| Feature | UXPressia (Winner) | Make My Persona (Runner Up) |
|---|---|---|
| Registration | Required | Required only for saving/downloading |
| Templates | 4 different types, including B2B and best practices | Not specified |
| Customization | Advanced editing; add/change any elements | Simple editing; add/delete sections |
| Design | Sleek design | Visually pleasing with cartoony avatars |
| User-Friendliness | Beginner-friendly with a best practices template | Simple, on-the-fly editing |
| Functionality | Many options and elements to choose from | Allows for simple or complex customization |
| Pros | 4 persona templates Sleek design Many advanced options | Free No registration for initial use Customizable |
| Cons | Requires registration Not for basic users | Only cartoony avatars Audible cues (nitpicking) |
What is a Buyer Persona and Why is it Important to Create One?
A buyer persona is a fictional yet realistic representation of your ideal customers.
It’s crucial to understand that ‘fictional’ doesn’t mean ‘fake.’
Your buyer persona is rooted in reality, drawing from actual data collected from real customers.
Creating a buyer persona allows you to focus sharply on the customers you have a genuine chance of converting and enables targeted content creation.
Research indicates that only 1 in 10 people in your target audience actually needs your solution, meaning the other 9 aren’t viable prospects.
Without a clear buyer persona, there’s a risk of wasting 90% of your efforts and resources.
For a deeper understanding of buyer personas, consider reading my article, “Buyer Personas in 2024: How to Create One and Why.”
Utilize these tools to craft your buyer persona and effectively chase your ideal customers.
UXPressia – WINNER
UXPressia is a paid tool but you can try it for free with basic functionality, which is enough to create a buyer persona.
After you’ve registered and logged in, you will have to create a new project by clicking on the Add Project button.
Next up, choose Personas, add a new persona, and then choose one of the template options provided to you.
If you have a pretty good idea about what you want, a Blank persona will let you build a new one from scratch.
B2B buyer persona template will help if you’re in the B2B field and Persona best practices template will give you something to work with if you’re a beginner or aren’t sure where to start from.
Persona best practices template will not only give you a basic persona template to work with, but it will also provide you with the most important questions you need to answer to build a useful buyer persona.
No matter which template you choose, you will have the ability to edit and change anything you see on the screen.
So no need to feel like you’re mission out on any important options if you choose one template over the other.
Wrapping it up, UXPressia takes creating a buyer persona experience to the next level with its design and host of options and elements at your disposal.
Pros:
- 4 different persona templates to choose from
- A beginner-friendly “Persona best practices” template
- Sleek design
- Many options and elements to choose from
- Advanced editing options
- Many additional elements to choose from
Cons:
- Requires registration
- Might not be the right tool for those that want only the most basic functionality
Make My Persona – RUNNER UP
You can use Make My Persona tool without registration and create your buyer persona, but you’ll have to register to download/export your persona.
Hubspot created a visually pleasing buyer personal creation tool that allows you to create your persona in seven easy steps.
After choosing a cartoony avatar for your persona, the tool will require some typical buyer persona information like age, education level, industry, company, job title, etc.
When you’re done answering questions, your buyer persona comes to life and the tool opens up for edits and modifications.
You can edit or delete existing sections, as well as add new ones by clicking the “Add New Section” button at the bottom of the screen.
Right there lies the beauty of this tool – you can make it as simple or as complex as you like.
Pros:
- Free
- No registration required unless you want to Save or Download your persona as a file
- Simple and easy to use while offering more customization if necessary
- On-the-fly editing
- Ability to add more sections
Cons:
- Cartoony persona pics only
- Audible cues while progressing through the sections (yes, I’m nitpicking)
- Lacks some of the more advanced customization options
PersonaGenerator – Quick and Simple Choice
PersonaGenerator doesn’t waste your time with a registration process.
As soon as you land on the domain, you can start creating your buyer persona.
This tool is perfect for not-so-demanding users who only need basic functionality and don’t want to spend time figuring out how to use the more advanced tools out there.
PersonaGenerator template only has a few categories of information, but they’re well thought-out:
- Basic information
- Needs
- Wants
- Values
- Fears
- Criteria for Success
One could argue that these are the most important categories of information necessary to build a useful buyer persona, though.
You’ll notice the helpful examples that are already there to give you a hint about the kind of information each element should be populated with.
PersonaGenerator will remember your IP address and save your progress so you don’t have to complete the entire process all at once.
When you’re done, you can forward your new buyer persona to any email address as well as share a unique link to your buyer persona with someone else.
Pros:
- No registration necessary
- Simple and easy-to-use
- Tool will give you helpful examples to draw inspiration from
- Easily shareable
Cons:
- Limited functionality and customization
- Impossible to add new elements
Up Close & Persona
Up Close & Persona is not going to win any graphic design awards, but that doesn’t make it any less useful.
Quite the opposite…
The questionnaire goes in-depth and asks detailed questions which forces you to really think your persona through.
In each of the sections, the tool will offer helpful tips.
It tells you why the questions you’re answering are important which is very useful for beginner users who might not even be sure why they need a buyer persona.
Most questions are simple and straightforward, but there are a few that you’ll have to read a couple of times before you understand them (at least I did).
This could pose a problem for non-fluent English speakers.
Once you answer all the questions, you’ll have to submit your email in order to access your persona.
If you made mistakes, like I intentionally did, you won’t be able to make edits on-the-fly.
You’ll have to go back to the questionnaire and correct them there.
Other than that, Up Close & Persona is a great free customer persona builder.
Pros:
- Beginner-friendly
- In-depth questionnaire
- Detailed buyer persona in the end
Cons:
- Some of the questions are complicated
- Inability to make edits on the final persona sheet
- Outdated visuals
Userforge
Userforge is a paid tool that has a generous free plan that lets you create three buyer personas, among other things.
Once you register and create a Workspace, simply click on Personas and Add Persona on the next screen to start creating your new buyer persona:
Userforge offers a neat buyer persona building experience.
At first, it gives you a blank interactive template to play with.
The template is segmented into content sections that you can click on.
Upon clicking on any of the segments like Age, Education, Goals, or Story, you’ll see a content section edit screen pop up on the right-hand side.
There, you can make edits and populate your buyer persona with information.
You populated all the default sections and need more of them?
No problem.
Simply click on the little Add Content Section button in the bottom right corner of your persona and add as many content sections as you like.
All in all, Userforge is a great tool to create up to three buyer personas for free.
Pros:
- Ability to create Group Profiles and Human Personas
- The ability to add images from Pixabay
- Interactivity
- On-the-fly editing
- Ability to add as many sections as you like
Cons:
- You have to register to use this tool
- Could have been more content sections to give beginners more inspiration
Smaply
Smaply is a paid customer experience management tool but it has a 14-day free trial which you can use to create a buyer persona.
Once you create your account and log into your Smaply workspace, you will have to create a New Project.
From here, you will be offered a choice of using a basic template or start building your buyer persona from scratch.
I suggest using a template that will give you something to work with.
The tool offers great customization and you will be able to change anything and everything anyway.
You can then start building your buyer persona by populating the elements, adding images, text, or manipulating the entire template by deleting the existing elements or adding new ones.
Adding new elements is done by dragging them from the Add Element tab and dropping them into the template.
However, if you know exactly what you want and how you want your buyer persona to look, creating one from scratch might be the right option for you.
Pros:
- Amazing level of customization
- Ability to Export or Duplicate your buyer persona
- Advanced options that will satisfy even the more demanding users
- Interactivity
- On-the-fly editing
Cons:
- Paid tool (14-day free trial)
- The tool lacks color
Xtensio
Using Xtensio to create a customer persona will require going through a simple registration process first.
After you’ve registered, logged in, and entered a few simple information, you’ll get to the workspace area.
Once there, click on the Create a Folio button…
… and choose the User Persona template.
Xtensio User Persona template is nicely structured with all the important areas covered.
Of course, you can make edits on-the-fly, remove elements you don’t need, and add new ones.
You can also make your buyer persona as colorful as you like by changing the background color of each of the elements separately.
Apart from the standard text-based elements, there are also many slider-based elements that add to the visuals.
Besides adding to the visuals, sliders are really helpful when it comes to describing data points that aren’t simply binary but can widely vary in degree.
First-time persona creators will appreciate the examples of data points each element shows.
For the mode demanding users that want to add much more information than shown in the basic user persona template, there’s an Add New Section button that will allow them to add more elements or modules.
Once you’ve created your buyer persona and are done fiddling with it, you can easily share it via unique links or download a PNG image of it to your computer.
The free version of Xtensio puts an ever-so-slightly visible watermark over your buyer persona that might irk some users.
Pros:
- Tool provides you with a simple and well thought-out persona template to start with
- Many slider-based elements
- Advanced elements and options to choose from
- Ability to change backgrounds of each element separately
- Easily shareable via unique links
- On-the-fly editing
- Change fonts and font sizes
Cons:
- Requires registration
- Free version puts a watermark over your buyer persona
