What is Customer Journey?
Before learning more about the customer journey map, let’s first understand what the customer journey actually is.- Impressions – The first stage of the buyer life cycle begins when a customer comes across your brand. They might receive a referral from a friend, click on a Google shopping ad, or see an ad in their social media feed
- Acquisition – In the second stage, potential customers are actively interacting with your online store. They might visit a service/product page or save an item for later, for example
- Conversion – A customer enters a conversion stage when they make a purchase. This stage is included when mapping for first-time purchases, but it is also related to inactive or returning customers
- Loyalty – The loyalty stage is relevant for existing customers that are actively making repeat purchases
- Advocacy – A customer enters the stage of advocacy, they become an “evangelist” for your brand
Customer Journey Map
A customer journey map is a visual representation of customer experience with your online store. It includes detailed journey sequences in which these experiences occur. An e-commerce customer journey may consist of start-to-finish experiences, or they might include one-off interactions with your brand that don’t go any further. The important thing to keep in mind is that a customer journey map holds the detail of all possible types of experiences, big and small, from the perspective of the customer. It is an important piece of insight in your eCommerce toolkit because it helps you improve your customer experience, and ultimately boost conversion rate and sales. A customer journey map allows you to see through the eyes of your customers and customize content and optimize the way it’s delivered. Please keep in mind that individual customer journeys can be hugely diverse. There are many checkpoints or touchpoints, all the way from impression to purchase, through which customers can communicate with your store and brand. And because customer journey maps need to include all of these checkpoints, they can be very complex documents. Customer journey mapping is all about businesses stepping into their customers’ shoes and noting down all the possible experiences they might have. The first step in creating a customer journey map is to build detailed profiles, accounting for customers’ pain-points, goals, and objections. Once you are through with this, you can map out all of your brand’s checkpoints and connect them to different stages of the overall customer journey.Benefits of a Customer Journey Map - How Does It Contribute To Boost Conversions?
Here’s why customer journey mapping is important for your business:- Highlights what customers need and when they need it
- Shows how your value proposition matches the customer experience
- Clarifies customer needs
- Highlights limitations in your customer journey
- Clarifies optimization and development
- Enables you to target resources for maximum returns
I’d say that focusing on the customer journey in regards to company websites is important in general – not only for online stores. Sure, in the case of e-commerce it will result in better sales, but guiding the user through the desired path on the company websites will also contribute to more leads – then, closed deals.