What is market research?
Market research (or marketing research) is any set of techniques used to gather information and better understand a company’s target market. Businesses use this information to design better products, improve user experience, and craft a marketing strategy that attracts quality leads and improves conversion rates.

Why is market research so valuable?
Without research, it’s impossible to understand your users. Sure, you might have a general idea of who they are and what they need, but you have to dig deep if you want to win their loyalty.

Here’s why research matters…

Obsessing over your users is the only way to win. If you don’t care deeply about it, you’ll lose potential customers to someone who does.

Analytics gives you the ’what,’ but research gives the ‘why.’ Big data, user analytics, and dashboards can tell you what people do at scale, but only research can tell you what they’re thinking and why they do what they do. For example, analytics can tell you that customers leave when they reach your pricing page, but only research can explain why.

Research beats assumptions, trends, and so-called best practices.

Have you ever watched your colleagues rally behind a terrible decision? Bad ideas are often the result of guesswork, emotional reasoning, death by best practices, and defaulting to the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). By listening to your users and, focusing on their customer experience you’re less likely to get pulled in the wrong direction.

Research keeps you from planning in a vacuum.

Your team might be amazing, but you and your colleagues simply can’t experience your product the way your customers do. Customers might use your product in a way that surprises you, and features that seem obvious to you might confuse them. Over-planning and refusing to test your assumptions is a waste of time, money, and effort because you will likely need to make changes once your untested plan gets put into practice.