Defining Your Company's Ecommerce Buyer Personas: A Reflection

Constructing a buyer persona is an excellent model for improving your business. By creating fictional characters that represent your target market, you can establish a more clear vision of both your message and how it will affect consumers. Buyer personas can be shaped by either envisioning your target customers or interviewing them. The following tips will help you strengthen the process of developing useful buyer personas for ecommerce customers.

One way to interview your customers is to provide survey forms on your website. You can also collect information on their opinions through social media sites. Don't be in a hurry to get this information since many people simply won't have time for it. Here are some important questions to ask your ecommerce customers so that you can use the answers to construct accurate buyer personas:

1. How well do you understand this product?
2. What types ofmedia do you use most often?
3. How does the product affect your life?
4. Who influences your buying decisions?
5. To what degree do you embrace new products?
6. How often do you repurchase this product?
7. What is your preferred payment method?

There are many more important questions you can ask yourself and customers. The key is to document as much information as possible then create different characters that represent different segments of your market. For example, you might develop a character named "Carol" who depicts your most active and loyal customers, such as middle aged housewives. Then create another character named "Bob" that reflects your more passive customers, such as a young man with limited spending cash.

The more diverse your business is, the more likely you will need to construct multiple ecommerce buyer personas. Your customers can be defined by demographics, lifestyle, and how they view the world. Not only can this information be used for your own internal use, you can use buyer personas in your marketing campaigns to help consumers identify better with your product. One of the best ways to make buyer personas come to life is to work with an artist or cartoonist to create visual images.