What if you knew exactly which features of your website and content converted users at the highest rates?
This has been a holy grail of UX research for decades, and has been answered in different ways via conversion rate optimisation (CRO), multi-armed bandit testing, and funnel analysis.
Answering this question relies heavily on accessing the right data, which traditionally could only be done after a web page went live. Today, thanks to synthetic personas, we can make accurate improvements to conversion rates in a pre-launch environment, similar to traditional user testing.
Crucially, these synthetic personas are cheaper and faster than their human counterparts, and are easier to deploy and access on short notice. For lead-gen focused websites and content teams, the value of this tool is self-evident.
What are synthetic personas?
Put simply, a synthetic persona is a simulated persona, created with real user data and given a comprehensive pre-defined personality. A synthetic persona may have its own desires, objectives, preferences, and biases, and these will reflect the behaviour and needs of the real users that they represent.
Synthetic personas can provide feedback and validation on any designs or content across your website, typically providing a unique perspective that would otherwise be hard to gather internally. This more diverse analysis of a design is crucial to finding issues that designers and developers may overlook . As Tim Broadwater put it; “You are not your users … the developers are not your users, and your coworkers are not your users”.
How synthetic personas increase conversions
Of course, all of this feedback and information translates into more effective digital solutions. As synthetic personas allow for more extensive and on-demand testing and validation, each component of your website can be optimised for their needs before you even launch. Of course, this was possible with human testing, but only at a much more limited scale.
Another key advantage is timing. Synthetic personas don’t clock-off or take breaks, and they never leave the office. They allow you to push out pre-tested and pre-validated updates without the delay (and cost) of organising testing sessions with real people. This means a more adaptive, responsive approach to pushing updates, controlled by designers and developers in real time.
The return on investment of synthetic personas
A significant benefit of synthetic personas is their high return on investment. Once personas are defined and created, their maintenance from one test to another is very low (more on this below). This means that the ROI of your personas will increase continuously the more you use them.
Of course, the upfront investment of synthetic personas is also lower than that of human testing, which makes them suitable for smaller projects where systematic user testing is less practical and timelines are less relaxed.
Best practices when using synthetic personas
As with many AI powered tools, the key is knowing when to use synthetic personas, and when to trust real human testing instead. Ultimately, synthetic personas are only as accurate as the data they are built on, and the quality of this data is therefore worth investing in. We’ve previously argued that your website is an excellent channel for gaining first-party data, and it can serve as a great source for building accurate synthetic personas.
Synthetic personas also need to be maintained and updated over time. As time passes, the needs of your personas will change, as will the data upon which you understand them. In some instances, your marketing strategy may even target new personas entirely. All of this means that you should iterate your synthetic personas continuously as you receive new data, ensuring that their insights remain relevant and accurate. The easiest way to do this is by conducting interviews with real users at regular intervals, and using their insights to validate your synthetic personas.
Are synthetic personas for you?
Synthetic personas are a brilliant and exciting tool, and they can help many businesses in many different circumstances. Some classic use cases for this technology include:
- Fast-moving projects which require low-cost feedback on design without project delays
- Large project suites with well-defined personas and a wealth of accurate user data
- Complex marketing operations targeting multiple personas simultaneously
- Content-heavy websites which benefit from tone of voice feedback
- Risk-averse brands seeking to validate every update before launch
Of course, there are other creative ways to use synthetic personas, provided you do so based on accurate and relevant underlying data, and thoughtful audience analysis.
If you would like to learn more about synthetic personas, or deploy them on your own project, just get in touch today. We’d love to hear from you!
