Loading...Setting up an online store - what to start with?
So what does this scenario look like in the online world? What are the beginnings of an online store? How to improve your conversion rate and encourage customers to shop online? The SEO process, more attractive prices than the ones offered by your market rivals, SEO-friendly product descriptions, and a wide product range may not be enough. A customer journey map is a key to success. So how can the customer journey map for e-commerce help you understand the needs and purchase path of users?Online store - statistics
The market and competition are pretty sizable. However, it turns out that only ⅓ of all the businesses survive more than 8 years. So what can you do to guarantee the high effectiveness of your business? First of all, ensure the proper customer experience.
Customer experience - what is it?
CX, meaning customer experience, indicates all users’ emotional and physical experiences, interactions, and touchpoints related to your products or services. Marketers and salespersons have been paying special attention to CX for years. After all, it greatly affects customer loyalty and it’s a factor deciding whether people are going to visit a given store again. In today’s e-commerce industry, conscious and thoughtful Customer Experience Management (CEM) that focuses mainly on the user is a standard. In the "State Of Marketing” report, Salesforce states that as many as 70% of companies take care of their customer experience. What about you?Customer experience - what to start with?
As in the case of every marketing and sales activity, start with defining and clarifying your target group and user persona as clearly as possible. The more thorough and precise information you gather for your analysis, the better. Social media data concerning your followers (Facebook Audience Insights), professional analytical tools (e.g. Google Analytics and Google Search Console), company reviews (published on your Google My Business or Facebook profile), competitor analysis, industry reports and surveys, your own observations and interviews will certainly be helpful in this process. [caption id="attachment_38319" align="aligncenter" width="750"]
A Google Analytics report can help you create your e-commerce customer journey map. To be more precise, we’re talking about the “behavior flow” report in the “behavior” tab.[/caption]
Goals, problems, needs, and desires - that's everything you need to determine your user persona. Ready? Now let's get down to the customer experience map.
Customer journey map - what is it?
The customer journey map, a tool also known as a customer experience map or a user journey map, is supposed to use a timeline or a table to visualize all offline/online interactions of a selected user persona and their entire purchase process from the very moment they entered your website to the moment they received the product. It’s worth complementing it with service design. Remember - less is more. The experience map is a recipe for astonishing your customers. It’s important to make sure that all your employees understand the magic ingredients of this simple recipe.User journey map for employees
After all the brainstorming and visualization of the purchase path, share everything with your employees. After all, each of them can help make everything go smoothly and according to the plan. Shared goals and standards presented on the experience map can motivate your whole team to take appropriate action. A customer journey map for everyone? Yes, please. Everything noted? So let’s get down to work!How to add customer experience and customer journey activities to a customer journey map?
1. Gather a team of internal experts from different departments (e.g. new business managers, customer service specialists, HR specialists, or marketers). Brainstorming and different perspectives are worth their weight in gold. 2. Start with desk research meaning data analysis. How does it work at this point? Identify a starting point to determine where you're going as a company and map out what the ideal customer journey map would look like. 3. Together with the team, analyze your customers’ journey and first touchpoints that lead them to your online store. 4. Specify all the points of contact between the customer and the brand (e.g. offline advertising, newsletters, specific social media channels), name them, determine what emotions and experiences are associated with them. Remember about the ROBO effect (research online, buy offline and the other way round, research offline, buy online). [caption id="attachment_38321" align="aligncenter" width="750"]
There are many points of contact with a brand. What is more, the influence of these points on the customer's purchase decision changes when different communication channels are crossed. Sometimes it happens that before finding an online store, a customer encounters a newsletter, a TV ad, and a social media post at the same time.[/caption]
5. For all points of contact with the brand, plan appropriate, individual content marketing and remarketing activities (if it's possible in a given case).
6. Determine the thoughts and actions of the customer related to a particular touchpoint. Think about increasing the impact of your brand at each point.
7. Imagine the painful moment when users abandon your shopping cart. Why would they do that? What can you do to encourage people to stay on your website or visit it in the future and finalize the transaction?
8. Describe the service blueprint in detail - indicate specific people responsible for the customer experience at each stage. Customer service, IT department or maybe sales department?
9. Plan tasks and assign them to specific employees of your company. Monitor implemented changes and progress related to improving customer satisfaction and experience.
10. Regularly come back to your customer journey map and benefit from subsequent brainstorming sessions or workshops to update it every few months. Revise previous incorrect assumptions by replacing them with ones that should work better.
Tools for designing the customer journey map
If you want to present your e-commerce customer journey map, you can conveniently benefit from tools like Paint (offline), Canva (online), or Diagrams.net.
UXPressia is one of the more professional tools that can help you create your own customer journey map, user personas, and maps depicting how your team members affect various stages of the purchase path.
However, if you’d like to approach the issue more socialistically, we’d recommend using apps like UXPressia.com, Xtensio.com, and StoriesOnBoard.
Customer Journey Map vs E-Commerce Sales
Customer experience analysis can definitely make you more mindful and aware. The customer journey map can help you notice numerous elements and problems of your online store that need to be solved or improved. This solution can significantly improve your customer satisfaction level thanks to which you’ll be able to develop your business.Why do I need a customer journey map?
- You’ll be able to collect all the customer data, information concerning users’ needs, problems, forms of interaction, and points of contact with your brand from various departments (HR, marketing, sales, customer service, etc.).
- You’ll look at your store and product range from a different perspective. Are you sure that everything works fine? Well, that solution is perfect for you.
- You’ll identify key problems, improve the UX and UI of your website in order to refine services and purchasing, shipping, or complaint systems.
- You’ll improve ROI for your e-commerce.
- You’ll explain the whole sales process to all your employees. With the use of proper incentives, you’ll be able to gather valuable feedback and loads of ideas that your business can benefit from.
Well, customer journey planning alone (without other activities) won’t do wonders for your conversion rate, but sure it helps! Also, it’s worth mentioning that the customer path may be different around the year, so it’s good to plan other scenarios or at least review how the current customer journey map is working and (if needed) update it 🙂