Difference between Target Market vs Personas:

Target market: technique that help companies analyse what segment to target.

Personas: helps companies to elaborate a communication tone to their segment by humanizing it.

One of the first steps for any marketing strategy is identyfing your target market in order to create a Marketing Plan and direct personalized actions and design the Personas in order to empathize with your customer, find a common language and better your product.

“People ignore design design that ignores people” — Frank Chimero, designer

Difference between user and buyer persona:

User persona: whoever uses the service/product. Might not be the buyer nor make the decision of purchase. Focus on details (ease of use, flat learning curve…)

Buyer persona: whoever that makes the decision to purchase the product/service. They are not necesarily the ones that use the product. Especially in B2B, strategic goals (often for the long run), ROI pursue.

In B2B, most cases your buyer persona won’t be your user persona. There are general managers, department managers or supervisors that are the decision makers.

How to create a Persona step by step:

Research

Collecting insights is key priority in order to make your Persona. You might have some previous ideas from your current customers or some hypothesis about future ones, but if you don’t there are some tools that help you collect all kind of info you need such as interviews or surveys.

For the last two sources you might want to know what kind of information you are trying to obtain so that you can ask the right questions.

• Approach: identify the problem you’re trying to solve, select the technique and the tool to collect the data, define the sample and describe the variables and dimensions.
• Preparation: prepare the collection tool (excel, google form, etc.)
• Data pick up: time to apply the selected technique, collect data (visual, attitude, behavior)
• Analysis: analize the picked up data, data interpretation, conclusion extration, report presentation and follow up with the client.

After collecting all this verbatims (text quotes from the interviews) we’ll get enough insights in order to prepare the Persona.

You should add some external sources to support your data (articles, news, researches…).

In some cases, like in Lean management teams, you will create your personas based on assumptions and not on research. These are call “Proto-personas”.

Segment

The persona would be a collective impression of a segment of your target audience. We’ll create one hypothetical persona which will be your potential user/buyer.

There’s no standard number of Personas you’d need, it would depend on your business and product/service. After a deep market research, you should have define your MVS (minimum viable segment). Then break these segment into groups with some features or properties that identify them (if your target audience is too broad, you might want to divide them into subgroups). These will be the number of personas you’ll need to create.

Prioritize which personas to design first based on the size or the importance of the group. Try to keep personas to the minimum since you will create your marketing actions based on them.

Demographic profile

In order to create the right actions with the right tone, you need to find out specific details of your Personas, and it’s logical to start on demographic data.

• Give your persona a name and a photo, it doesn’t have to be real.
• Age
• Marital status
• Location
• Job/income/studies
• Any other features you consider appropiate for your persona definition.

Goals / Frustrations / Motivations

Goals: it’s important to describe your customer goals in order to align with your business strategy.

Frustrations / Motivations: within your research you should be able to idenfity your customer frustrations and motivations which will lead you to find a way to win them.

Other

You might include some background of everything you know about your client and could be useful for your research, like the apps they use, their daily routines, skills, technologies they use, values/fears, hobbies..

I like to include some textual quotes that idenfity them or their main need.

Take a look to the following article to find out what questions you should ask in order to create a Persona.

The final end is to empathize with our customers by being good storytellers and put the marketing efforts in the right Persona.

It’s 2019 and social media has taken over most aspects of personal and proffesional life. Is there any business out there that doesn’t have a Facebook or Instagram profile? If you’re not in LinkedIn, are you even on the working market? Do you even exist if you don’t appear on Google My Business?

Sounds cliché but nothing works better than a good and high quality content. You’re an expert, that’s not even an issue, just get out there and publish. Real problem? We’re so full of content everywhere: pictures, long texts, short text, videos, podcasts… You follow all these accounts to stay updated on your favorite topics that fill your timeline with nothing more than empty posts. You don’t have time to read all of those and even if you do, you’ll end up mixing up everything or not remembering them at all.

Infoxication achieves that you get all the information you asked for and get none of it at the same time, while filling you with anxiety and uncertainity.

High Quality

This is obvious, right?

So here content steps up even further: not only content needs to be top quality, but also need to catch attention, needs to engage with the customer on the language, the tone, the emotions… Needs to be real, honest.

I’d like to go deeper on Instagram management in future posts, but I could use it as a good example here! What kind of content would you like to find in IG? For me, I’d get attracted by a simple, minimalistic multi-picture post with all the summarized info I need. I don’t usually read long captions, I doubt any of us does, but if the content it’s on a picture and it keeps you intrigued, it’s a success!

Timming

Analyze when your content is being consumed: at the metro long trips, intimate bathroom time, elevators… Depending on your customers behaviour, you should go one way on another in the designing of your content structure.

As for me, I usually listen to podcasts when I’m driving, so my strategy here would be longer content including debates with experts, FAQs about a topic, etc.

Organization

Whether you run your own account of multiple ones, you really need a master in organization skills. Here there are some tips to start with:

• Retail calendar — it’s important to be ahead of important events on your industry. Like main holidays, trade fairs, festivals, product launching…Prepare campaigns and proper content, researching on every topic, analyzing your audience to reach them by same tone..
• Schedule — retail calendar needs to be prepared a year ahead on the main issues, but it’s crutial to at least check it monthly to update the important events that might come up. I’d even go to weekly if you got the time, but I guess perfect timing would be biweekly if you don’t have enough time (who does?).
• Adapt — even if we planned and planned, schedule and review, make sure you’ll always meet the unexpected on the way. Every client is different, every industry, even your own work can twist from one day to the other. We always blame on the social media campaigns if the results are not that good.

If you got this far I’m 99% sure you only read the bold words, but that’s enough! My point here was that exactly. If you want to get out there and just let it all out, that’s fine! You just need to make sure customers will get your point by just one glance…

…because that’s all the time they’ve got.

(yep, I got out of topic many times that I had to delete! Focus is my top priority, I ramble a lot!)

Where are we and where are we heading? A great value proposition lives in a sustainable and profitable business model, but starts with a deep understanding of customers. It requires a design mindset. An easy approach to define our Business Model would be through a co-creation process.

From a while ago, corporations no longer decide what they should be doing by themselves, or at least, they shouldn’t be. Customers are the center of all operations and strategies the company should follow. The final goal of a company is to make money, that’s the truth. But how do we make money? Many companies and start-ups fail because they build something nobody wants (about 36%), hiring poorly (18%), lack of focus (13%), fail to execute Marketing and sales strategies (12%) and some others (such as not having the right founders, chasing investors and not customers, ignoring social media…).

Marketing purpose is not selling as many may think. The goal of marketing is keeping current customers and attracting new ones by increasing brand awareness, generating qualified leads, increasing brand enegagement and revenue generation. From a while ago, the “customer centric” strategies have been ruling the new model business companies. They focus on listening to the customers and their needs, really get to them to hear their pains points to be able to get some insights out of them and find some solutions to reveal them.

A very interesing and important process for the customers to be implied on the engagement ideas is through co-creation. Through this kind of client empowering, they are part of the whole product/service funnel in a continual design process. But customers are not the only ones that need to be present during a co-creation process. Other stakeholders such as employees, providers and/or communities are as much needed to get a whole view of the company. All of the stakeholders need to be as content as the final custumer to create the team feeling and being seen as a “whole”.

What is co-creation?

ECC partnership defines it as:

Experience co-creation is a major re-think on how businesses create value. It involves redefining the way organizations engage individuals in value creation, especially employees and internal stakeholders, but also customers, suppliers, and related external stakeholders and communities. It is about organizations unleashing the creative energy of people by inviting and enabling them to interact with them differently

Another interesting definition could be the one of Business Dictionary:

A business strategy centered on the customer experience and interactive relationships. Co-creation allows and encourages a more active involvement from the customer to create a value rich experience.

The co-creator goal is to get out of the process a value proposition which will be applied to our Business Model Canvas. It allows customer to get engaged to the brand into developing and keeping new products/services, sharing ideas, build and work as a team, allows constructive criticism, provides healthy competivity and inspires proactivity.

User Persona

First step would be to create an user persona in order to get a first view of our type of customers and stakeholders that are implied.

Value proposition

It’s a tool that helps you to systematically understand the customer needs.

Customer profile

The customer segment is a set of characteristics that you assume, observe and verify in the market. This is the group of people that you aim to reach in order to create value for them. By listening to our stakeholders, we can get verbatims and insights out of them, and translate them into categories (user job, pain and gains) of our Value Proposition Canvas.

• Customer Jobs: what customers are trying to get done
• Gains: the expected benefits the customer seeks
• Pains: describes bad outcomes, risks and obstacles related to the intention of the customer (customer job)

This type of canvas is to be used just for one type of customer, but we used our past two user personas (student and teacher) as a punctual exercise.

Value map

After observing, we get to define how we can create the gains our customers expect and how to relieve their pains.

• Products and services: the list of products or services provided by the company under the study.
• Pain relievers: describe how your product kill (present) or relieve (future) your clients pains
• Gain creators: describe how your produdct generate customer gains.

The connection between our product/service and customer jobs/gains/pains is the value proposition: the product-market FIT.

If our pain relievers solve our customer pains and we satisfy their gains, the result would be of a perfect fit. Test your VP by using ad-libs:

Our (name of product/service) help (X type of customer) who want to (customer job) by (pain relievers) and (gain creators).

There are three kinds of FITS

• Problem-Solution fit: understanding customers
• Product-Market fit: design value propositions
• Business Model fit: find the right business model

Business Model Canvas

What comes next is to translate this customer view and our Value proposition to our Business Model Canvas (BMC).

This BMC describes how we create value to our customer AND how we create value to our business: how we create revenue from our activities.

And although it might look great, it’s nothing but a set of hypotheses.

• Customer segments: this is what we get from the circle of the value proposition. It’s the segment of clients with a need unsatisfied.
• Value proposition: it’s the core of our company, how we are proving value to our stakeholders. It’s what makes us different, and the reason why our customers should choose us among all others competitors. It describes the benefits our customers can expect from our services.
• Channels: how does each customer segment want to be reached
• Customer relationships: what kind of relationships are establishing with each segment: personal, automated, acquisitive or retentive?
• Revenue streams: what customers are really willing to pay for our product/service.
• Key resources: essential assets and resources.
• Key activities: the essential activities we need to perform in ourder to achieve our value proposition.
• Key partners: partners and suppliers that leverage our business model.
• Cost structure: such as personnel, salaries, rentals, raw materials..

Without a co-creation process, we would need to verify and validate this model assumptions with the customers until we get it right.

The business model canvas is just a step of our Business Plan, so next steps would be:

• Financial spreadsheet: breakeven analysis, sales scenarios and projections, capital spending, operation costs, funding requirements..
• Environment analysis: PESTEL, 5’s Porters forces, competitors analysis, competitive advantages..
• Implementation roadmap: projects, milestones, roadmap..
• Risk analysis: SWOT and uncertainity analysis

Let’s finish with the proper quote about the whole Customer centric process:

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about it in terms of the service it might give to others… I find out about what the world needs, then I proceed to invent” — Thomas Edinson

La funcionalidad: Cancelar coche reservado

Pantallas

A través de pantallazos, he elegido las siguientes 5 vistas/pantallas dentro de la funcionalidad elegida.

Paper-prototyping

Primero he desarrollado un sketch a mano, técnica que permite crear y testear rápidamente y sin coste las diferentes interfaces de usuario. El proceso sería crear dibujos no muy detallados (mi dibujo de coche lo demuestra) como prototipo o modelos de diseño. Lo normal sería que resultasen útiles para dar un rápido feedback sobre el diseño y estructurar la arquitectura de información. En este caso, al ya tener las pantallas, sólo me ha sido útil para poder pasar rápidamente a la siguiente fase del prototipado: los wireframes.

Wireframes

Los wireframes son unos entregables de proyectos digitales que muestran estructuras simples y reflejan la estructura de información y el diseño. Definen el mapa de contenidos y las decisiones del diseño de la interfaz.

He usado como herramienta Whimsical, que ofrece una rápida y cómoda forma de elaborar las pantallas con todas las características esenciales.

El objetivo de los wireframes sería recoger feedback sobre la aplicación y experiencia de usuario en una fase inicial del proyecto. Por tanto, he intentado hacer los wireframes lo más intuitivos posibles.

En esta sección he intentado enfocarme en los botones de acción que realizarían el siteflow de la funcionalidad, textos e iconos básicos, intentando ser lo más fiel posible al diseño real pero sin aportar color, diseño, iconos ni copys finales.

Lo he diseñado en blanco y negro, resaltando en color los botones de acción, y unos primeros textos no finales para centrar la atención en la jerarquía para que sea más fácil y claro el trayecto.

Conclusiones:

• Me ha parecido un ejercicio muy interesante para, en principio, diferenciar los tipos de prototipos de una idea, qué elementos incluir y cuáles no.
• Me hubiese gustado hacerlo con Adobe XD, de haber tenido más tiempo, lo habría intentado diseñar con el programa para practicar y conocer mejor las herramientas.
• Muy útil aplicar de forma rápida e inmediata la teoría.
• La restricción de tiempo ha sido muy útil para poder centrarme en elaborar algo sencillo y rápido, ya que soy bastante dada a la perfección de detalles.
• Puede ser muy útil enseñar estas versiones a los stakeholders en fases iniciales del proyecto.

En nuestro curso de fin de semana de UX/UI nos han propuesto realizar un mapa de sitio de Instagram.

SITE MAP

El mapa de sitio es una lista de páginas de un sitio web o app accesible por los usuarios y los buscadores. Google los define como “ Un mapa del sitio es un archivo en el que puedes enumerar las páginas web de tu sitio web para informar a Google y otros motores de búsqueda acerca de la organización del contenido del sitio. Los rastreadores web en buscadores como Googlebot leen este archivo para rastrear de forma más inteligente tu sitio”. Los entiendo como un camino para que los buscadores indixen correctamente cada página, una estructura de lo que contiene un sitio web y lo que incluye éste. Lo imagino como si un sitio web fuese una casa y cada página una habitación. Al insertar un mapa de sitio en la web, proporcionamos a Google y otros buscadores un plano para que sepa localizar fácilmente todas las habitaciones. Por lo tanto debe ser básico para un buen SEO del sitio web, como quizás no lo es tanto para el usuario.

Lo primero que he necesitado concretar es la diferencia entre un sitio web y una página web, ya que hasta ahora las había estado usando erróneamente como sinónimos:

• Página web: la página web forma parte del sitio web, es una de las habitaciones de la casa. Es un único documento/archivo con un nombre asignado. Según la RAE es un conjunto de informaciones que se muestran en una pantalla que puede contener texto, contenidos audiovisuales o enlaces a otras páginas. Técnicamente, estas informaciones están en formato HTML y pueden incluir recursos que le aportaría una serie de características gráficas (CSS).
• Sitio web: es una localización en la World Wide Web que contiene los documentos o páginas web. Sería un conjunto de páginas web.

Si el sitio web es un libro con su propio título (nombre del dominio), cada página serían los capítulos con sus nombres. Un mapa de sitio sería el índice de esos capítulos.

He recurrido a Apple para mostrar un ejemplo, aunque igualmente el mapa se sitúa en la parte inferior de la página:

Hay varios generadores de mapas de sitio que facilitan esta tarea, pero la única que he parado a estudiar sería Screaming Frog, con una versión gratuita de hasta 500 páginas.

Cuando nos propusieron el reto no me pareció complicado. Tenía en la mente la estructura clara de Instagram. Pero es cierto que según iba pasando pantallas me iban surgiendo dudas respecto a si se podría considerar o no “página” a determinados apartados o considerarlos como herramientas o añadidos. He decidido marcar estos con líneas consecutivas para separarlos de los que creo que sí son páginas del sitio.

No he considerado tampoco como “pantalla” las opciones al elegir una nueva publicación, escribir un nuevo mensaje o las diferentes vistas de la propia colección de fotos del perfil.

En el sitemap propuesto se observan las siguientes páginas y secciones:

• Feed: sería la “home page” en la que aterriza el usuario al iniciar la app o entrar al sitio web. En el feed o “muro” se ven todas las nuevas publicaciones de las cuentas a las que seguimos + las publicaciones promocionadas. -En la parte superior de la página se encuentra la sección de “stories”, mensajes privados y IGTV.
• Búsqueda: sección de búsqueda con publicaciones recomendadas según actividad.
• Nueva publicación: para publicar una nueva foto o vídeo se puede seleccionar de la galería o hacer una nueva desde la cámara.
• Notificaciones: en la página de actividad se pueden ver las notificaciones de la cuenta o de las cuentas que seguimos. He decidido dividirlo en subpáginas por contener información y multimedia con diferente contenido dependiendo del origen de la información que se busca.
• Perfil: en el caso del perfil sí he visto más clara la división de subpáginas, por contener contenido más identificado. Se pueden ver las historias destacadas y diferentes vistas del álbum de fotos del perfil. Como subpáginas, he identificado la edición del perfil (donde cambiar el nombre de usuario e información básica de la cuenta), el menú con la configuración y el archivo de publicaciones.

La segunda parte del ejercicio consistirá en hacer un mapa de flujo desde que el usuario decide hacer una foto hasta que la publica.