Almost every seller's core concern is how to understand the ecommerce customer journey. As a solution, most sellers use different types of analytical tools to perceive the customers' intentions. In short, the ecommerce customer journey is a psychological game that uncovers the story of every purchase.
Providing the best customer experience is one of my primary targets while starting a business. Thus, it is better to be aware of the common and typical ecommerce customer journey map, before entering the ecommerce industry. Learning about eCommerce customer journeys helps track purchasing strategies and build customer engagement.
Honestly, it's very challenging to trace the customer journey, especially when it is an online business. It's very difficult to say the ecommerce customer journey is a linear graph (straight and moving upward). Because the whole journey consists of interacting and making micro-decisions at every different stage.
There Are 5 Stages Of Ecommerce Customer Journey:
Thus, in this blog, I will discuss all the aspects of the ecommerce customer journey, showcase how you can draw an ecommerce customer journey map template and many more.
In simple words, the ecommerce customer journey coveys all the steps & actions a potential customer experiences while using or interacting on an ecommerce website. This customer journey of ecommerce begins when a customer initially becomes aware of the product and ends when makes the final purchase. When a customer begins the journey and crosses the stages, it is called a customer touchpoint. Then, as this process flows, an e-commerce owner collects & uses those data to improve various aspects of the website.
Through ecommerce customer journeys, online business owners can analyse the customers' strategies, and psychologies, which are later utilised to build engagement and drive conversion.
Most ecommerce business entrepreneurs consider ecommerce customer experience metrics the only method for tracking & measuring customer satisfaction and boosting business success.
Ecommerce customer journey is a series of five stages that completely define how customers behave, choose, react, and interact while visiting an ecommerce platform.
5 Stages Of Ecommerce Customer Journey
Discovery |
A customer just became aware, learned, or heard about the product. |
Interest |
When a customer’s desire matches with my product, hence show interest & search for more information. |
Intent |
Scroll the page & add the item to the wishlist/shopping cart, but do not make any purchase decision. |
Purchase |
When a customer makes the purchase decision and converts into a consumer. |
Engagement |
Become a loyal customer, make repeat purchases, engage on social pages. |
5 Steps Of Ecommerce Customer Journey To Grow Your Business (Details Description)
Understanding the e-commerce customer journey is not just a basic concept, but a crucial one. It encompasses the entire journey and the customer's experience during the buying process, which can have a profound impact on your business strategy and customer loyalty.
As an e-commerce entrepreneur, you're not just selling products, but also understanding the psychology of customer buying and retention. This insight is a potent tool that can empower you to craft a winning e-commerce strategy and nurture customer loyalty.
It's a common misconception among entrepreneurs that affiliating their products with multiple ecommerce stores will automatically lead to increased sales and reach. However, this approach can often complicate the understanding of the customer journey. If you've found yourself in this type of confusing situation, you're not alone. Many e-commerce entrepreneurs face this challenge, but understanding the type of channel your customers are using can help you navigate this complexity.
Below, I break down all five parts of the e-commerce customer journey, and each stage is crucial to understanding the potential customer's needs and wants.
Awareness is the first step of the e-commerce customer journey. This is the stage when prospects discover, are introduced to, or learn about the brand/product's existence in the market.
It doesn't matter what source they became aware of the product/brand; it could be a search engine, influencer, paid ad, traditional media, word of mouth, social media, or any recommendation.
Through this stage, an eCommerce owner positions themselves in the customer's mind. It's like feeding the customer about your product or brand, forcing the customer to take steps to search for your product themselves.
Strategies To Spread Awareness:
Key Takeaway:
Since the prospect is now aware of the product, this stage will only continue if the desired product needs to match the niche. In this stage, the prospects will start to show interest beyond just being aware. Prospects will feel interested in searching for the products or websites.
At this stage, the prospect perceives the product as a potential solution to their problem. They begin to explore various aspects of the product, such as its description, price, features, delivery time, and even competitors' prices. This stage also contributes to building a sense of trust in the prospect's mind.
Strategies To Create Consideration:
Key Takeaways
This is a very crucial stage of the ecommerce customer journey because, in this stage, prospects make the final decision to purchase. Soon after a prospect makes the final purchase decision, they become the consumer and leave a probability of coming back again.
This stage only considers those perspectives as final consumers who actually made the purchase decision. Visitors who have added products to the cart or wishlist but didn't make any purchases won't be considered final consumers.
Strategies To Push Customers To Take Final Decision:
Key Takeaways:
One of the common mistakes most eCommerce owners make is considering the final purchase to be the last stage of an ecommerce customer journey. Unfortunately, it's a huge mistake not to stay connected with the converted customers.
This customer retention process starts after the final purchase decision, ecommerce owners can stay connected through personalized email, keep them as subscribers on social media, get involved in different loyalty programs and many more.
Ecommerce owners always need to work on maintaining a balanced relationship with customers. As a result, they come back again and become your repeat customers.
Strategies To Retain Customers:
Key Takeaway
This stage is closely related to the retention stage. These stages consist of customers who are retained and become loyal and repeat customers. These loyal customers will play a major role in your e-commerce, such as becoming brand ambassadors and spreading positive word of mouth and influencers. And the best part is they do all this marketing without any payment and on their own.
It's important to remember that not all customers are meant to be satisfied with your service or come back. Each customer is unique, with their own preferences and needs. By understanding this, you can better tailor your strategies to cater to different customer segments, thereby increasing your chances of retaining loyal customers.
Strategies To Maintain Advocacy:
Key Takeaway
All these five stages assist an e-commerce store in personalizing its strategies to fulfill the needs and wants of customers. Besides, it helps to filter the customer, find the target audience, and improve the lackings in your website UX/UI. Customer journey ecommerce is the only remedy to make the customer journey satisfying, collect the leads, and lifetime brand loyalty.
In this section, you'll get a basic knowledge for sketching an ecommerce customer journey.
Before starting any e-commerce store, it's wise to determine which types of customers you are going to target. Map out buyer persona details such as demographics, purchase history, locations, etc. Analyze competitors' customer bases to predict the generic needs and wants of the customer. Moreover, be alert for the upcoming challenges an e-commerce owner might face when the customer journey starts.
From the awareness stage(the first stage), e-commerce owners need to be alert throughout the customer journey to identify and filter the ideal customers.
Soon after the ecommerce customer journey starts, owners have to be aware of the customers' interactions, behavior, and purchasing patterns to make their experience smooth.
2. Collect Customer Information
This step is all about analyzing all the interactions that occurred during the ecommerce customer journey. In this stage, an ecommerce owner will try to identify the reason behind the following:
You might be wondering how you'll collect the data to analyze the intentions. Here are some ways to collect the primary data
Customer touchpoints are a situation of interactions where customers come into contact with your eCommerce store throughout their journey. Identifying those customer touchpoints is crucial because it helps to understand how their actions or behaviors revolve at different stages of the e-commerce customer journey.
Type Of Customer Touchpoints
Here are some tips for managing customer touchpoints, which, if followed EFFECTIVELY, achieve success
Indeed, recording the customers' journey has various advantages, from improving the website's performance to personalizing the customer experience. E-commerce sites utilizing image resizer achieve faster page loads and improved user engagement across their product galleries.
As this ecommerce customer journey map continues its flow, it becomes more crucial to examine customers' steps. One of the instant steps an ecommerce monitor can take is to identify the customer's main interest and reduce the number of clicks for quick conversion.
Tips To Make The Customer Journey Successful
You've already identified the targeted customer and collected all the touchpoints from the ecommerce customer journey. Now, it's time to draw your ecommerce customer journey map.
An ecommerce customer journey map helps note every interaction with an online store. This map will make every touchpoint clear, especially "how the customer reacts," "actions," and "their purchase behavior."
We all know how customers' needs and demands always change depending on the latest trends. To keep up with the trend, every eCommerce owner needs to keep their website in a continuous evaluation of the ecommerce customer journey.
6. Plan Your Resources
Honestly, there isn’t any end to tracking the ecommerce customer journey. But if you can figure out a regular pattern of customer behavior and intersection, then I think you are good to go for planning your resources.
This is all about planning the resources that will help you to customize promotional campaigns and have a smooth customer experience.
Tips To Plan Your Resource For E-commerce Platform
Indeed, the ecommerce customer journey is an integral part of every type of e-commerce business. Unfortunately, most online store owners are unaware of its proper usage and importance.
Ecommerce customer journeys are the only way to get a closer observation of the customer's purchase behavior. As the whole journey is visual, this customer journey helps you shape the business strategy and leaves you with an understanding of the customers' demands, motivation, and depression points.
Here Are Pinpoints Reasons Behind Being Important:
Improving your ecommerce customer journey involves focusing on every step of the customer's interaction with your brand, from initial awareness to post-purchase support.
Here's How You Can Enhance Each Stage:
1. Improve Customer Delight:
2. Create Fear of missing out (FOMO) Chart:
3. Conduct Surveys:
4. Raise Your Social Proof:
5. Personalize Every Touch Point:
Time To Build Your Ecommerce Platform With
The e-commerce customer journey is a critical process for online business owners to understand. It encompasses every stage of the customer's interaction with your brand.
By prioritizing the enhancement of this journey, entrepreneurs can create a seamless and personalized experience that delights customers, drives conversions, and fosters long-term loyalty.
Ultimately, a well-crafted ecommerce customer journey enhances the overall customer experience and also contributes to business growth, differentiation, and sustained success in the competitive online marketplace.