That Danny!
Persona Non Grata – In the context of website usability – a term I use to describe users I do not want on a website.
In the course of a web design (or redesign) project, you will often encounter a process by which the design or usability company create personas (or personae).
A persona is a fictitious archetypal user, built to represent the users of a website: their needs, drivers and characteristics – to help you understand who you are building for. Put simply it is a member of your target audience, which you create to help the team understand who they are designing for.
In a project I’ve been working on recently, I came across a need that I haven’t had before: to define not just personas, but also a persona non grata. I call it that because in my mind it represents the people you do not want on your site, but of whom you are getting plenty.
Owners of most websites don’t mind if they get lots of irrelevant users. Their traffic is up, management is happy, and the focus is often on conversion rates and increasing the site’s relevance to the people that matter. It follows that the models and personas they use relate to the people they want, rather than those they don’t.
But if, for example, your site is very niche, and you get a lot of misguided traffic that puts a burden on your customer support team, or on your bandwidth, you sometimes need to define who these misguided users are, and how you can channel them elsewhere. One part of the solution would be to design the site well for its desired users, but that may not be enough. You may find that the only way to fend off the unwanted traffic is to use a similar process to the persona process – but one that defines the personae non gratae and figures out ways to stop them from misunderstanding your site, or deflecting and redirecting them elsewhere.
More methodology to follow. I wanted to get the definition and explanation out of the way first.
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