When observing users as they go about using a website one often discovers that some users do not use websites in the way they were intended to be used. This raises several issues, the most important of which being – Do we really know our audience?
Winning the digital game is about understanding your customer’s needs and expectations and making sure that you are reaching out to him or her via the appropriate marketing strategies. Translated into the igaming that involves taking the full online gaming experience on a level where it has been thoroughly tried and tested to match the personas.
What is a persona?
A persona is a detailed representation of your customer. In other words, it is a model that is not simply roughly hewn and sketched out but which has been given substantial body to ensure that the company truly understands the motivations, needs, expectations and behaviours of its customers. Today many companies strive to build several personas to represent the main distinct types of customers that they serve.
In essence, personas know their origin in market segmentation theory but are richer models fuelled by in-depth probing that yields the information that is required to build a persona. Nowadays many igaming companies focus on using personas because they need to build better online systems which engage their target market.
Starting off from the basic investigation, research and collection of Web Analytics data, the process requires a sound exercise of looking at key metrics like bounce rates, web and social media traffic along with other relevant aspects arising in the click ecosystem. This has to be fused with the company’s own insights from CRM systems and marketing intelligence about the market, target and own product/s. In a way, the exercise feels like a cross between art and science where patterns are meticulously investigated but where opinions also matter. The extra bout of data that is needed to build persons is usually collected via surveys and interviews. The data that emerges allows one to start building a persona complete with a name…
At this point, one can then elaborate about the needs, expectations, barriers and issues that this ‘persona’ is bound to encounter when it uses your platform. For example, one can discover how and when this specific persona stumbled upon your company, how active are they and when do they tend to be more activity and which social media platforms they use. When patterns emerge, this allows you to segment and give full depth and muscle to your persona by elaborating on her/his behaviour, demographics and how he /she uses your product.
Once you have your set of personas you will be in a better position to design and tailor-make content and systems for different people. For example, people who are in the game for fun have different motivations than those who are professional gamers and hence will display a different kind of activity and behaviour.
There is no doubt that Personas have taken usability testing higher in the hope of delivering a better gaming experience.
