↓ User Archetypes
Unbounce 2020
User archetypes are modelled around a behavioural and environmental perspective that directly align to a job. They clearly illustrate who we are designing for.
The Problem
Unbounce is a conversion intelligence platform that enables marketers to quickly create and optimize campaigns. The challenge we faced was that our last ethnography study was conducted in early 2017 and our data was stale. Our target segments had also shifted from medium sized business to SMB's in saas, ecommerce and agency. We needed to understand who our customers were and who we were designing for.
Team
Denis Suhopoljac (design director)
Alecia Morris (director of ux)
Ricky Knight (ux manager)
Sarah Gillis (senior product designer)
Shawna Jones (senior product designer)
Rebecca Preston (product designer)
Activities
Interviews
Ethnography Study
Affinity Mapping
User Research
Poster Design
The Approach
The UX team conducted an Ethnographic study in the summer of 2019. We interviewed and observed 22 participants as part of our study. The study generated 2550 data points based on customers and non-customers from our target segments in saas, ecommerce and agency. This data allowed us to generate deep insights into motivations, behaviours and pain points for our customers.
A user archetype is not a 1:1 representation of a user. It is not a customer segment as there can be multiple personas within each customer segment thus archetypes. It is not set in stone. It should be updated as new learnings arise throughout ongoing research. Examples of archetypes could be a leisure browser, photography centric, or task centric.
↓ The Pioneer
Highly invested in their company’s future. A Founder wears a variety of hats at the start of their company’s lifecycle and then hires an individual for strategic marketing leadership.
↓ The Founder
The Pioneer partners with the Founder in order to execute marketing tactics. They are hired early days after company has had an influx of money. The Pioneer will eventually hire an Executor to take over their tactical activities.
↓ The Executor
The Executor works closely with the Pioneer in order to execute marketing tactics. They are hired after the Pioneer to round out the marketing discipline and take over all delivery and production of marketing assets.
Highly invested in their company’s future. A Founder wears a variety of hats at the start of their company’s lifecycle and then hires an individual for strategic marketing leadership.
↓ Goal
To grow their company at a rapid pace and secure their place in the market. Eager to hire a marketer but is usually awaiting funding beforehand.
↓ Attributes & Behaviour
- Key stakeholder for data and insights
- Drives all the business health analysis
- Self-taught marketers
- Projects an aura of confidence and are jargon heavy
- Likes to hustle and enjoys fast-paced environments
- Strong desire to derive insights from data analysis to affect their company’s strategy
- Involved heavily in approvals until marketing team grows beyond 2-3 individuals
- Founders make early decisions on tools and data management workflows (unlikely to change until a larger company size)
↓ Attributes & Behaviour
- Balancing the work of creating the actual product and marketing it
- Often large gaps in time between when they are able to work on marketing projects
- Very rarely has access to dedicated IT/DEV and Design support
- Feels slowed down if they have to seek out support from IT/DEV or Design
- Manages the needs of IT/DEV and sometimes Design / Copywriting on tight budget with:
- Contractors
- Tools
- Hacking
- Founder (if IT/DEV/Creative background)
↓ Focus
- Funding
- Business health
- Product development
- Marketing and sales
- Inbound marketing is often their strategy over outbound
- Significant time spent on content creation
↓ A Day In The Life
- Mostly planning the inbound strategy and marketing activities
- Uses data analysis to inform strategy
- Focused on Content creation to accomplish strategy
- Content for Instagram
- Digital Ads
- LPs
- Video
- E-books
- Website content
- Blog content
- Content for emails
- Some branding work (name, logo, domain, visual language, voice and tone)
0 Marketers
→ How behaviors change with team size
Founders are learning what works and handles all marketing activities down to content creation, optimization and data analysis. At this stage Founders may rely on external help that would include agency, consultants or outside advisors.
1 Pioneer
→ How behaviors change with team sizesdfsd
Founders still hold onto marketing strategy activities and also maintain final approval on things, but starts to pass on marketing execution to the Pioneer.
Founder maintains data analysis and insights.
1 Pioneer, 1 Executor
→ How behaviors change with team size
Founders release all marketing strategy and execution to the Pioneer and Executor. Founder releases data analysis activities to the Pioneer.
The Pioneer partners with the Founder in order to execute marketing tactics. They are hired early days after company has had an influx of money. The Pioneer will eventually hire an Executor to take over their tactical activities.
↓ Goal
To formalize the marketing discipline and hit key performance indicators through marketing led activities.
↓ Attributes & Behaviour
- Reports to the Founder
- Strong networker
- Experienced and/or educated in marketing as a discipline
- Like Founders: is often confident and jargon heavy
- Likes to hustle and enjoys fast-paced environments
- Takes on the management of IT/DEV/Creative by utilizing:
- Contractors
- Tools
- Hacking
- Manages design and copywriting (takes over from Founder)
↓ Attributes & Behaviour
- Often assembles content with assets created by freelance designer
- Generates content for social media, google ads, blogs, landing pages and any other channel that is relevant
- All work produced is usually reviewed by Founder (based on trust level)
- Influences marketing strategy and tactics
- Works closely with sales team once they’re established
- Established pipeline to feed sales with leads
- Reviews marketing data but usually doesn’t do deep analysis until team scales up
- Will take on more marketing approvals as team grows
↓ Focus
- Defining and converting qualified leads
- Most time spent in content creation
- Marketing trends and relevant industry trends
- Marketing analytics
- Marketing strategy
↓ A Day In The Life
- Mostly planning the next marketing activity
- Project Management
- Some data analysis
- Focused on Content creation
- Content for Instagram
- Digital Ads
- LPs
- Video
- E-books
- Website content
- Blog content
- Content for emails
- Some branding work
0 Marketers
→ How behaviors change with team size
With only a Founder, they will need more approvals from them until trust is built, however they may start with more responsibility depending on their relationship
Low trust: Pioneer will do data wrangling and reporting but not insights and deeper data analysis.
High trust: Pioneer will take over strategy, data analysis and insights.
1 Pioneer, 1 Executor
→ How behaviors change with team size
Founders still hold onto marketing strategy activities and also maintain final approval on things, but starts to pass on marketing execution to the Pioneer.
Founder maintains data analysis and insights.
The Executor works closely with the Pioneer in order to execute marketing tactics. They are hired after the Pioneer to round out the marketing discipline and take over all delivery and production of marketing assets.
↓ Goal
To execute against the marketing strategy set forth by the Pioneer and Founder.
↓ Attributes & Behaviour
- Reports to and works closely with Pioneer
Often has formal education and marketing degree - Strong networker
- Novice to intermediately experienced in marketing as a discipline.
- Very rarely has access to dedicated IT/DEV and Design support
- Feels slowed down if they have to seek out support from IT/DEV or Design
- Feels slowed down if they have to seek out support from IT/DEV or Design
↓ Attributes & Behaviour
- Takes over from Pioneer the execution and management of IT/DEV/Creative by utilizing:
- Contractors
- Tools
- Hacking
- Manages design and copywriting (takes over from Pioneer)
- All work is run by the Pioneer for approvals
- Does basic reporting of marketing key performance indicators
- Does some data analysis
↓ Focus
- Most time spent in content creation
- Coordination
- Workflow
- Reporting performance metrics
- Delivery
↓ A Day In The Life
- Primary focus is content creation
- Content for Instagram
- Digital Ads
- LPs
- Video
- E-books
- Website content
- Blog content
- Content for emails
- Some planning the next marketing activity
- Some project management
The Outcome
- Alignment with PM, Engineering and Revenue teams who we are designing for.
- Painted a clear shift towards marketers that scale and grow the discipline across the organization.
- Built empathy by crystallizing a deep understanding of attributes and behaviour across archetypes.
- Built empathy with a portrayal of a day in the life of a marketer and what they focus..
- Archetypes became the anchor points for trade off conversations with Engineering & PM.
- Our ability to design for archetypes as behaviours shift and change with team size.