Molecular Consultant Publishes Practical How-To Book on Web Personas for Marketers and User Experience Practitioners

Steve Mulder's Book Shows How to Build More Effective and Profitable Web Sites By Giving Users What They Actually Need

WATERTOWN, Mass. – October 23, 2006 – Molecular, Inc., a leading internet consulting firm, today announced that principal user experience consultant, Steve Mulder, along with president of internet strategy Ziv Yaar, have published a definitive guide to using personas: The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web.  Mulder’s how-to book is the first to address Web personas in a comprehensive manner, making it ideal for user experience designers as well as corporate marketers eager to tap personas as a way to improve digital marketing performance.  Steve Mulder discusses highlights of the book on a podcast listeners can access here: http://www.molecular.com/research/publications/PracticalPersonas.aspx.

 “At Molecular, many of our clients have been asking about personas, but few understand how to effectively create and use them to engage customers more profitably,” said Steve Mulder. “Forrester Research recently reported that ‘though increasingly popular, personas remain widely misunderstood.’ The User Is Always Right demystifies personas and shows how this tool can help to understand customer goals, behaviors and attitudes, ultimately leading to improved business results from your web site.”  

Building upon work done for Molecular’s clients, The User Is Always Right provides practical instructions and advice on each step of persona creation, including conducting qualitative user research, using quantitative research techniques such as surveys and site traffic analysis, various approaches to persona segmentation, and techniques for creating realistic personas.  The book explains how implementing personas can improve a company’s overall e-business performance and profitability by bringing a quantitative discipline to customer acquisition and loyalty programming.  The book also explains how personas guide decisions throughout the lifecycle of web site improvement or redesign, from decisions on overall business strategy and feature prioritization to the details of information architecture, content and web site design.

“Our goal for The User Is Always Right is to provide marketers and user experience professionals with insights they can immediately put into action,” adds Mulder. “By using personas effectively, a web team can align online content with brand experience at the individual customer level and create a unique and powerful experience for them.  At Molecular we have a methodology for achieving this alignment and personas are central to our clients achieving success.”

As a principal consultant in user experience at Molecular, Mulder specializes in customer research, personas, information architecture and usability. His work with clients includes Morgan Stanley, PC Connection, Talbots, VistaPrint, 3M, Estee Lauder Companies and Gloss.com.  Mulder regularly speaks about user-centered design (UCD), and he has previously written Web Designer’s Guide to Style Sheets, Web Authoring Desk Reference and Teach Yourself Photoshop in 14 Days.

Ziv Yaar, vice president of Internet strategy at Molecular, is a contributing author of The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web.  Yaar has spent more than ten years helping companies develop technology and business strategies, and he too has been at the forefront of merging the power of marketing analytics with personas.

About Molecular, Inc.

Molecular, an internet consulting firm, designs and builds digital solutions to help companies increase revenues and decrease operating costs. Since 1994, Molecular has directed successful Web initiatives for the nation's top companies, including Finish Line, Inc., Fidelity Investments, MFS Investment Management, Hewlett-Packard and Talbots. Headquartered in Boston, Molecular also has offices in New York and San Francisco.  For more information, please visit www.molecular.com.