Jane.com Personas Project

The Problem

Who was the Jane customer? How did she perceive Jane? Why does she keep coming back to shop on Jane.com? How did she interact with our brand and site? What was her personal style, and who were her influencers?

There had been many ad-hoc research projects attempting to answer the above questions, and many differing answers. My manager and I were tasked with creating an official customer personas that would help point the company in a single direction. 

Process

• Collect pre-existing assumptions through internal research

• Four company workshops and lunch & learn activites

• Exploratory survey (~170 respondents)

• 25 in-depth customer interviews

• One evaluative survey (~500 respondents)

• Nine supplemental target demographic tests for additional evaluation (~1100 respondents)

• Hundreds of Post-it™ notes

Extensive work was done to accurately classify respondents' qualitative feedback. 

Findings

Many long-held assumptions regarding the "typical" Jane customer were laid to rest and replaced with accurate data, inclluding...

• The average Jane customer was older than originally thought

• They were more likely to live outside of Utah than within it

• A large portion of Jane customers were not stay-at-home moms, but balanced raising a family with their personal career aspirations

Results

The personas we created were used to align Jane's brand strategies to our customer personas and profiles. It also provided direction for marketing, creative, and product & development teams. 

The personas were referenced for four years after their original creation, until Jane went out of business in November 2023 due to unrelated economic issues.

My Role

I assisted in writing and analyzing customer surveys, attending or leading video interviews, compiling findings into summary decks, and helping share our findings to the company through presentations and activities.