4 Tips to Create User Personas for Higher Ed Websites

A user persona is a representation of your target audience. Higher ed user personas are tools that help university marketing professionals understand their primary audiences and develop a web design and content approach that speaks to their needs, motivations, and preferences. 

If you’re creating personas for the first time, lean on tried-and-true best practices to get your strategy off the ground. This guide covers four tips to develop detailed higher ed user personas that will allow you to connect with your audience on a deeper level.

Identify your primary audience

The first step in creating user personas is researching your university’s audience members. What information do you already have about the individuals who use your website, and what do you still need to learn? Gathering as many details as possible about your website’s users will make the persona-building process much easier. 

Start by identifying all potential users. Consider the following common user groups for higher ed websites and their needs: 

• Students need to use your website to understand the educational opportunities and other benefits of attending your school. You can break down your student audience into multiple subcategories, including: 
  • Prospective students
  • Current students
  • Freshmen 
  • Seniors
  • Transfer students
  • International students
  • In-state students
  • Out-of-state students
  • First-generation college students
• Parents and other family members of students (grandparents, siblings, etc.) want to know what kind of experience their student will have at your institution. 
• Alumni want to stay updated with your university’s activities and find ways to stay connected as they pursue their careers. 
• Faculty and staff use your website to access resources such as tutorials or schedules, learn about employment benefits, and stay updated on employee policies. 
• Current and prospective donors seek information about how their gifts make an impact on your university and the different programs they can engage with. 
• Other community members may be interested in connecting with your institution by taking continuing education courses, leveraging services you offer, using your library resources, and more. 

Comb through your constituent relationship management system (CRM) to assess the information you already have on your audience members. What are their demographics, motivations, interests, and website browsing preferences? If you’re missing any core pieces of information, consider running a data append to enhance your database with information from external sources. 

Develop three to five main personas

We recommend building fully fleshed-out personas for three to five main audiences. Why?

Your website clearly isn’t just marketing to one audience, so you’ll need at least a handful of personas. But if you try to address too many people, your message could become muddled or overly complex. It’s better to project a clear message with your website rather than trying to make it an all-encompassing resource for any potential user who stops by. 

For example, you could choose prospective students, current students, parents, alumni, and donors as your five core personas. Then, based on what you know about these essential audience members, you can tailor your website content to resonate with their needs and interests. 

You can certainly create informational pages, resources, or subdomains for more than just five personas. However, your primary marketing message, such as the message you use on your website’s homepage, should be more limited in scope. 

Build out your personas with rich details

At its core, a user persona is a fictional representation of a member of your audience. However, these personas should be full of rich details about different audience segments that bring them to life. 

Add these details to each of your personas: 

• Name
• Age
• Photos to represent the persona
• Motivations for using your website
• Common pain points
• How your website can meet their needs
• Main messages to use

For example, let’s say you’re building a persona for your prospective student audience. You could add these comprehensive details to the persona to make it more realistic:

• Name: Prospective Student Patrick
• Age: 16-18 (high school junior or senior) 
• Problem/needs: Wants to figure out if your school is right for him.
• Our response: Provide robust and interactive information about majors, school culture, clubs and sports, and campus life to help Patrick decide. 
• Our message: “Find your niche! Our school is the place to be, no matter who you are.” 

According to Kanopi’s best college websites guide, the top university websites promote inclusiveness by using first-person language to speak directly to their audiences. This is easier to do when you add complex details to your personas so that they feel as real as possible. 

Don’t forget to incorporate any accessibility needs your personas may have. Many audiences may need accommodations on your site—anything from needing help due to poor vision, color blindness, or vestibular needs. Therefore, we recommend baking in accessibility needs at the initial strategy phase before the design and development of your site to ensure you’re keeping accessibility top of mind throughout your project. 

User your personas to enhance your marketing

After building your personas, you can use them to create a more dynamic marketing strategy that successfully engages your target audiences. Actively incorporate your personas into the following aspects of your marketing strategy: 

• User pathways. Build user journeys for your primary audiences. The user journey involves the steps website visitors take to complete their intended actions on your website. Leverage streamlined navigation and personalized calls to action (CTAs) to connect users with the resources and information they need for a successful visit. 
• Content strategies. Each persona has unique preferences and interests when it comes to the content they want to see on your website. You can better determine which types of blog posts, visuals, videos, and other content to use on your website by referencing your personas’ interests and preferences. 
• SEO approach. Understanding your personas allows you to create a tailored SEO strategy that better reaches your target audience. Target keywords your audience members are searching for and drive more organic traffic to your website. 

Continually adjust your personas over time to ensure your marketing strategy meets your audience’s current needs. Refresh your personas based on new data you acquire along with feedback from audience members. This could be direct feedback from user surveys or interviews and indirect feedback collected from website analytics and user tracking tools.