Describe Your Customer When You Have No Data

Every HumanPanel run starts with a sentence or two about who should answer. The worlds, the people in them and every answer follow from those words. A vague description gives you a vague panel.

You don’t need customer data to write a good description. You need five pieces of information, and you know most of them already.

1. Place. Country, plus city or region if the business is local. “Adults in Manchester” beats “adults”.
2. Life stage or role. Parents of toddlers, retirees, first-year students, office managers. For a business product, name the job title and company size.
3. The behaviour tied to your product. What they do today in the area you serve: “buy coffee on the way to work”, “file their own tax return”, “walk a dog twice a day”.
4. Budget signals. An income range or a spending habit, such as “shop at discount supermarkets” or “pay for two or more streaming services”.
5. The spread you expect. Name who else is in the mix: “mostly commuters, some remote workers and students”.

• Before: “People who like fitness.”
  After: “Adults aged 25 to 50 in Austin, Texas, who pay for a gym or fitness class, a mix of beginners and regulars, with household incomes from $40,000 to $120,000.”
• Before: “Small businesses.”
  After: “Owners of independent restaurants and cafés in the UK with 2 to 20 staff, who do their own scheduling and payroll.”
• Before: “Pet owners.”
  After: “Dog owners in US suburbs who work full time and leave the dog alone for more than four hours on weekdays.”

• Describing fans only. “People who love handmade candles” gives you a panel of yes votes. Describe the market instead, “adults who buy candles or home fragrance at least twice a year”, and let the survey find the fans.
• Stacking every trait. Ten conditions in one sentence describe almost nobody. Keep the traits tied to buying, and let HumanPanel fill in the rest from realistic population weights.
• Pasting a persona. “Sarah, 34, loves yoga” describes one person. You want a population, with a range of ages, incomes and opinions.

From your description, HumanPanel designs 1 to 10 worlds, each with about 14 weighted attributes such as age, income, education and media habits. The worlds appear first when a run starts.

For a new description, start with a small run of 20 respondents. Read the worlds and a few respondent profiles. If a world doesn’t match anyone you would sell to, edit the description before the full run.

If you have a website, give HumanPanel the address and say what you want to learn. The AI survey writer reads your homepage and drafts who should answer, along with the questions. Check the draft against the five parts above and fill in what’s missing.

Writing surveys is free, and new accounts get $1 of free credit with no credit card. Sign up with your email.