Persona focused Web site leads to 4x conversions for RightNow Technologies

In early 2008, Bozeman, MT based RightNow Technologies kicked off a project to rebuild the company Web site around buyer personas.

As you probably know, a buyer persona is distinct group of potential customers, an archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach.

Creating a site based on buyer personas gets you away from an egotistical site based on your products and services (which nobody really cares about, after all). What people do care about are themselves and answers to their problems, which is why buyer personas are so critical for marketing success.

"The RightNow persona development exercise was broader than just for creating Web site content but was designed for all marketing content," says Steve Bell, Product Marketing Manager for RightNow. "The goal of the Web site project was to turn RightNow.com into a Website that Sells. We created the new Web site with conversion paths for each persona, and more overall conversion points than the original site."

To help people at RightNow build appropriate information for the site, detailed buyer personas were created for four different personas:
- Atul - Director of IT (technical evaluator of RightNow Technologies)
- Chuck – CS Director (operational prospect for RightNow Technologies)
- Oliva – SVP (a RightNow Technologies strategic prospect)
- Trinh – Financial Analyst (a RightNow Technologies information seeker)

"Chuck's content is built around his specific needs 'I need to...', which are illustrated on the home page and take him down a specific conversion path," Bell says. "Olivia, who is more senior, is more focused on strategy and is more brand conscious. So a big part of the banner areas on home page are dedicated to her, such as 'Weathering the Storm'. The CEO blog and the customer experience strategies are also targeted at Olivia. There is a brand new technology section dedicated to Atul."

Bell and his team developed details about each buyer persona. The best way to do this is to interview representatives of your buyer personas. As an example, some details about Chuck’s goals include:
- Chuck wants to improve his team's efficiency, due to his inability to fund new hires to keep up with demand.
- Chuck wants to decrease his staff's call and email volume, so they can spend more time with customers who really need help instead of routinely answering the same questions.
- Chuck needs to find a solution that doesn't involve IT and can be implemented quickly.
- Chuck wants to improve customer satisfaction, but he assumes that will happen if he can reduce his team’s call and e-mail volume.

It's worth clarifying that the detailed information about your buyer personas is for your internal information and shouldn't be posted onto the site. However, what you learn helps you to create valuable information to be posted on the public site. For example, you’ll notice on the RightNow site that there is a list of questions on the left navigation. The links that these point to are specifically built around buyer personas.
I need to transform my call center
I need to capture customer feedback
I need to add live chat

According to Bell, the results have exceeded expectations. Here are a few before (August '08) and after (November ‘08) metrics:
- 4x increase in overall conversions
- 5x increase in live demo request conversions
- 3.4x increase in Flash demo conversions
- The CEO blog is new and now has subscribers in the thousands

As the RightNow Technologies example shows, there are clear benefits to marketing based on detailed understanding of buyer personas. In particular, when you stop talking about you and your products and services and instead use the web to educate and inform, you will be more successful.

Comments

[Jep Castelein]

David, do you know how many iterations they made before they got it right? Or did they build the site and immediately got the improved results?

By the way: I think RightNow is out of Montana, not San Mateo.

[Leo Wurschmidt]

I think this is so important. Unfortunately, we had already written our website content by the time I found your information earlier this year. That means it is egocentric and all about us.

We had to start from scratch and hopefully sometime soon we will have our website content better suited towards our website personas.

It is always nice to see success stories like this.

[Adi]

Certainly an interesting approach. Obviously this is mainly for new customers, do they use a similar strategy for existing customers?

[Steve Bell]

Hi Jep - here are some answers and clarifications:
In terms of number of iterations,
it was pretty much a complete redo of the site, so there was a lot of up front design work and iterations on the draft content, but once launched there have only been minor tweaks. So really just one iteration and we started seeing incremental improvements right off the bat.

And you are correct, RightNow is headquartered in Bozeman MT (I am located in the San Mateo office).

I also wanted to reiterate that I was part of a "Website That Sells" virtual team headed up by our VP of Corporate Marketing, Dan Nichols. Also, we were working with a great external agency ID Branding http://www.idbranding.com, out of Portland OR, who were very influential in conceptualizing the persona-driven concept (they must have read David's book!)

[Steve Bell]

To Adi's question about a similar strategy for existing customers: in addition to the main web content there is a dedicated customer community site with forums. We haven't (yet) gone thru the detailed multi-persona exercise. As of now, we have a customer community and a developer community. We did do some persona work when we created the latter.

[Jen Agustin]

Really great post and glad to see actual conversion numbers attached to the effort! A couple of questions: 1) Are you able to track the conversions back though specific persona-related landing pages, etc.? 2) How do you handle visitors who don't fall into one of the designated personas?

[Josep T. Dager]

Very nice article David, I cannot agree more. I believe the most effective way to build any organization, for profit or non-profit is thru a targeted buyer-person(ideal client).

[Michael Ray Hopkin]

David, great example of the power of personas. RightNow is a great company; I've been watching them for the past few months since I met Jeff Davidson (CFO) on a flight from SF to SLC. He has (they have) an impressive story to tell and they're obviously doing a great job using personas to tell it. -Michael

[Liz]

Great post as usual David. This is important to keep up on- measuring the results of the new rules of marketing.

[Doug - Velocity, B2B Marketing Agency]

Thanks -- we're just starting to integrate personas into our web development process and it's paying dividends.

I'd love to see how others do them. Any other examples out there?

[Sam Bowley]

Great Post! For companies that are just getting started and don't yet know the real buyer personas, what recommendations are there to get started?

[David Meerman Scott]

Hi Sam, I write a lot about buyer personas. You can check out other posts on this blog or my book The New Rules of Marketing & PR. You should also take a look at Adele Revella's blog http://www.buyerpersona.com/

[Jep Castelein]

Steve, thanks for the clarifications. You and your team have done a great job!

[Steve Bell]

Hi Jen - we are indeed able to track conversions tied to certain Olivia and Chuck areas, such as the Solve Your Problem pages and Customer Experience Strategies pages which specifically are targeted to these 2 personas. The visitors who don’t fall within the main persona buckets (Olivia, Chuck, Atul) are being catered to by the 4th persona called Trinh (the information seeker), to whom we provide general information such as company information, investor information, the careers section, research & analysis reports, etc.

[Adele Revella]

Thanks, David for a great post that exposes the value of buyer personas. For those looking for another example, go to www.vantagemobility.com. This company saw a 160% growth in revenue in the first year after they converted from a product-oriented site to a persona-based site. They made no other changes to their marketing strategy that year, so they attribute their success to this single investment in buyer personas.

To Sam's question about how to get started on persona creation, ask from 4 to 6 people within your company to meet and agree on what they do and do not know about the target buyers. This is an "ad hoc" persona and not enough to support an important marketing decision, but you may be surprised at how much internal knowledge is locked inside the heads of people who regularly meet with buyers.

[Meredith Bell]

David, I really got a lot from this post, combined with the related chapters in your book I've been reading. The RightNow example you gave and the one Adele just referenced are both very helpful.

We're re-designing our site based on these principles.

Do you know of anyone who's used surveys of current or prospective customers to help create a persona? We're just wrapping up a survey (using our feedback software) to a key target market for us: management consultants. We sent the survey to our value-added resellers (who are consultants) as well as consultants who own our software and use it with their clients. Even though we've worked with most of them for many years, we felt this would be a good way to get an up-to-date look "inside their heads" regarding the current economic situation and its impact on their business. We've gotten over 100 responses so far, and the data will provide us with rich information for future marketing efforts to this group. I had not seen you reference the use of surveys so was curious if you're aware of others using them for this purpose.

I'm very glad I found your book and your blog.

[David Meerman Scott]

Meredith

Surveys are NOT a good idea to do primary buyer persona research. In the initial stages of understanding buyer personas you must get out of your comfortable office and meet people. Talk to potential customers (not existing customers) and learn what their problems are. How do they describe those problems? Where do they go for answers? You can't do that in a survey.

However, once you have done primary research, a survey can be used to validate something or to ask opinions about direction (such as which of three homepage designs people like best).

This is important. Don't outsource your primary research.

David

[Neil Jesani]

Hello David,

After listening to you at Sales & Marketing conference at New Orleans, we have launched persona based website. Check this out www.BeamaLife.com

Thanks a lot for great idea.

Best regards,

Neil Jesani

[David Meerman Scott]

Neil

Great improvement in the site. You might want to reconsider the big photo you have on the home age. It is REALLY BIG.