Without users your business isn't going to make the impact you hope for. Your users are the most important asset to your business. Learning what they like, don't like and need to achieve from your brand, product or service will increase their satisfaction and can lead to them spending more, sticking around and recommending you to new users.
An important step in improving your offering is to identify your customers pain points and providing improvements to address issues as soon as they are identified.
User research can be performed in a number of different ways, for existing and established businesses we can chat with or survey your current customers to identify who they are, what they need and how we can improve their experience when interacting with your brand, product or service. This can be focussed on a single aspect of the business for example your website or we can analyse the full process and every touch point you have with your users.
For new businesses we can use your competitors and the wider marketplace to identify the goals and pain points of their customers to establish how you can position your brand, business or service in order to make your mark and start competing in the marketplace.
As well as understanding your users and their goals it is often beneficial to create user personas. A user persona is basic profile of a made up user, consisting of a basic biography, their wants and needs, frustrations and often their personality type and technical skills. These personas are created using user research and they can be used later in the design process to make key design decisions to ensure your product is compatible with your users.