😉
A separate report in Geo deals with the location, i.e. where the visitor connected to your site from. If you're targeting a specific country or region, here you can find interesting data.
Interests
Where is it? (Menu on the left) Audiences > Interests > Overview | Affinity Categories | In-Market Segments
Here you may find out to which category of Internet users your recipients are assigned according to Google data. This data is only saved on the basis of information from the DoubleClick tag, which means that it may not be complete. In the Overview report, you'll see the percentage of total users on which your data is presented. (If you don't know how to create a segment, check out the video tutorial. Also, an article on segments is available here.)
Well, okay, but the data that you already have and can see allows you to check the interests of your recipients. Is your site more visited by fans of shopping or art and lifestyle lovers? Take a look at the categories and think about the the way of speaking, pages and photos you associate each of these categories with. It is a great help in adapting to the needs of your clients.
The information you'll find in the In-Market Segments report is an Analytics hint about your prospects. Based on the collected data, the program analyses and suggests that users from selected sectors are more likely to buy in your store than others.
In each of these reports, pay attention to the conversion rate for that category. It may happen that you have many more sessions from the Sports Fans category, but that those interested in the garden are more likely to convert. This is reasonable if you offer grass in rolls and your photos show players in dynamic poses 😊 Of course, conversion data will appear if you have goals and / or E-commerce reporting set in your Analytics. If you don't know what I'm writing about, check out these articles: Why do you need conversions? and Why do you need e-commerce (for stores and non-stores).
Device Category
Where is it? (Menu on the left) Audiences > Mobile > Overview
Last but not least, a report that shows you what devices are most likely being used to browse your site. It is known that the mobile version of the website is now an obligatory element of the presentation. However, it is worth looking at whether the majority of your audience uses mobile devices or uses a desktop computer. Even ignoring the issue of how your website looks on them, you can imagine the circumstances in which it is viewed. Are they on "Mobiles", so on the run / in public transport / while shopping / in the queue? Is it on the "Desktop", that is during a break at work or in the evening after all classes, at home?
Can you already imagine your persona? Add her/his picture and your hero will be alive!
Ready?
This is the hero of Monika:
Age: 30
Sex: mężczyzna
Location: Rotterdam (Holland)
Language: Dutch / English
Occupation: architekt
Income: 75 000 EUR / year
Interests: contemporary architecture, mountain tourism
Values: openness to cultural diversity, freedom to travel
Story: Daan has been working in an architectural office for several years. He has just received an offer to work on a major project in Oslo, which will require a longer stay in Norway. He is looking forward to this trip because he likes the mountains and hopes to explore the Oslo area. He enjoys direct contact with people and knows that it is worth learning a language to better understand their way of thinking.
Monika finds in her reports information about whether similar people already visit her educational website, creates a segment and checks reports where such people come from, what they watch, how long their visits are and where they most often end. Now she only needs to adjust the message to their needs and redirect from the exit pages to the next steps of the purchasing path of the new course. As the course also has to be created, added to the website and announced in the media😉
Got it?
If you still feel that you need support in interpreting the data and telling the stories of your heroes, or you have not yet recorded conversions, but you know this data will be useful, then contact me (contact). I'd be happy to assist 😊
Additional materials (click to go):
Website which generates portraits of non-existent people, photos are generated by an algorithm: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com.
Previous article on the persona subject in the Knowledge Base: Why my audience is the Persona?
Videotutorial (youtube.com, channel Owwwla - Google Analytics od podstaw):
If you have questions or topics that are not covered here, and you are particularly interested in, write to me, I will be happy to help.
Owwwla
