HOW DO I IDENTIFY DIFFERENT PERSONAS FOR A RESTAURANT
Defining Different PERSONAS
Leverage Research- (Collect Qualitative
not Quantitative Information)
Dive Deeper
Consider what’s preventing
consumers from choosing your restaurant or
customers from returning
Evaluate and Refine
SHRUTI SINGHAL
The restaurant industry is a competitive world. Staying top of mind with
prospects, customers is essential for growing your business. It all starts
with a really good understanding of your customers and those you wish to
target.
Before embarking on any project, it is important to understand the needs of
your users. You are selling something. It could be a product or simply an
idea. But, you are selling something to someone. So, the question is, how
do you get them to buy it?
Identify the buyer personas. It is then possible to identify the features and
functionality that will make the intranet or website a success, and how the
design can support users with different goals and levels of skill.
Customer Personas are a detailed profile of an example buyer that
represents the real audience – the buyer that you hope to persuade to buy
your products, services or solution.
Personas are not profiles. To successfully market to your customers it’s
essential to understand their mind set, preferences, motivations, interests,
behaviors and goals and to tailor your content and messaging accordingly.
When done correctly, your audience will feel like you are speaking to them
directly, using their language, addressing their concerns.
Developing personas usually starts with collecting some demographic data,
such as age, education, and job title. But the goal is to collect qualitative—
not quantitative—information. Interviewers need to gather stories, quotes,
and anecdotes from interview subjects that pertain to their environment
and behaviors and reveal their attitude and goals.
To really help personalize your personas and bring them to life, it
beneficial to give the personas names, distinct traits, personalities,
personal backgrounds and even photos. When a persona is given a name, a
photo, and one or two personal details, then the hypothetical constructs
easily spring to life.
Let us say, you are trying to increase sales of your restaurant during some
particular time of a day, say during lunch. There may be 3 distinct groups
that come through your restaurant during that time:
Mike works as a graphic designer in a big agency. As he is single, he came
every day at lunchtime; prices didn’t bother him. He usually ordered the
same items, was always in a hurry to get back to work and got agitated
when things took too long.
Zoe is studying Masters in International development. She came every
fortnight with her friends. Being single and young she comes during
promotions or after discount coupons were released.
Geoff works as an architect. He has a wife, a young girl and a 6-month
baby boy. Being a family man with responsibilities, he comes along with his
family monthly or rarely. He welcomed healthy alternatives to classic fast-
food items. Prices did bother him. Low prices, healthy alternatives and
family-friendly options would likely appeal to him.
Looking at these examples, it is obvious that “Mike”, “Zoe” and “Geoff”
have different motivations, values, behaviors and interests. You can’t go
with “one-size-fits-all” strategy. You need to consider certain pieces of
actual data associated with these personas…
Demographics
Their value, in terms of money, reach and return business
Where they choose to interact with you – phone, email, website,
mobile, social, etc.
Mastering persona interviews requires unearthing subjects' unstated goals.
It is crucial to identify users' mindset about going to some restaurant, since
this mindset drive design decisions. Encouraging subjects to candidly and
personally talk about their lives takes time. It is not unusual for some
interviews, depending on what kind of interface is being designed.
Now we have to find out different personas for a restaurant.
I. Start with the ideal customers within your Restaurant. Who’s the best
customer for you? Review any customer research you have conducted.
Talk to your front line staff about current customers. Refine the
profile by:
a. Include people who have not visited your restaurant but they
generally visit your competitor’s restaurant.
b. Find out your customer’s needs and wants and their decision
making process.
You can do so by conducting surveys to gather more data.
You can separate Personas into primary and secondary Personas.
Primary persona are the most important consumers or target
customers that must be satisfied, because failing to satisfy their
requirements means failing to satisfy the other expected persona.
II. Defining dimensions.
i. Persona’s biographic background.
ii. Restaurant’s relation to persona.
iii. Persona’s relation to your restaurant.
iv. Understanding specific intentions, needs, and attitudes.
These dimensions represent user needs and behavior, such as:
What is your frequency of visiting some restaurant?
How do you select, which restaurant you want to visit this
time?
What is your spending habits in a restaurant? Etc.
III. Measure these dimensions
Consider what’s preventing consumers from choosing your restaurant
or customers from returning. This is a very important question to ask
and answer in persona development. Dig deep. Understand why.
Talk to the people who’ve just chosen your restaurant and talk to
those that haven’t and find out why. Learn what you could’ve done
better. You may find out that there are perceptions that aren’t even
true. Or that there are things that must be addressed.
IV. Evaluate and Refine
The qualitative methods such as consumer observation and interview
can be used to refine and enrich details of persona. Don’t think that
once it’s done it’s done forever. Personas are an endless quest for
perfection. You’ll continually learn more and more. Additional
observation and interview will provide detailed information which can
be used in enriching and refining the typical user profile into
personas. Consumer preferences change over time. So periodically
revisit your personas and refine them regularly.
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