Key steps in creating your reader persona

By Gerry McGovern

The first step in developing successful reader personas is to decide what readers you are not going to focus on. Good web management is often more about what you exclude than what you include.

I know of a large organization that primarily targets four key markets offline, yet targets 20 markets online. Its website isn’t great, with lots of poor-quality, generic content. There is no marketing focus and consequently the website delivers precious little in results.

The Web is about self-service and self-service is about simplicity and convenience. You’ve got a small screen and every time you add something extra to that screen you make the world more complicated for your reader. You must make very difficult choices if you want your website to work. You can’t serve everybody, and if you try to you will serve nobody.

Three readers best; five readers maximum
Aim to have no more than three core reader personas for your website, with a maximum of five. Having three readers gives you a much better chance of creating a simple self-service environment with clear messages that are immediately evident to each reader.

Aerlingus.com is a successful low-cost airline. If you go to its website you will find four clear market segments: Ireland, UK, Europe, USA. However, most of the homepage shows offers for Irish people flying abroad, because for Aer Lingus, this is the core market. Like other successful websites, Aer Lingus makes tough decisions on who to target and who not to target.

The task is everything
Once you’ve identified your core readers, the next job is to identify their core tasks. Again, you should not have more than three tasks per reader, and ideally one dominant task. On the eBay homepage there are three key tasks: Find, Buy, Pay. When you go to Google, there is one: Search.

On the Web, the task is everything and you must focus relentlessly on it. Your arch enemies are statements like: “They might be interested in this; Some people come to our website looking for information.” Nobody that matters comes to your website looking for information. They come because they have a task they want to complete. All information must serve task completion. Websites that are full of aimless, vague information are a waste of time, effort and money. They should be shut down.

Put a face on your reader
Give your core readers names and faces. Buy some stock photography or do some photography yourself. Give a little background on John or Mary, and clearly articulate their tasks. What you want to create is a set of fictional characters who will become part of the daily conversation. This is vital. Your characters must be integrated into the day-to-day thinking of the staff responsible for the website.

This is another reason why you should try and not have more than three key readers. If you ask your team to get to know and understand three reader personas, that’s feasible. If you ask them to get to know ten reader personas, that’s highly improbable.

Our very nature leads us on an inward journey, so we need to work hard every day to ensure that we focus outward, and genuinely make the customer king. Developing reader personas helps us do that.

Gerry McGovern provides website content management solutions