Business goals and user goals – what is the difference and why is it important
Everyone wants a website, or a blog, or a telegram channel—so what? If you have a shell but no clear vision of the product, you will never make a profit. Do you know how business goals differ from user goals? Read the article and test yourself!
First create products, let it grow and develop, but it will be finite. If you already have a goal and it's not being met, the product itself is probably not as good as you think. Have you accurately calculated and analyzed everything?
Business goals are not the same as user goals.
First, users always want something. Simply because they are human. And people have this quality – always something to want. But if the user “want" is often scattered and can be abstract, then business goals have a specific grain.
And it's not the same when a person is trying to sign up on dating sites, or searching for "sneezing panda" on YouTube, or stalking ex-boyfriends or girlfriends on Facebook. If users always want, “I don't know what,” then the business not only wants, but also performs specific tasks.
How an online business understands what the user wants:
To understand the user's wants and needs, you'll have to research their behaviors, interests, and habits. Everything is legal. This is called working with user data.
What is this all for? To achieve your business goals. Yes. You will have to study your audience well. The product of a business, whatever it is, is always for people. But people, as we know, are not so simple, and the specific target audience is not so stupid.
So what are business goals?
Why is this not the same as user goals? Every organization has a reason to create their own platform: an application, a blog, or any other site. The most common reasons are money and brand awareness. In second place is getting leads (new subscribers). Maybe something else, more specific.
It is also important that business goals may differ. For example, if you want to show more ads, your strategy will be different than if you want to sell products or advertise through social media.
Differences are clearly visible when analyzing various metrics, "metrics" or "KPIs".
“Alignment” of business goals and other tasks
All these goals are handled in large companies by UX (User Experience) designers. Their main task is to understand how well the goals can be coordinated with each other. Simply put, so that the business brings benefits, and the user finds his "pandas". On the contrary, it doesn't work!
How it works in practice:
YouTube makes money from ads. The user is looking for or wants to find something that interests him in the variety of YouTube videos. So when you allow ads on your video that has been viewed by more than 1,000 people, the user's desire to watch your video is satisfied and YouTube's business goal is to make a profit.
If the goals are not aligned, either users can get what they want, but it doesn't help the business (many users, don't succeed), or users don't get what they want (no users, no success).