User research & persona creation
Our user research is specifically designed to form the foundation of your entire website strategy and planning. User research, and in particular the use of personas, has the following benefits:
- Your website will achieve your business goals both in the short- and long-term
- Users will easily be able to (and want to) achieve your goals for them
- Key stakeholders will better understand your users so will make better decisions
Webcredible is an integral component in helping us create flexible websites for holidays, flights and hotels. Their user research and user-centered design expertise is enabling us to provide the best possible user experience.
George Nolan, Thomson (see more testimonials)
The user research & persona creation usually takes place before both the card sorting & site map creation and wireframe design & testing in the user-centered design process.
User research methodology
Our user research process typically includes some or all of the following:
Stakeholder interviews
The user research process begins with us running interviews with key internal stakeholders to:
- Gain an initial understanding of the audience and their needs
- Understand your business objectives (both for the company and for the website itself)
- Learn about the proposed strategy and plans for the new website
User interviews
Webcredible will next interview up to 20 typical website users, based on the user groups initially identified by the stakeholder interviews. User interviews would usually include ad hoc usability testing to see first-hand how users go about completing tasks on yours and competitors' sites.
The aim of this user research phase is to fully identify key user groups and discover:
- What the website needs to do so they achieve your goals
- Their goals, behaviour, attitudes and motivations
- What kind of functionality they'd realistically use
- Exactly how they go about completing key tasks on the website
The user interviews will demonstrate to you exactly what the website needs to do so each user group most effectively achieves your goals for them.
Contextual enquiry
Taking interviews one step further, contextual enquiry is a powerful user research technique for getting even further into the minds of users. We visit several users at home or work and observe them carrying out tasks in their natural environment. We then interview them after completing tasks.
Questionnaire
In order to validate the opinions and ideas from the user research, Webcredible will deploy a questionnaire for users to complete. By running a questionnaire we can get input from between 10-100 times more people than from just the interviews.
The questionnaire results will serve to validate and refine hypotheses from the user research and will feed directly into persona creation.
User research deliverables: Personas
Why we're different
Webcredible does things slightly differently to (and much better than) our competitors:
- We know more than just usability and accessibility
- We're experts in what we do
- We're passionate about our work
- We don't have 'project managers'
- You'll enjoy working with us
- We believe in knowledge sharing so you'll learn a lot from us
Find out in more detail about why we're different.
In addition to a full report and presentation, the main deliverable from the user research is a set of personas (typically 3-5 personas). Each persona is a fictional character representing a set of your users and is created after rigorously analysing and categorising the data from the user research.
Personas provide powerful (yet quick and simple) guidance for any website strategy and planning decisions. Personas are brought to life and made credible by including personal details (such as a name, age, background and a photo).They capture the most important information about each user group:
- Goals - What users are trying to achieve, such as tasks they want to perform
- Behaviour - Online and offline behaviour patterns, helping to identify users' goals
- Attitudes - Relevant attitudes that predict how users will behave
- Motivations - Why users want to achieve these goals
- Business objectives - What you ideally want users to do in order to ensure the website is successful
Personas from the user research are based on totally different criteria to traditional market research. Market research usually focuses on users' demographics, which for a website strategy isn't at all relevant. The personas we create are the underpinning component of any website project and will:
- Put you inside the minds of your users
- Form the foundation of all future website strategy and planning
- Unite internal stakeholders throughout your organisation so they're focused around users' needs
What next?
Please contact us by phone on 0870 242 6095 or by e-mail at usability at webcredible.co.uk. We'll discuss your user research & persona creation needs and requirements with no pushy sales pitch and no obligation to you.