Not everyone agrees that personas are effective. Some argue that you do not need that much intimate knowledge to sell to customers. Some even argue that it is an invasion of space and privacy. But isn’t that what marketing is all about? Persona creation does not examine the data for a particular individual; it looks at general trends, behavior, and patterns among different market segments. Yes, the goal of persona creation is to increase a particular company’s revenue, but the road toward that goal is navigable only by creating a website that is user-friendly and benefits both the end user and the company.
On the opposite end of the spectrum are those who argue that personas limit a project’s scope and focus because they do not have a clear relationship to real customer data. These people feel that personas distance teams from real users and needs, and that personas’ success lacks hard evidence.[28] This theory was debunked when experts conducted experiments in which groups of students in a controlled environment were asked to solve a design brief. One group used personas, the other did not. The group that used personas produced designs with better usability.[29]
Buyers’ behavior patterns and characteristics tend to be the same on both ecommerce websites and their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Best Buy’s Jill was the most promising customer persona; however, she wasn’t always purchasing from Best Buy stores, which is why Best Buy trained specific store reps to target the Jills, help them locate the desired items, and walk them to the register lest they change their mind at any point.
There are also those who argue that personas prevent you from anticipating all the particulars of your customers. Because a persona is limiting in terms of whom it “individualizes” (i.e., personality type, traits, job, income, etc.), marketers may not anticipate all of the persona’s concerns. Personas are developed so that you can anticipate the many situations that visitors present to you. They guide the process of understanding the various buying, browsing, and navigating scenarios of your customers so that you can design for them. But can you anticipate every scenario? Never. No site or offline store is able to convert 100% of its visitors into customers. Clearly, some customers are there by accident (they came with a friend to your store or just landed on your site unintentionally), some are there to compare prices, and some have needs that you just do not meet. Personas maximize your reach, but like any optimization or marketing venture, you can never guarantee absolute response.
Finally, there are many frustrated online retailers who argue that personas are only effective with smaller websites, and that ecommerce websites are complex and have too many pages to effectively use personas to increase conversion rates. This shows a lack of understanding of how personas fit into the conversion optimization process. We never aim to take thousands of pages and apply personas to them. The optimization process requires a lot more thought than that. Persona development provides you with a framework to understand your website visitors. The actual conversion optimization process starts with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis of your website, your campaign, and your sales process. The goal of the analysis is to create a conversion optimization road map. Only then will you apply personas to specific areas of the website. You are no longer talking in terms of thousands of pages, but rather in terms of a focused set that will produce the highest impact on your conversion rate.
Although we stress the importance of persona creation, personas do not comprise the entire optimization process; they are simply the first step. If you do not use and develop personas correctly, they will be useless to your site or campaign.