Compare this approach to creating a persona for the VP of marketing in the technology sector. By identifying individuals with a name, a life, interests, and online habits, you can develop empathy toward them and place yourself in their shoes. You can begin to imagine each persona coming to you at different stages of the buying process for a different set of reasons and scenarios, and address each concern accordingly. You can individualize the site and its copy to appeal to all the personas and successfully maximize the number of visitors that contact you to learn more about your service or product.

CASE STUDY: Using Personas in Ecommerce

RHDJapan is one of the largest online sellers of OEM and Japanese domestic market (JDM) race parts in the world. The company is headquartered in Tokyo, at the heart of the extreme racing world, which gives it access to the latest JDM parts at unbeatable prices. Although the website received tens of thousands of visitors every month, its conversion rate hovered in the low single digits.

The Invesp optimization team first familiarized themselves with the JDM and auto industry at large to gain a baseline understanding of it. The team then devised a plan for optimization that relied heavily on persona development. The team understood the challenge of creating personas for an international audience. The process of persona development included the following stages:

  1. Gathering general demographic information, customer buying patterns, competitor information, market segments, and overall branding objectives.

  2. Conducting a detailed survey to better understand the RHDJapan customer’s demographics and insights about the site, the products, and branding resonations. Additionally, the team conducted phone interviews with best customers (top spenders) to gauge their perspectives on site performance, usability, and selecting RHD over other vendors.

  3. Recruiting people who shared the same characteristics as RHD’s target market and using them to conduct usability and field studies to monitor visitor behaviors on the site. By asking users to complete specific tasks, the Invesp team identified conversion bottlenecks and usability issues visitors struggled with.

RHDJapan wanted to broaden its reach to the European market by making more of a general marketing push through pay-per-click (PPC) and offline advertising methods throughout Europe. However, the current customer base was composed largely of U.S. customers, which RHD did not want to alienate.

The optimization team developed four primary personas and four secondary personas to address the wide range of visitors from various nationalities, needs, and concerns. The secondary personas were needed due to the complexity of this particular market.

By evaluating their analytics and identifying the needs of each persona—their objections and fears, and the various buying stages and scenarios that would bring them to the RHDJapan website—the team was able to prioritize areas of optimization and make changes that required the least amount of effort and generated the greatest ROI.

Using personas in the final optimization process paid off well. RHDJapan reported 15% uplift in conversion rate month to month during engagement.