At University we always designed for the ‘target audience’, broadly meaning; the people who would use the product/website etc. Sounds simple and straightforward enough, and yet I always struggled with it, but never understood why.

So, what does a ‘target audience’ include?

The first thing we were told was to simply think about; who do you think will use the product? What job do they have? Where do they live? What activities will they do? How much money will they earn? Down to what clothes would they wear?

At university the ‘target audience’ was always something I personally struggled with. Trying to cater to an invisible audience that I had to define before the product idea had been fully developed stumped me every time. I just couldn’t get a grip on generalising (as I saw it) to that scale, trying to come up with minute details for these peoples’ lives so that I could design specifically for all of them. Now that left me feeling a bit stupid, but I was never told exactly what I was looking for in a target audience, how to work that out and how it should influence my concept and design. Needless to say I was never taught user profiling.

It wasn’t until I started my role here at ES that it finally clicked, and I understood why I had had so much trouble with the ‘target audience’ aspect at university. What I learned from the guys here is that there are two types of profiling that happen within the sphere of a target audience; a marketing profile, and a user profile. They appear to be the same thing, and it took some patience on their part in order to communicate to me what the specific differences were between the profiles we make, compared to the profiles that are generally thought to represent that of the customer.

Marketing Profiles – a look at where they work, what car they drive…

Marketing profiles, generally speaking, are what companies use to determine how they can sell products and services to their prospective customers; what paper do they read, where do they live, what car do they drive, what their household income is, etc. They need to know this sort of personal information so they can target, design for, respond to, and basically pander to the customer’s interests and habits.

This information helps them to speak in the right language, at the right level. It helps them to advertise in specific publications. It knows what TV programs they are most likely to watch, and therefore where to place their ads. This of course is all relevant when trying to publicise the company. For example, your marketing profile might look like this:

“Mary, a 35 year old mother of two, household income of £60k, drives a VW Golf, reads the    Daily Mail, uses the internet mainly for emails and shopping, lives in the South East”

But how does this help to prioritise the content and functionality on a website?

User Profiles – focusing on the individuals goal

On the other hand, a user profile focuses on the goals of people who will use the service. When creating a user profile there are a different set of questions which must be thought about, for example; what is the user’s goal? Why do they need to achieve this? How quickly do they need to achieve this? And what steps do they need to go through to reach their goal?

If we take an online balloon retailer who needs their site redesigned, a user profile for that site would look something like this:

“Mary, her daughter’s birthday party is in two weeks, she needs 20 balloons that will ideally have    her daughter’s name (Louise) on and be pink in colour”

Of course these questions will be affected by such things as who the individual is and what kind of job they may do, however it is not dependant on all, or sometimes any of those factors at one time. It doesn’t matter if I am a mum, sister, or friend planning a birthday party for someone, I will still need to buy 20 balloons. That is my end goal which I want to be as simple, easy, and stress free as possible.

So what did I learn?

Although I still feel mildly ignorant for not having figured this out by myself, I now see where I went wrong at Uni. A user profile, and decent understanding of the goals your end-user will want to achieve, should be the main force driving the design of a products core structure. A marketing profile can then be used to help decide on the visuals and aesthetic appeal to appeal to the use once the site is built in a user-friendly way.

What do your profiles look like, and how do you use them?

Pukka teas are a brand that’s easy to like. They present themselves as a healthy, organic company. They have a nice overall feel, they have good quality products, their packaging is appealing, their website is…well, ok.

So, over the years while I’ve been a customer, I’ve found a few teas that I really like. But I have tried some that I don’t like so much too. I know they have quite a big range so every time I see their invitation for free samples on the inside of their box I think “one day I should do that”. I can try out a bunch of different teas, and expand my horizons a little. Pukka get more money from me and everyone’s happy. Every time I found myself in the supermarket to buy some new teas I looked at their range, hungry to try something new but wary of buying a whole box if I didn’t like the taste. And every time I would kick myself for not filling in that free sample form!

My goal was clear: Broaden taste horizons by sampling different teas without having to commit to a whole box in case I didn’t like them

So after lots of times telling myself I should, 2 weeks ago I finally did. I went to the website and filled in the form with anticipation. Then after completely forgetting about it, this weekend I received a small package in my letter box.

Excited when I saw it was from Pukka, my next thought was it looked a little small. I opened it up to find 2 free tea bags, both of which I had tried before. Excitement turned to disappointment, which then turned to anger. I’d wasted my efforts in filling out the form and telling myself off every time I hadn’t filled in the form.

Pukka could turn customers into brand advocates
Pukka had an opportunity to turn me from a regular customer to a loyal customer who spends more money with them and who will potentially go on to become an advocate to recommend the free samples to their friends. Allowing Pukka to grow their customer base and increase their customer data capture from their free samples form. Instead they offer a sub standard customer experience, leaving me frustrated and much less likely to fully engage with the brand further. Although they haven’t done enough to stop me from being a customer altogether, its unlikely I’ll ever try out the other options in their range and will just stick to what I know until I find an alternative brand which interests me more.

Cost to send tea samples vs. benefit of delighting customers
If the issue is one of cost in sending out a bunch of free samples then there are different ways to look at it. One would be to give customers the option to indicate which teas they have tried and which they haven’t. Alternatively Pukka could look at the opportunity to create loyal customers or customer advocates who will bring them more customers. They may decide that the cost associated with sending a larger number of free samples is worth it to acquire new customers and larger purchases from repeat customers.

Pukka took an opportunity to delight and instead replaced it with one which frustrated and angered. Are you making the most of your opportunities to delight your customers?

Our primary function as a business is to bring our clients closer to the users of their website. It’s difficult to remain objective and see things from your users perspective when it’s your website. When you have conceived ideas, directed the look and feel and even written the copy. You know your website and your organisation inside out and you know what you want to achieve with your site.

Users don’t care about your business

When we put users in front of your site, they don’t care about what you want them to do, they don’t care about your business, they just need to get things done. It can be really difficult for us to break this news to our clients sometimes, but more often than not users don’t care about you, they are too focused on all the things they need to get done. Finding out more about how great your company is hasn’t made it to their to do list.

You need to make a decision about your website

If you run a website, you need to make a decision. You can either continue to push the objectives of your company and go on the hard sell, or you can accept that you are not that important in the users eyes, and focus on helping them instead. We encourage our clients to think of their site in terms of a sales person just inside the door of a showroom. As the customer walks through the door, what type of sales person do you want to be? The pushy sales guy, or the genuine sales assistant?

The pushy sales guy website

The pushy sales guy website acts something like this when a customer walks in the door/enters the website:

Unfortunately, this type of website is quite common. The homepage is all about the organisation and all the navigation and calls to action are designed to push the business goals without any real thought for what users goals might be.

The helpful sales guy website

The helpful, genuine sales guy on the other hand might go something like this:

Focus on user goals and you’ll satisfy your business goals

Ok, so this is all a little oversimplified perhaps, but in principle we find the websites that really frustrate users are those which are too inwardly focused and over prioritise their business goals over their users’ goals. In contrast, the websites we find users naturally want to use again and again are those which balance the needs of their business with the needs of their users. By ensuring their users can find what they are looking for quickly and easily, they generate more repeat business and more sales as a result. A genuine focus on user priorities generates a big difference to their business goals.

Does your website act like a pushy sales guy?

Retargeting example – See larger image

As part of a casual query, I once typed in my car registration into a certain site that offers to purchase absolutely any vehicle. Scoffing at their derisory offer for my motor, I went on to live a full and happy life, and part-exchanged my car for multiples more than the site offered.

However, for the next month, almost every advert I came across on any website was a reminder of how much this company, that will acquire any auto for money, would offer for my, now crushed, car. Friends have reported similar experiences on a range of shopping sites, where your previous interest in an item can haunt you like a marketing-oriented poltergeist.

This technique, known as retargeting is an online advertising model where ecommerce websites can re-connect with past website visitors to remind them of what they had looked at with the hope of stimulating a sale. If you forgot what site you were on or what exactly you were looking for, then it can prove a useful reminder. But, if you were looking for a present for a partner, or for, ahem, a sensitive medical or entertainment item, then it might come as a bit of a shock to anyone else who uses your PC.

Whilst its an obvious benefit to businesses, with some companies offering a no-conversion, no-fee model, there may be some user experience concerns which may not be fully considered when deciding to kick-off a retargeting campaign.

High-wire balancing act, without a net

If you want to attempt this kind of approach on your site, then you need the kind of balance that would do Man on Wire proud. Most sites that engage in the activity of retargeting use a third-party service, such as TellApart or Criteo. Over time, these services have responded to the fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) over retargeting and improved their user communications to make it easier for a user to understand why their shopping searches are suddenly following you around the web, and to disable them.

Explaining to users why they are being shown retargeting ads

Kicking off a retargeting campaign must consider user experience

If you do decide to use such a service to promote your site, you should be aware of the potential pitfalls involved in customers feeling stalked by you. Privacy is a big concern for customers and comes up again and again in our research. If customers feel like their privacy is under attack, however small "the attack" may be, they may associate negative feelings with your brand. Rather than initiate sales and inspire revisits, you may well result in negative reviews and less repeat visits.  

If you choose to use retargeting then you should enquire as to whether you can limit it to certain ranges, perhaps high value items, as no one wants to be chased across the web for a book purchase. Also, ensure a reasonable time limit is in place as well. On the whole, think about it from the user’s point of view.  

Ultimately, when it comes to adding new features that could cause even mild confusion among your user-base or site visitors, remember to treat them with kid gloves. Users do not like surprises and they hate any infringements on their perceived privacy. While the marketing spiel from a retargeting company may offer the world and massive ROI, its benefits will be countered by accepting that some users may be completely turned off by retargeting and may damage brand perception.

What do you think of retargeting?

I paid for a train ticket over the counter yesterday. As I completed the transaction I nearly walked off leaving my Debit card in the PIN machine. As I turned back to the machine to retrieve the card the chap behind the counter said something along the lines of, “That was lucky. We’ve already had three people leave their cards here this morning.”

Three people, this morning, have walked away leaving their card in the machine. Can you imagine arriving for a day in London and realising you’ve left your Debit card somewhere? Pretty stressful huh?

If your customers are suffering – take action

So having already experienced people leaving their cards, would it not be courteous to remind customers to remove their cards after the transaction?

Since Chip & PIN, all organisations have had to invest heavily in installing new equipment to cater to the new technology. However, I can’t help but ask myself if some of this technology either hasn’t been thought through properly, or is not being used properly.

Technology shouldn’t create customer experience issues

If the staff working behind a counter are unable to see the Chip & PIN machine it would be useful for their screen to inform them that the card has not been removed. They can then prompt the customer. Like most ‘simple’ fixes, it becomes less simple to fix once the technology is complete.

If the full customer journey and scenarios are planned and mapped out prior to build, these minor details will be catered for. And if customers are introduced to the project early, to test a prototype, the barriers will be highlight and dealt with before these ‘simple’ issues become costly fixes.

Do you involve customers in your project process early enough?

Related services: Customer Journey Mapping and Usability Evaluation & Testing