Many eCommerce businesses think that they know about their customer very well. But there are chances that you might be missing a few data which can support and optimize your marketing efforts. Identifying those gaps and filling them will surely optimize your eCommerce store functioning.

“About Us: SFWP Experts is an award-winning San Francisco web design company specialized in offering conversion-centric custom web design services to all sizes of businesses. Our professionals can create highly effective and fully responsive eCommerce as well as a standard website. We at SFWP Experts have a team of highly qualified content writing and marketing experts, dedicated to delivering high-quality and fact-based content to educate our audience about the latest trends, tools, tips, and more.“

For an eCommerce website, it’s always important to identify and understand your customer’s problems and day-to-day work. Because your whole store functioning depends on the type of customer you target. And before targeting, you need to identify the right persona for your eCommerce business.

When it comes to sales and marketing, an eCommerce website needs to understand their potential customer’s behavior. In short, your whole marketing, advertising, and sales strategy depends on the buyer persona. Having proper knowledge about your buyer persona will not only boost your sales but it will also help you to maximize ROI on your marketing and advertising spent.

So in this article, we will be drawing your attention on something that can help you to amplify your marketing, advertising, and sales strategy. We will be discussing what is a buyer persona, why it is important for every eCommerce business and how you can identify your buyer persona. Understanding these three things will help you to craft proper strategy and deliver the right message to the right group of customers.

What is a buyer persona?

According to Hubspot, A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customer. In simple words, A buyer persona helps you in determining what your potential customers are thinking, what they need and whether your product can solve the problem your potential customer is facing.

Identifying the right buyer persona is the key to a successful eCommerce business. There are various elements involved that help businesses in identifying the buyer persona to optimize their sales and marketing efforts. Today’s almost every successful B2B and B2C company makes its sales and marketing decisions based on their buyer persona profile.

Many companies make their marketing, advertising and sales strategies like what advertising messages they should use, which marketing channel will be effective and how much budget they should assign for advertising and marketing based on the data they receive about buyers persona.

Why is it important for every online retail store to identify their buyer personas?

Determining buyer personas for your e-store will also help you to deliver the right message to the right set of customers that can convert into paying customers. If you look at the above survey then you may realize identifying the right buyer persona will not only help you to boost your sales but it will help to craft effective marketing companies, strategies, and plans.

For example, if your niche is into selling formal clothes then your buyer’s persona will not be men/women looking to buy clothes. your actual buyer persona would be corporate world employees, banking people, a salesperson who likes to dress up to represent themselves in front of the audience. Different niches have different types of buyers’ personas. Some may target a large group of audience, few may target a specific group of persona. If you want to succeed in the eCommerce industry then it is important to understand your buyer’s persona in and out.

Identifying the right persona will boost your eCommerce business sales, amplify your marketing strategies and branding efforts by providing the right customers for your business. Many eCommerce businesses struggle to amplify their sales because they fail to determine the right buyer persona for their niche.

Once you successfully discover a buyer persona then it will help you to provide the right solution for their problem in the form of the blog post, video content and more. By analyzing their behavior you can craft the right advertising message that will relate with their thinking. Not only that but it will also help you to train your sales team and enhance the customer experience depending on data you receive about your buyer persona.

How to create a buyer persona for an eCommerce website?

Identify and collect information about your persona

Before collecting any information about buyers persona try to ask yourself what type of customer you want on your website? Who can be your potential buyers? who can use your product to fulfill their needs?. Once you start asking these types of questions you will surely come up with various questions that will make it easy for you to collect information about your buyer persona.

If you look at the above stats then you will get a clear picture of how you can discover the buyer persona for your eCommerce business, which part can help you to determine the right persona for your business. Using the above stats you can focus on the elements like a personal profile, then your buyer’s journey, the benefit sought, your prospect priorities, etc.

The behavior of your buyer persona is not analyzed on assumption. An effective information about your buyer persona is collected based on real data and research. To define your buyer persona you need to identify a large group of consumers in your eCommerce store. You can make use of purchase data, order history and more to get the real information about your buyer persona.

Generally, most of the eCommerce business define their buyer persona based on customer demographics (age, gender, education level, career, occupation, location), behavior (purchase history, frequency, how they utilize your product, type of content they watch and read) and interest (problems, hobbies, goals). Once you are aware of this information then it will become easy for you to define buyer personas for your eCommerce business.

Use your existing data & various information to define your buyers persona

Before moving ahead you can check in the above diagram to know the percentage of businesses using a buyer persona to optimize their eCommerce business functioning. And from when they are using persona for their business.

Now you know what type of data will help you to define your buyer persona. The next question that may trouble you is how you can collect all this information and data? Don’t worry, read this article carefully to determine the right buyer persona for your eCommerce business.

Instead of running here and there you can start by understanding and analyzing all the data present on your website. Firstly you can identify your customers buying frequency, next you can segment the audience depending on their purchase history and buying frequency. Don’t forget to include your loyal customers. They are the ones who will help you to define your buyers persona. To get all these data like order frequency, order total and more you can go to your woocommerce dashboard.

Analyzing these data will help you to identify who is buying the product. It will also help you to understand why they are buying the product, your customer’s background and more. For example, if your eCommerce website is specialized in selling decoration items then you can identify your customer’s buying frequency when they are purchasing the product (during any occasion), the reason behind their purchase and more. Depending on that you create two different buyer personas one can be for customers buying the product for self-use. Second can be the customer buying the product for giving gifts to others.

Various ways will help you to identify the reason behind the purchase. In the next few steps, you will come to know how you can identify the reason behind any purchase.

Use Demographics to know about your customer

Demographics play an essential role in defining the right buyer persona for your eCommerce store. It helps you in identifying who your customers are. Once you become aware of your customer basic info then it will become easy for you to segment into different groups. and Now you may think about what type of demographic you should look for. Below is the list of factors that will help you to make a reasonable assumption about your buyer’s persona.

Location
Gender
Interest
Income
field of work
Job title
Business type
Total family members

To get detailed information about your customer’s demographics you can use your eCommerce website analytical tools. It will not give you every detail like the job description, family size and more about your customer but yes it will sure help you to bring out most of the useful information. To know more about how to find customers demographics and interest report in google analytics you can click here

Most of the eCommerce websites owners commit a mistake by limiting their data to demographic information. There are other ways to collect data from your customers. Below we will be discussing different ways to extract your customer information that you didn’t receive from analytical tools.

Use analytical tools to know about customer demographics

When it comes to analyzing data then analytical tools are the best way to know every information about your customer. Accessing the data of your analytical tools will help you with information like which browser your customer is using, their location, language, how they visited your website and more.

If your website is using google analytics or any other paid tool then it will surely help you to determine how many times your segmented customers have visited your website and how much time they spend in your eCommerce website, their visiting frequency and many more. All this small information will help to build a structure that will determine the buyer persona for your e-store. There are other factors involved that we mention below.

Use your contact form or lead generation form

Many of you may not know that contact form can play a vital role in extracting additional information from your customer. You can add an optional field in your contact or lead generation form to know more about your customers. Many customers may not show interest in filling that information but there will be a group of customers that will show interest in providing these details.

Make sure you target people who filled those optional boxes because they are the ones who will help you in finding the right buyer persona for your website. Don’t add too many optional fields in your contact form. And try to ask questions that relate to your store or purchase they made, like for whom did they buy the product, their family size, occupation, etc.

Use Social Media to get customers information

Social media can also help you in collecting information about your customers and followers. Many eCommerce businesses are using creative ways to gather information on social media by posting funny content.

You can also create an attractive post-Facebook, twitter, Instagram and ask people to comment on it. Creating a poll on social media can also help you in gathering the required information. But make sure that you don’t ask any personal questions instead of using funny posts you can ask your followers about their work, job, location, etc.

Remember if you are looking to gather information from social media then you have to be active and interactive on social media. Suddenly if you start asking questions to your followers then no one may show interest in commenting on your post.

Use Survey to extract information about your customer

Another unconventional way of gathering information is by sending a survey to your new as well as existing customers. If you are looking to collect more personal questions like family size, salary and more then creating and sending a survey can be the best option for your e-store. If you want to know more in-depth details about your customer then you can offer some incentives like coupon code, special discount, cashback and more.

There are many tools available like SOGOSurvey, Survey Monkey, Typeform and more that will help youtube craft a survey for your eCommerce store. don’t rely on multiple-choice questions instead create a survey that has both the multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions. Using this technique will allow you to get unique information that you many never think of putting in multiple-choice answers.

Speak with your customer directly

If you want to know more about your customer then you can directly speak to them via phone or face to face. To gather information through the phone you have to be persuasive enough to convince your customer to answer your questions.

Until and unless your customer finds the right reason they will not answer your question instead they may cut your call. So, if you order data to try to contact your frequent buyers, you can even give them a reason that this call is about improving your services. Using these types of techniques will surely convince your customers.

Using all the above information you can identify your customer’s goals and their pain point. Once you successfully discover the answer for a question like:

What type of problem your customers are facing?
How is your product solving their problem?
What type of challenges your customers are facing in their daily life?
How and why do your customers use your offering?

Then it will become easy for you to identify the right buyer persona for your eCommerce business.

You can also go behind the phrases used by your customers repeatedly. Using these phrases in your advertising message or your marketing ads will help you to relate to their problems. Not only are you the customer but if you also find the same or pertinent words that relate to your problem then you will surely check to see what’s in it.

To make this task easier, you can use the spreadsheet to take down all the repeated responses from your customers. Identify the repeated phrases, then use them in your marketing or advertising messages.

Here is the list of question that can help you to create a buyer persona for your eCommerce business:

What is your buyer’s age?
What is your buyer’s gender?
Which industry do they belong to?
What type of company do they work for?
What is their responsibility in the company?
How much do they earn?
What is their education qualification?
Where do they buy their essential products?
How much time do they spend on the internet?
What does your buyer do?
How often do they buy the products online?
What makes them buy a product?
How much time do they spend on an eCommerce website?
What do they do during free hours?
What type of online activity frustrates them?
How much time do they spend on social media?
What persuades them to buy a product?
What type of communication channel do they prefer?

Segment all the information to identify right Buyer persona for your e-store

After collecting all the required data you can build a buyer persona for your eCommerce website. To make this task easier you can relate each persona to an actual person. you can determine the name and face for each personality. You can use your customer’s data to define their name. It may sound strange to you but visualizing things will help you to identify more accurate results.

Now you may think: How many buyer personas do you need for your e-store? And how much time does it take to create a buyer persona?

In the beginning, you can focus on creating one or two personas for your eCommerce business depending on the size of your eCommerce store, type of product you offer. When you start learning more about your customers then you can create additional personas for your eCommerce business.

Earlier we have mentioned taking down all the research work in a spreadsheet. You can use the spreadsheet data to identify the common challenges faced by your customers. Next, you can group them into the same persona as it will make your further process easier.

For example, if your online business is into selling health-related food and subscription then your targeted buyer persona will be people looking to lose weight. Another type of persona will be a customer looking for gluten-free products.

Remember you have to dive deeper to determine the right persona for your eCommerce business. You need to understand your customers thoroughly, their problem, expectation, the reason behind their problem, what attempts they are making to solve their problem.

Monitor your Competitor Closely

By now you might have a clear picture of how you can identify the right buyer persona for your eCommerce business. Above we have mentioned all the necessary steps that an eCommerce business should take to identify their buyer persona. You can spend some time crafting a strategy and segmenting all the customer’s data to define a different persona for your store.

Next, you can take one step ahead to understand more about your buyer persona by looking at your competitors. They are the ones who will give a clear picture of the different persona you need to target for your e-store. watching them closely helps you to analyze how they identify their buyer persona? What type of customer they are targeting? And how much revenue they are generating by targeting those personas.

To know more about your competitor performance you need to identify how much traffic they are generating and how they are driving those traffic?. SimilarWeb is the most popular extension and tool that will help you to determine your competitor’s monthly traffic and bounce. It will also help you to determine the location and traffic generation method.

Once you are aware of your competitor’s traffic generation method and location then it will help you determine the potential customer and location that you might be missing while creating a buyer persona for your business.

You can also visit your competitor’s social media and check how they are interacting with people, what method they are using to advertise their products in social media and Google ads. All these small data will add up and give you the proper solution on how to determine the buyer persona for an eCommerce business?

Competitor analysis is the best tool to find the right set of persona for your eCommerce business. It will also help you to optimize your marketing strategies effectively.

Conclusion

Now you might be thinking that you have successfully identified the right persona for your business which means your work is done. No, the work is not done yet, buyer personas will not be the same every time, they may expand or change like you make changes in your website, product, etc.

Identifying the right persona will give you ideas about what group of people your e-commerce website needs to target. But if you want to get maximum out of it then it is important to monitor your customer’s behavior, interest over time and make changes depending on their behavior.

Therefore, determining the right persona for your business will surely result in higher sales and maximum return on investment (ROI). Monitor your buyer persona, update it, and share the details with your marketing and sales team to make them understand what type of customer they need to target and how they can persuade them through the sales pitch and marketing messages.

Frequently Asked Question:

1. How do you define the buyer’s persona?

In simple words, A buyer persona helps you in determining what your potential customers are thinking, what they need and whether your product can solve the problem your potential customer is facing. Identifying the right buyer person is the key to a successful eCommerce business. Many companies make their marketing, advertising, and sales strategies beads on their buyer persona.

2. How do I create a buyer persona?

Research your target audiences behavior,
Gather all the information (behavior, interest, demographics)
identify the pain point of the target audience
Go through your competitor’s data like their traffic details, social media, google ads, type of content they post, etc.
Segment all the necessary data into a spreadsheet
Use your existing data & various information to define your buyers persona
Start creating buyer personas for your business

3. Why do you need a buyer persona?

A buyer persona helps an eCommerce business to get in-depth knowledge about their potential customer behavior. If you are marketing your product to consumers and looking to get a better result out of your efforts then you need to know about your buyer persona interest, behavior, attitudes, and demographics. Determining your buyer persona will also help you to deliver the right message to the right set of potential customers that can convert into paying customers.

4. What do you do with a buyer persona?

Identifying the right buyer person is the key to a successful eCommerce business. Many companies make their marketing, advertising and sales strategies like what advertising messages they should use, which marketing channel will be effective and how much budget they should assign for advertising and marketing based on the data they receive about buyers persona.

5. What are the three stages of the buyer’s journey?

A buyer’s journey is based on their stages of Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.

During awareness, you introduce yourself to customers by addressing the buyer’s pain point. In awareness, you try to build relationships with your buyer by introducing your brand and product in front of them.
In the consideration stage, your buyer seeks the right solution for the problem they told you in the awareness stage. It is a crucial stage where your solution will decide whether the buyer is going to move to the next stage or not.
Lastly in the decision stage, analyze the solution you offered to them. If you successfully convince your customer then in this stage they decide whether the product you are offering is right for them or not.

6. How many buyer personas should you create?

A buyer persona is identified by collecting all the data from the customer and by identifying the beginning, you can focus on creating one or two personas for your eCommerce business depending on the size of your eCommerce store, type of product you offer. When you start learning more about your customers then you can create additional personas for your eCommerce business.

7. What are the three different types of buyer personas?

Most of the people around the world when they hear the word persona only one term comes in the mind i.e. Buyer persona. But in reality, there are three different types of personas

Buyers persons: A buyer persona helps you in determining what your potential customers are thinking, what they need and whether your product can solve the problem your potential customer is facing. It represents your target audience.
Website persona: it targets all the people from whom your website has been constructed. It is very different from the buyer’s persons.
User persona: it represents the group of people who will represent your product. It is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. This type of person is researched by developers and UX designers.

8. What is a passive buyer?

Well, passive buyers are the most hated word in the e-commerce business. Passive buyers will show interest in your product. They will interact with you and try together with all the information about the product. In short, they will do everything that an active buyer does but when it comes to buying the product there is only a 10% chance of them buying the product.

9. What is the example of a buyer persona?

If your niche is into selling formal clothes then your buyer’s persona will not be men/women looking to buy clothes. your actual buyer persona would be corporate world employees, banking people, a salesperson who likes to dress up to represent themselves in front of the audience.