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In today's eCommerce landscape, customer journeys are becoming more complex, making them harder for eCommerce managers to track and manage.
It's now essential to properly map your own customer journeys to create seamless experiences that attract and retain all the shoppers landing on your site.
Mapping and improving customer journeys carry plenty of benefits, including:
- Increased profits from driving conversions through experiences rather than discounts
- Improved customer loyalty
- Lower customer acquisition costs
- Improved brand image
In short, they're one of the best things you can invest in.
In this post, we'll discuss strategies for mapping and improving eCommerce customer journeys as well as a step-by-step guide favored by eCommerce leaders.
Define customer personas
Your starting point is always to define your ideal customers' personas. Use data from sales and other platforms to create detailed customer profiles that include their demographics, pain points, motivations, and preferences.
We'll assume you already have some idea of your ideal customer profile. Factors like age, interests, and income are useful, but what we really need is an idea of customer expectations.
Here is an example.
Let's say you're a health and beauty brand. Most customers look a bit like "Sarah". She is 32 and has a challenge with finding sustainable beauty products at an affordable price.
Sarah's motivation to shop online is the convenience it offers, coupled with the ability to compare a variety of products in a short space of time. Sarah prefers websites that are easy to navigate, have transparent customer reviews, and offer fast, reliable delivery. To Sarah, excellent customer service is a significant factor influencing brand loyalty.
Having this information will help you understand your customers' wants, needs, and behaviors, which act as a clear guide for improving your journey.
Understand and audit your customer journeys
Next, you’ll need to identify the different stages in the customer journey - from awareness to purchase and beyond.
Below, we can see all the potential touchpoints at each stage of a typical customer journey, courtesy of Cartsguru.
The emphasis on each stage can vary depending on your business model and products or services. For instance, a fashion brand with predominantly young customers might use social media platforms to drive traffic to their sites.
Conversely, for DIY or homeware retailers, informative content or paid search adverts could represent the first stage on the route to making a purchase.
Once you've identified each stage, plot your customer journeys. You can do this in a simple spreadsheet or using a more sophisticated tool like customer journey mapping software. The important thing is to understand the touchpoints and key interactions at each stage.
The final step is to audit your current customer journeys to identify any pain points or areas for improvement. Looking at metrics like bounce rates will pinpoint where customers are dropping out and make it easy to spot room for improvement.
Map out your ideal customer journeys
Now that you have defined your ideal customer personas and audited your current customer journeys, it's time to take a step forward by mapping out your ideal customer journeys.
Identify each step in the journey, including touchpoints, customer interactions, and sales channels, outlining each stage and the outcome you want from it.
The only thing left is to encourage more customers to take these routes and enjoy an enhanced user experience. There are two very simple actions to take here:
- Optimize each touchpoint
Where you're improving your website, increasing your social media presence, bolstering your customer service, accelerating your shipping time, or revamping your returns, you need to make improvements in the right areas.
Ensure that your customer-facing touchpoints align with the journey map you have created. This will make it easier to understand the customer's preferences and pain points at each step and respond accordingly.
- Monitor and refine the journey
The final step is to monitor and refine the customer journey continually. Use analytics and feedback to track customer activity, identify new trends, and respond to changing customer needs.
This will help you stay ahead of the game by responding quickly to new opportunities and challenges.
Five tips to instantly improve an eCommerce customer journey
When we see retailers conducting improvements to their customer journey, the advice generally centers on a few common issues and opportunities.
Be aware that there is no general order of priority for the types of changes you should make. Our advice is to focus initially on the areas that you are struggling with, or those that have been raised by customers.
If you’re ahead on a few of these already, you might be closer to a gold-standard experience than you think.
- Personalizing the experience: Utilize data from customer interactions to curate personalized shopping experiences. Techniques like product recommendations based on previous purchases or browsing history can significantly enhance the customer's journey.
- Streamline the checkout process: A complicated checkout process can be a significant barrier in the path to purchase, leading to abandoned carts. Ensure your own process is as straightforward and seamless as possible, with guest checkout options and stored payment information.
- Improve site navigation: Make it easy for customers to find what they're looking for by having a simple, intuitive site layout. Use clear categories, filters, and a powerful search function to enhance product discoverability.
- Enhance customer support: Prompt and efficient customer support can make a massive difference in the customer journey. Implement live chat options and comprehensive FAQ sections, and ensure your support team is responsive and helpful.
- Implement a loyalty program: A well-structured loyalty program encourages repeat customers and improves the overall customer journey by adding an extra tier to it. Reward loyal customers with discounts, early access to new products, or exclusive perks. This not only enhances their journey but also fosters a long-lasting relationship with your brand.
Conclusion
Mapping and continuously improving your customer journeys can take a lifetime, but it's not difficult to get started and make some early gains.
By outlining what you currently have, and what you want, it's much easier to direct your shoppers to a route that has them coming back again and again.
With the right strategies in place, you can create an exceptional eCommerce customer journey that delights your customers and boosts your bottom line.
