User research is the bridge between a business and the people it serves, yet it’s often overlooked. Whenever I ask, “Have you done any user research to understand what your customers or users need right now?” I often hear responses like:

“I know my customers/users.”

“We did research last year for another project, and it showed the same need to add the chat feature.”

“Demographic research shows that female Millennials spend a lot of time on social media, and our users fall into this group.”

“This is a leadership decision to create a gamification function.”

“Why don’t we just do it? I’m sure our customer will like it because this plan has been thoroughly discussed.”

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: you don’t know your customers or users. You may have heard how other, similar people behave, but they aren’t your customers. You may feel confident because a group of smart people (or consultants) spent weeks in a conference room debating ideas. But they don’t know your customers either. The result is often the same: brilliant ideas and sophisticated plans that miss what people actually want. And then, the product fails.

Why user research matters

HHuman preferences change constantly. What was popular 12 months ago may not apply today (think Pokémon Go). The customers who participated in your retail service study may not be the same people who use your mobile app. And leadership doesn’t automatically know what customers want simply because they’re “more experienced.”

It’s hard to overstate the importance of truly understanding customers and users. No one wants to spend months building a product, service, or content that looks amazing, but no one cares about (besides the team that created it). Small things can cause outsized damage. Agile development helps teams test and adjust quickly, but “starting right” matters just as much as “fixing right.”

At the same time, doing user research without rigor won’t lead to meaningful insights. Ask the wrong questions, and you’ll get answers that send investment and activity in the wrong direction. Weak study design and shallow analysis can introduce bias and false confidence. The real question is: is there enough customer value to drive acquisition, adoption, and sustained use?

The “why” and “how” of user research

UX Booth has a comprehensive guide to user research methods. Below are several commonly used approaches:

Interviews
Interviews let you speak directly with the people who inform your decisions. With carefully crafted questions, you can uncover true feelings, desires, struggles, and motivations.

Observation
People often do (or avoid) things they can’t fully articulate. Observation captures natural behavior by watching and listening without interfering.

Immersion
Immersion builds empathy through firsthand experience. By stepping into someone else’s environment, you gain a clearer view of motivations and needs.

Focus groups
Unlike one-on-one interviews, focus groups surface how opinions shift through group dynamics, influence, and shared reflection.

Surveys
Surveys help gather quantitative input from a large audience. They’re useful for measuring, comparing, and benchmarking patterns at scale.

Usability testing
Usability testing evaluates how easily users can navigate, understand, and complete tasks. It surfaces friction, confusion, and missed expectations.

A/B testing
A/B testing can assess content, UI, messaging, and more. It lets customers decide through behavior, with statistical evidence of impact and conversion.

Persona, user experience, and the customer journey

The next step is creating personas. A persona summarizes the mindset, needs, and goals that guide decision-making for the people you serve. It becomes a practical north star throughout the process.

Building relationships with customers and users is a journey. Each touchpoint creates an experience that shapes how people perceive your product or service. Together, those touchpoints form the customer journey.

Early on, the journey map should be broad enough to capture what happens before and after customers interact with you. For example, for an e-commerce site, you’d want to understand how customers hear about your brand, how they find your site, and what they do after they leave. This 30,000-foot view reveals behavior patterns, pain points, and opportunities.

Once you confirm where the greatest potential impact is (for instance, the e-commerce site rather than customer service or delivery), you can go deeper. Create a journey map focused on the site experience itself. You’ll see how different personas navigate, where they drop off, and which problems are worth solving first.

Size matters, and SMBs need this even more

Large companies are more likely to have dedicated research teams. That’s often not the case for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), let alone startups. Yet SMBs and startups can benefit enormously from user research, or be severely hurt by skipping it.

SMBs are especially sensitive to sales performance, which is closely tied to customer satisfaction. In today’s market, many SMBs are technology-driven or growth-driven, often with limited resources, and user research is frequently deprioritized. The cost of that decision is underestimated, especially when customer preferences shift quickly.

Research only matters if it’s shared

Sometimes high-quality research is completed and well documented, but it ends up sitting on a shelf as the team moves on. Meanwhile, people outside product, design, and research are hungry to understand customers but don’t have access to the insights.

A human-centric mindset should be shared across the organization. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to interview customers directly, but sharing insights helps teams that influence the customer experience (sales, finance, support, operations) make better decisions. UX Mastery also offers useful guidance on communicating research results effectively.

Finally, keep in mind the difference between what people say they need, what they actually need, and what they don’t yet know they need.