Persona Building

Why should you use this persona building template?

Personas, whether for a buyer profile or a user flow, are powerful documents that help you focus on persona building.

Properly validated (data-driven) personas unlock valuable insight at every stage of the product development process. Personas guide research strategy, participant criteria, and marketing efforts. 

This persona building template contains the essential elements of a data-driven persona, but consider what other data sources you have available to incorporate in this exercise. 

The utility of this particular template comes from personas’ need for consistent updates to remain representative of your customers. So, you’ll likely need to run this test at least annually and have this handy template to help you!

Testing Outcomes

• Chart the current state of your customer base.
• Reduce ambiguity surrounding customer needs and challenges.
• Amplify real customers’ voices to inform your product team.

Organization Benefits of Persona Building 

• A solid foundation on which to flesh out full-scale personas
• Strengthens the relationship between your brand and the market

Test Questions

1. What is your household income?
   Multiple Choice
   When presenting sequenced multiple-choice options, give ranges so that participants are more comfortable answering.
2. How often do you take out loans?
   Likert Scale
   These quantitative scales can work with the multiple-choice questions above to compare answers across similar questions.
3. Which of the following are you most likely and least likely to take out a loan for?
   MaxDiff Question
   Adding the right context to this question is key to promoting the right mindset for participants.
4. Which of the following best describes your living situation?
   Multiple Choice
   If you are already aware of your customers’ challenges, this could be a rank-order question instead.
5. Rank these factors from Most Important to Least Important regarding your online experience.
   Rank Order
   Being able to sort personas based on priorities and preferences is key.

Additional Questions for Persona Building

• What is your educational background?
• How would you describe your personal demographics?
• Walk me through your career path thus far.
• What industry does your organization serve? / do you work in?
• What is the size of your company?
• What is your job role? Job title?
• Whom do you report to? Who reports to you?
• How do you measure success?
• What are your biggest challenges?
• What are you responsible for?
• How do you learn new information about your job?
• What do they value in their personal or professional life?