E-COMMERCE SUCCESS STARTS HERE - MAPPING THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Are you familiar with the term 'e-commerce customer journey'?

Surprisingly, even if you are not, you must have experienced it as a consumer or business owner.

If you are an owner, it is obvious that some people buy from your site and some do not. Even if you are an aspiring business owner, you will experience this in the future.

If you have no clue about why the latter group abandoned your website, this article is must-read.

Browsing, product selection, checkout, and post-purchase support are all parts of an e-commerce customer journey. This blog post aims to explain an e-commerce customer journey, why its optimisation is necessary, and explain actionable tips for mapping the customer journey.

Why is the Customer Journey Different in E-commerce?

An e-commerce customer journey refers to a customer's end-to-end experience with a brand. It starts from the first impression and goes all the way to the final interaction.

The focus of e-commerce brands is conversion in most cases. Acquiring new visitors and encouraging them to purchase are their core tasks. Moreover, success does not come from one-time sales but from repeated customer purchases.

Why is It Important to Optimise & Understand the ecommerce Customer journey?

E-commerce is a highly competitive industry.

Understanding and optimising the e-commerce customer journey can help businesses significantly enhance engagement and increase conversions.

Your customers are forming their opinions about your business at different stages of this journey, and you must ensure that these opinions are positive if you want conversions.

Consumers have a wide array of options when they want to purchase any product or get any service online. Mistrust enters their minds even before they initiate the process. They tend to go for the most famous online marketplaces since they are reputable.

Yes, consumers look for speed and convenience and even make impulse purchases sometimes. Still, the trust factor is impossible to ignore.

With so many brands vying for attention online and consumers trying to pick one that suddenly clicks them, getting sales as a new entrepreneur is no piece of cake. It needs dedicated efforts pointed in the right direction.

Stages of e-Commerce Customer Journey

And that right direction is the understanding of consumer behaviour and their psychology. Buyers go through a certain stage throughout the buying lifecycle. They will not go anywhere if you touch them tactfully at every point.

Stage 1: Awareness

In this stage, customers identify their problems. Meanwhile, they are also checking other brands and trying to determine if they have the solution to their problem or the product or service that can solve it.

Somehow, they also get to know about you. Perhaps they have seen ads or promotional campaigns. At this point, you can reach them out via social media advertising or word-of-mouth referrals from existing customers.

Tips to Optimise Customer Journey at This Stage

A. Identify & Get to Know Your Target Audience: Create detailed customer personas that reflect your ideal customer's demographics, interests, and behaviour patterns.

B. Craft Targeted Content: Make educational blog posts, engaging social media content, or informative videos that resonate with them. Make it not just promotional but also informative and educational.

C. It must make your customers know who you are as a brand and your mission and vision. You can also publish high-quality infographics.

D. Leverage SEO, social media, & paid advertising: Make sure your content marketing strategy smartly uses all these methods.

Physical Touch Points of Awareness Stage

· Word of Mouth

· Radio/TV

· Print Media

Digital Touch Points of Awareness Stage

· Digital Ads

· Search Engines

· Emails

· Social Media

· Landing Pages

Stage 2: Consideration

As the name implies, they start considering your brand in this stage. They thoroughly analyse every option they have. They read your blog posts and watch reviews. They start making product comparisons.

Tips to Optimise Customer Journey at This Stage

A. Enhance User Experience: This includes easy navigation, clear call-to-action buttons, and fast loading times.

B. Offer Live Demos and Free Trials: It is always a good strategy to provide customers with a first-hand experience of your product or service.

C. Informative Product Pages: Ensure that your website has comprehensive product pages that give your customers the touch and feel of the product. Use high-quality images, well-written product descriptions, and catchy videos. Also, try to make product comparisons easy for them.

D. Utilising Customer Testimonials and Case Studies: Also, ensure the presence of honest customer reviews on your website. Share their success stories to make new buyers feel confident in their decisions. If you are a B2B service provider, you can display case studies of past customers on websites about your services, helping them improve their business operations.

Physical Touch Points of Consideration Page

· Coupons

· Direct Mail

Physical Touch Points of Consideration Page

· On-site Messaging

· Content Cards

Stage 3: Decision

You will find a variety of names for this stage. Some say it is the decision stage. Some refer to it as the purchase stage. Acquisition term is also used. This is when a customer decides to buy the item from your e-commerce store. Congratulations!

Tips to Optimise Customer Journey at This Stage

Offer Simplified Checkout Process: A streamlined and user-friendly checkout process can reduce cart abandonment rate. Many people will stop the process if they find a complex buying process.

Guest Checkout Option: Let them check out as a guest so they do not have to create an account. It can speed up the process for those looking to make a quick purchase.

Secure Payment Gateways: People easily provide payment information if they find your eCommerce store secure. Also, try to embed as many different payment platforms as possible so you do not miss any customers.

Offering Incentives: Discounts, limited time offers, or free shipping can help encourage purchase. You may offer a discount on the first purchase or free delivery on orders over a certain amount.

Trust-Building Measures: Security badges and money-back guarantees can go a long way regarding trust-building. Have a clear return policy to assure customers of product quality and service reliability.

Physical Touch Points of Decision Page

· Brick-and-Mortar Store

Physical Touch Points of Decision Page

· Website

· Mobile App

Stage 4: Retention

The quality of your products and services is crucial at this stage. It is all about keeping customers satisfied and encouraging them to return for future purchases.

How you respond to your queries can make them either loyal customers and followers or just a one-time and unsatisfied buyer. Brands that are successful at this stage can maximise ROI and increase profits.

We also sometimes refer to this as a service stage. This is because some customers may need more support or help using your products.

Tips to Optimise Customer Journey at This Stage

A. Comprehensive On boarding: A good on boarding process educates customers about the most effective ways to use the product or service. A series of interactive tutorials and webinars leave no stone unturned in making the end-user comfortable with the product.

B. Order Tracking and Notifications: Keep your customer updated about the status of their orders. Let them know the estimated delivery dates. That gives good transparency and high-quality engagement.

C. Personalised Communication: Thank You emails are the perfect example. They are the first step to long-term professional relationships. They express appreciation and support and help make a positive impression.

Also, you can tailor your communication based on customer preferences and usage patterns, so they feel valued. You can recommend new products based on their purchase history.

D. Fast and Reliable Customer Support: Customers want immediate assistance if they encounter a problem.

E. Gathering and Acting on Feedback: Keep seeking customer feedback so you can improve your business policy, which is crucial.

F. Providing Regular Updates and Improvements: This should be done in the light of the previous step.

G. Loyalty Programs: Customers rewarded with loyalty points, discounts, or special offers for future purchases are more likely to stay engaged.

Stage 5: Advocacy

Customers are ready to start recommending your product to others at this stage.

E-commerce brands need brand advocates who share their experiences and help attract new customers through word-of-mouth. Since you have prioritised their satisfaction and fostered a long relationship, they are ready to provide their testimonials through social media endorsements or word of mouth.

Mapping the Ecommerce Customer Journey

Businesses can develop their e-commerce journey maps according to their unique needs and circumstances. An ideal map shows the different steps your customer goes through. It is comprehensive enough to help you plan how you would improve each customer touch point.

It clearly reflects where they are in the buying process, their goals, and how they interact with your e-commerce store at various stages.

You should have answers to the following questions for every stage:

· What is the customer feeling or thinking at this stage?

· What should be the ideal customer action at this stage?

· How can we move the customer to the next stage?

· What is the customer researching at this stage?

· Where is the customer researching at this stage?

How to Measure the Success of E-commerce Customer Journey?

There must be a way to assess the customer experience. Otherwise, how can businesses make improvements if they do not know where and how much they are lacking?

The step-by-step process goes like this: You define the key metrics, collect the data, analyse customer behaviour at every stage of the customer journey (previous section), and identify the pain points. In the light of pain points, you can develop new strategies.

Define Key Metrics

Key metrics to help fulfil this need are essential for businesses to assess their customer's overall experience and satisfaction with the product or service. Also, Key Metrics help businesses understand the customers' perceptions, behaviours, and preferences in detail.

1. Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score

This essential metric measures the level of customer satisfaction with the product, service, and overall experience. Graphics

2. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

NPS tells how loyal customers are towards a brand, product, or service.

3. Customer Effort Score (CES)

CES measures how easy customers find to interact and engage with your brand, product, or service.

4. Conversion Rate

As the name also implies, it tells the number of customers who move down to the sales funnel and place an order.

5. Customer Churn Rate

The customer churn rate is the percentage of customers who have stopped interacting, engaging, and using your brand, product, or service.

6. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

CLV is the total net profit a business generates from an individual customer throughout their lifetime or relationship with the company.

7. Bounce Rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate means there is room for improvement in the landing pages or website. A low bounce rate shows you have done it well.

8. Average Order Value

The average amount of money customers spend on a single order is AOV. You divide the total revenue by the number of orders to get it.

9. Cart Abandonment Rate

The name of this metric is intuitive. It measures the percentage of users who add items to their shopping cart but do not complete the purchase. Here is how you get it. Divide the number of abandoned carts by the total number of initiated checkouts and multiply by 100.

Collect the Data

You also need to collect data to measure the key metrics. When you get the key metrics, you can measure the performance.

Here are two tools that can help you gather customer data.

· Web Analytics Tools: These tools, like Google Analytics, give you quantitative data about user behaviour on your website.

· Ecommerce Platforms: If you use a good e-commerce platform in the UK, you get data like data on product performance, sales trends, cart abandonment rates, and customer profiles.

Developing the best e-commerce customer journey requires the identification of pain points. Pain point identification needs rigorous data collection. So, optimising e-commerce customer journeys is impossible without data collection.

The data should be comprehensive enough to help you know the following things about users:

· Are they the first-time visitor or returning customers?

· Which products do they view?

· How long do they stay on every page?

· Which pages do they visit?

· What are their navigation paths?

· Which pages do they exit from?

· Which devices (Mobile, tablet, desktop) do they use to view your products?

· What is their geographical location?

Tips for Monitoring and Improving the Customer Journey

Here are some tips to help make the process simple for you.

1.Employee Training

Training your employees is also crucial. Ensure your employees have first-hand knowledge of strategies you have developed to optimize the customer journey. Here are two more things you can do.

Develop Customer-Centric Culture

Try to build a customer-centric culture. The customer must be the centre of all your efforts. Hence, you can develop good strategies that create positive customer experiences. Value addition for customers has to be the core value of a business, and everyone must know it well about it.

Empower Frontline Staff

Frontline staff is even more important. Their decisions can influence the customer journey. So, provide them with resources, information, training, and tools.

2.Gather Customer Feedback

You can use customer surveys, online reviews, social media comments, or customer support interactions. Listen to their complaints and concerns carefully.

Analyse Feedback & Implement

Try to figure out the most common complaints and develop a strategy to address them immediately. Change what needs to be changed and replace what needs to be replaced as soon as possible.

Best Tools to Optimise Customer Journey

Several tools can help you get a deeper insight into customer behaviour and map the journey. Here are the two most useful tools:

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is extremely helpful, too. You gain insight into unique page views, the average time people spend on each page, bounce rates, exit rates, and even how customers use your site's 'search' bar.

Heat Maps

Heatmaps are an excellent tool to tell you a lot about your user. Heat Maps covers everything from what users do on your website pages and where they click to how far they scroll and what they see or ignore.

It graphically shows the areas of a web page where users pay more attention.

Conclusion

The e-commerce customer journey is an intricate process. Interestingly, it is not the same for every business. New businesses may need some time to figure out how it would work for them.

However, if they understand all stages of the journey well, consistently measure their performance through key metrics and data collection, and use a good e-commerce platform, they will soon have success.

WoWcommerce is one of the reliable e-commerce solutions that can help you stand out in the competitive market. It has many niche-specific versions, beautifully designed templates, impressive front-end functionalities, and amazing back-end capabilities.