No matter what niche your business belongs to, you likely need to know the same thing that all the other businessmen think about: what do your customers want? We live in an era of strong competition when you need to not only provide good products or services but also a convenient overall experience. Analyzing numbers is an obvious method that not always brings good results.
This method doesn’t allow you to detect particular customer needs. In addition, customer tastes change quickly so businesses need adaptive solutions. One of the most effective approaches is creating a user persona. Users Personas, also known as marketing personas, are characters based on real user data that represent your customers and are aimed to help you understand them better. Creating user personas can help you improve UI and UX, detect customer pain points, develop your brand identity, adjust your writing voice, etc.
For example, user personas can help you choose the right structure for your website, understanding what your visitors are interested in. User personas simplify the decision-making process and make it easier for businesses to determine the right course of action, compared to working with raw data. A user persona reflects not a particular customer but a whole group of customers. Creating user personas is an approach that allows you to condense a lot of data into a single document which is easy to comprehend. User personas allow you to design the user experience precisely, creating a user flow based on your user persona’s preferences and personality traits.
Advantages of User Flow and User Personas for UX
A user flows is a visualization of steps users have to take to complete a certain action when using an app or website. You may design your user flow in different ways, depending on a specific task. The best approach is to create diagrams, connecting different elements logically. Here are a few good reasons to use user flows during the design process:
- User flows can improve communication with clients and team members. A user flow is a good way of presenting information to people who are not designers, being able to discuss any important issues with the whole team
- User flows focus not on design details but on experience. You can evaluate the overall picture and create a comprehensive experience for users. User flows allow you to plan how your users will interact with the system and how it will react to their actions. You can also plan all the necessary decision points where your users have to make a choice
- One of the main advantages of user flows is that they simplify collaboration between designers, developers, and project managers. You can use user flows during workshops, quickly developing and testing different models
User Personas can make your user flows even more effective because you don’t need to check each particular user’s analytics. A User Persona collects all the necessary information in one place and makes the data easier to process because it represents a character. If you want to figure out what are your customer’s preferences, the easiest way to find the answer is to imagine a person who will interact with your product.A user Persona should have its name, personal motto, bio, demographics, personal traits, goals, motivations, frustrations, personality traits, and preferred brands or influencers. This way, you’ll be able to get a complete understanding of who your users are.
How to Design Customer Journey With the User Flow Tool
The simplest and the most effective way to create a user flow is to use the User Flow Tool. It allows you to create multiple user flows using an endless working space for your diagrams. You can share projects and collect feedback. In addition, you can export your user flows as a PDF, SVG, or image. One of the main advantages of diagrams created using the User Flow Tool is flexibility. You can determine the main goal and plan the route for your users depending on their response.
Here’s an example of a user flow for a booking app. As you can see, this diagram allows you to plan every step depending on what your user is looking for and what they choose. Once you’ve selected the main objective, identify the information that your visitors are looking for. What problem do they want to solve? Why do they need this information? What qualities of your product are most important to them? How can you help them take action? What are their doubts? Here’s where a user persona will provide you with the right answers. After this, you can plan flow steps, leading your users to the right information at the right time. Focus on the most-wanted action and make sure to lead your users to it while keeping in mind their needs, preferences, and motivations.
Conclusion
User Flows are extremely effective when you need to design the right user experience. They allow you to see the overall picture, planning your users’ interactions with your website or app. However, to create a proper user flow, you should perfectly understand your users. Analyzing behavioral data on each particular user would be virtually impossible.
Fortunately, you don’t need to do it because you can create a user persona that will include all the necessary information on your typical user, including their age, gender, motivations, goals, personality traits, etc. This way, you can plan a user flow with precision, clearly understanding what your users are looking for and creating a seamless user experience.