If you have been running an eCommerce business for any length of time, you know that understanding the customer journey is essential to making more sales!
However, understanding the eCommerce customer journey better is easier said than done.
eCommerce isn't like a typical retail business where you can physically see customers browsing the store. You need something to help you
- Visualize customer journey
- Get to the bottom of why online shoppers aren't converting into buyers, and
- Help you make the experience better
Follow along as I explain
- How to create a customer journey map
- How Fera can help you build trust along the customer journey!
The customer journey defined
When it comes to eCommerce, the customer journey is defined as the process or path a person takes to buy your product online. When you create a customer journey map, you are effectively creating a visual representation of that process.
Creating a customer journey map
To create a useful customer journey map, you will need a few things:
1. Customer Persona
Think of your customer persona as a semi-fictional representation of one of your ideal buyers. Typically, this representation of based on past customers, research, and web analytics. When making your customer persona, make sure you cover a couple of things
- Their mindset - the questions they have about your product, the problems they are facing, and the information that they have or don't have to make the right decision.
- Their emotions - are they feeling anxious to find a solution to their problem, looking to feel better about themselves, or sad about an event in their life that your product can fix?
This 'emotional' aspect of the customer persona can also tell you if they're frustrated or delighted with your or your business and how they should be feeling depending on the point of the journey they are on.
Having a customer persona makes mapping the touchpoints and goals on your customer journey easier!
2. Touchpoints
The next thing you will need to create a customer journey map is your customers' touchpoints on the path to buying your product. The more information here, the better, but don't get too bogged down about every touchpoint your customer may encounter.
Cover the most important ones like
- Your website
- Social media
- Customer service
- Packing upon delivery
3. Goals
Your customers may have different goals depending on your product offerings.
For example, your ideal client may be a socially conscious woman in her late 40s looking for a new beauty routine and makeup routine. She will have different goals, such as researching the best beauty products for her type of skin or the right kind of eye shadow for her skin tone.
The journey for skincare and make up will be different for her!
A specific example
Typically the customer journey covers these broad steps.
Your customer
- Discovers that they have a problem (they want to look fabulous for the summer)
- Researches their problem
- Googles: 'cute dresses for the summer' or 'where do find sustainably made sundresses in Los Angles'
- Heads over to Instagram to check out what their favorite influencers are wearing
- Sees an ad online with your product
- Purchases a product (hopefully yours) that checks all their boxes
- Gets their dress delivered (expects a shipped notification and it to be packaged well)
- Interacts with your brand after the fact (with a review or a mention on social media)
As you can see, the customer journey can start with an organic search, word of mouth, or paid advertising, but as you get further along the journey, the shopping journey and the order journey are where you will want to make the best optimizations.
Build trust along the customer journey
There are many conversion rate optimizations that you can implement depending on your customers' behavior, but building trust with social proof is one of the best ways to turn your shoppers into buyers.
But don't take my word for it! 20,000 + online stores have found that the best way to improve the customer journey is to build trust along the way, and they use Fera to do that!
Some of the best ways to build trust are to add things like
- Customer photos walls
- Testimonials
- Free shipping
- A good about us page
- Solid shipping & return policy
Final Word
If you want to make more sales, you need to understand the customer journey. By understanding what your customers want and need, you can give them a better experience and encourage them to buy from you again in the future.
