Each excursion has five phases that happen amid customer collaboration. You have to be familiar with every step of the process, how these steps influence the customer’s experience, and how you can make the journey more efficient at every step and customer touchpoint (we already talked about customer experience and ways to measure it here). Let’s have a look at stages of the customer journey so you can have better understanding of your clients’ experiences on your ecommerce platform:
1. Awareness
Awareness is the discovery stage of your ecommerce site. The customer figures out who you are and the services/products you have to offer. This is the beginning stage of their experience with you and is where they could find out about your item/service on your ecommerce page. It’s when a company attempts to offer ways to address a customer’s issues. The problems experienced by customers in an online store can be detrimental to the success of the business if they are not identified and resolved.
This phase requires the use of successful SEO and ecommerce advertising tactics. This phase is an opportunity for you to discover what marketing and search engine optimization techniques are effective if you have not yet perfected your online presence.
For instance, those wishing to buy new shoes may do a speedy search on Google. People view your advertisement, hit it and go to your targeted website page.
At this point, projections should include advertisements, blogs, flags, circulars, etc.
2. Consideration
Taking into account all the options provided on your online store and actively expressing interest in making a purchase is what is meant by consideration. This is when their shopping process shifts from unstructured browsing to examining particular products that could be purchased.
Many businesses frequently fail to close client deals at the consideration stage, primarily resulting from purchasers being unable to find the products they desire after a short period of perusing. Websites for online shopping that are attractive and easy to use on computers can be challenging and hard to use on phones or mobile devices. Ensuring that your eShop website is optimized for use on mobile devices is an effective way to hold onto customers.
In this cycle, contact points are comprised of the entry page, item/outlet page, classifying criteria, and so on.
Examining user activity in the contemplation period can furnish beneficial information concerning customer habits and which plans and techniques are effective or counterproductive for changing an individual into a customer.
3. Acquisition
At the acquisition or conversion stage, someone adds an item to their cart or saves it to their wishlist and pays for it by going through the checkout and payment process.
After completing their orders, customers are brought to a confirmation page where they are informed of when their shipment will be sent.
Acquisition is the essential step in which your organization is required to satisfy the promises it has made and live up to the anticipations that originated the purchaser to consider your services.
Thinking about a pair of shoes as an example, if a buyer is not content with their purchase, the next step should be the customer service phase.
Points of contact during the purchasing phase include the shopping cart, payment processor, checkout page, thank you page, confirmation of the order, and tracking information, and so on.
4. Service
The service stage is one of the last components of the customer experience. Interaction with people and providing superior service are essential.
At this moment, the customer could necessitate extra aid with their purchase or merchandise. In other words, they might want to send back the shoes they purchased. In this case, the client could phone customer service if the giving back process is complicated or confusing.
Achievement of customer loyalty is in part affected by the level of assistance you can provide and the ease with which you can accommodate their requests. Giving good post-purchase service will motivate clients to come back and make more buys in the future.
During this period, things you meet at intersections could include your often asked questions, the regulations set out and authorized, those who respond to people’s requests on behalf of the company, packaging materials, confirmation of returns, and so on.
5. Loyalty
Reaching the customer loyalty stage is the ultimate result of going through the entire process of an eCommerce experience.
Throughout this phase, an individual might be informed of an update via email, grade the item and offerings they were given, and take advantage of their reimbursement or voucher to buy something else.
In this situation, the primary point of contact is a newsletter or post-purchase email in connection with the item page, touchdown page, and digital form.
Considering, examining, and altering the phases of the client’s web based business venture is an extensive undertaking. A simpler method is to identify the most noteworthy buyer personas and construct a customer pathway step-by-step.
What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is also known as a customer persona, marketing persona, or audience persona and is a representation of a part of the desired consumer base for a company. Marketers should pay attention to the behavior, demographics, locations, desires, and needs of their target markets in order to stay centered on them. This enables them to form personalized and pertinent customer experiences that are more probable to interest and resonate with their expected audiences.
If a business is aiming to reach different sections of people with different backgrounds, interests and statistics they can separate their target group into different customer groups and come up with multiple marketing procedures to suit the requirements and tastes of the various parties.
Businesses can ensure that the eCommerce platforms and other customer-facing elements are tailored to the particular needs of the customer personas they have identified by taking them into account.
How To Create Customer Journey Maps for Online Stores?
This is the million dollar inquiry: when starting out, what matters should be taken into account for charting these paths? Let’s have a look!
1. View Your Business From the Customer’s Perspective
To build your customer map, you must consider what it is like to be a customer and evaluate your business from that point of view. The emphasis should be on comprehending their encounters when dealings with your firm.
Begin by selecting an item or service that your business provides and conduct searches for it utilizing different wording on search engines. To produce a list of words that can be searched, you can make use of tools like Google Trends which will give you an idea of the popularity of certain keywords and even propose other related phrases.
Examine how people who might want your services or products come across your company. Look into the source of your website traffic. There are numerous resources that can assist you with this task. Google Analytics is a well-known and free application. During this process, it could become apparent that particular consumer reviews, web journals, and articles directed patrons to your web page.
This step is vital because it is likely to be the initial occasion when potential customers become familiar with your company. Understanding what they seek and where they originate from offers insight into what they are searching for and how to personalise the initial contact to your benefit.
If you can create a more pertinent connection to the customer, you will have a better opportunity for pushing them further down the sales process. You will gain a better understanding of the different kinds of content that can help bring more customers to your business.
After you have determined the route they took to find your business, it is time to explore which product pages they typically view. View your materials as if you were a new customer, as if it were the first time. By taking an impartial stance, it is possible to spot elements that might be attractive to potential customers or recognize something which might lead them to move away from the website.
Write down points about what requires enhancement, what should be done in greater quantity, and other observations so you can use them to create tasks that can be done.
2. Understand Every Business Function
Having a well thought out approach to customer experience is critical for promoting a business. In spite of this, all business activities can be steered by a successful customer experience.
Here are the three areas of the customer journey your brand should evaluate:
- Peripheral touchpoints: Any points of first contact, such as hearing about your brand from a friend or seeing an ad for your brand.
- External touchpoints: Any direct interactions your customers have with your brand assets – like social media engagement or browsing your website.
- Internal touchpoints: Any interactions a customer has with members of your organization – such as reaching out to customer support.
Grasping each of these elements of contacts can assist you in formulating a more precise and pertinent client journey management scheme.
3. Have a Goal
What are your goals for tracking and outlining your customer experience?
Establishing precise and determined goals will enable you to get more out of your client journey administration plan. You take action as opposed to just acting on the wisdom you’ve gained.
As an illustration, it could be beneficial to decrease blockades and hassles, augment the purchasing of specific items, or augment the involvement of buyers. Establishing these aims from the outset assists you in getting the most out of the knowledge you obtain regarding your customers’ paths.
4. Know Your Customer’s Paths
Once your goals are made plain, the initial move is to get an idea of and visualize the actions customers take. Organize each type of marketing you use in your business and figure out how customers will come across your brand. Additionally, identify the journey they take once they find your brand.
Employing marketing automation and applying tracking tags may assist you in overseeing the customer’s digital experience. Occasionally, individuals will become aware of your local business by taking note of a chalkboard advertisement or learning about it from an acquaintance.
It is essential to apply your mental acuity in this situation. Consider all of the methods a customer might find and interact with your brand, and create an organized course of action from them. This might encompass various methods, from your entry advertising plan up to carrying out ads, specials, and more. Utilize marketing analytics programs such as Google Analytics to gain a more thorough understanding of customer travels.
5. Define Success Metrics
Maximize your customer’s satisfaction by establishing clear targets of success. What steps do you or they have to take in order to accomplish the desired outcome?
Figure out what achievement would mean to your clients and grasp what progress means for your company. Establishing measurable and attainable objectives during every step of the customer experience will help you to stay focused on your plan and more effectively meet your targets.
6. Use Journey Scores
Matching your corporation goals to your customer’s desires is a major element of customer journey management. A beneficial practice is to ascertain important goals that measure accomplishment on a global level.
Then get more granular. Think about what results would result in greater success for your company after taking into account the objectives and performance indicators you have already put in place. Make sure that these results correspond to what your clients are striving to accomplish.
Tailor your journey ratings and company performance measurements so that your customers and your business can both reach the same ambitions.
7. Get Everyone On Board
The importance of customer experience transcends just the marketing department. Every individual throughout a business needs to take part because all elements of the company are influenced by the customer experience.
Every division that has contact with customers should be informed of your customer experience management strategies and objectives. This contributes to developing a more comprehensive and effective plan that is consistent with the company’s ultimate objective.
8. Optimize
It is unlikely you will plan out your customer experience in full detail initially. Continuously improving and modifying the experience of customers in their journey is what customer journey management is all about.
It’s essential to keep a close eye on this and make changes based on market conditions and shifts in behavior. The customer experience is always changing, therefore it is essential that your process is aligned with these modifications.
Keeping current with your customers’ activities and communications with your brand requires you to continually refer to their journey. It is essential to offer a meaningful, significant experience to the customer throughout every step.
Conclusion
Customer journey management focuses on gaining an in-depth understanding of your customers and making sure they have the most favorable experience possible. Fulfilling what customers expect is indispensable for any successful company, and these days, customers are very demanding of businesses.
By ensuring that your customers get what they need while also ensuring that it lines up with what your business needs, you can increase the level of customer contentment, improve how your business is perceived, and result in higher sales.
