Your website is as much a means of navigating your brand as it is a resource and point of sale for your visitors. Visitors engage your business along multiple online touch-points, from an advertisement, to the landing page, to the ‘about’ page. All the while, they build an idea of who you are, what you offer, and what makes you the best choice for them. These are all part of their journey, the customer journey.
The customer journey encompasses every touch-point that a customer has with a business, from initial discovery through post-purchase engagement. By breaking down the customer journey into manageable stages, you can identify areas to focus on as you plan your new website or web redesign. We’ll explore the techniques you can use to visualize the customer journey. Once completed, you can begin to identify opportunities for form a seamless and positive experience through all your marketing channels.
What We'll Cover
Recap: What is a customer journey?
The customer journey starts when someone finds your business and ends with a purchase. It also encompasses all interactions and experiences along the way. This concept brings together branding, functionality, and trust over time. It can be a few minutes on website, to a few months across multiple marketing channels. By understanding and optimizing each stage of the customer journey, you can create a cohesive and engaging experience that not only attracts but also retains customers.
Stages of the journey
Breaking down the customer journey into manageable stages can help you identify opportunities to improve the customer experience. A better experience ultimately increases sales. Here is a basic process that a business can use to break down the customer journey from discovery through purchase:
Stage 1: Discovery
When a potential customer first becomes aware of your business. It might involve a referral, online search, or social media post. This initial encounter is crucial as it sets the tone for their perception of your brand. At this stage, it’s important to make a strong first impression by providing relevant information about your business and establishing trust.
Providing a seamless and informative experience right from the start can significantly influence their decision to engage further with your brand. Whether they spend a few minutes on your website or follow your social media channels, the goal is to create a positive and lasting impression that encourages them to move forward in their customer journey.
Stage 2: Consideration
The customer is evaluating their options and deciding whether to make a purchase. It’s important to provide clear information about your products or services. Readily offer helpful descriptions, specifications, and address any concerns or objections that the customer might have.
Providing detailed descriptions and specifications helps customers understand the benefits and features of what you offer. This information should be easily accessible and presented in a way that highlights the unique value of your products or services. Additionally, addressing any potential concerns or objections proactively can make a significant difference. This might involve offering FAQs, live chat support, or detailed product guides that answer common questions.
Stage 3: Purchase
This step can be broken into smaller steps necessary to make a purchase. It’s important to make the purchase process as easy and seamless as possible. Provide clear pricing information, payment options, and shipping or delivery information.
Providing clear and transparent pricing information is the first step. Customers should be able to see the cost of the product or service without any hidden fees or surprises. This transparency builds trust and helps customers feel more confident in their decision to purchase.
Next, offering a variety of payment options can cater to different customer preferences and needs. Whether it’s credit cards, digital wallets, or other payment methods, having multiple options available makes the process more convenient for the customer.
Additionally, clear information about shipping or delivery is essential. Customers need to know how long it will take for their purchase to arrive and what the shipping costs will be. Providing tracking information and updates can further enhance their experience and reduce any anxiety about the delivery process.
Not every business has purchases as their metric for a conversion. Many of our customers offer services where success is a message requesting consultation. Some customers also prefer to have a purchase initiated via email or over the phone. If this sounds like you, ensure you include on your website how long to expect a response or confirmation.
Stage 4: Post-purchase
Opportunities to engage with the customer can go well beyond a purchase. This includes addressing any issues or concerns. Addressing any issues or concerns promptly and effectively is crucial. Providing excellent customer service can turn a potentially negative experience into a positive one, reinforcing trust and satisfaction.
The post-purchase journey can also involve encouraging repeat business through loyalty programs or incentives. Offering rewards, discounts, or exclusive deals to returning customers can make them feel valued and appreciated, increasing the likelihood of future purchases.
Breaking down the customer journey into these four stages can help a further break down a plan for each stage, from optimizing the website for search engines to improving the checkout process. By providing a positive customer experience at each stage, you can build customer loyalty and increase sales over time.
Planning for Discovery
Identifying the first step in the customer journey is crucial. It sets the tone for the rest of the journey. Customers can discover you in a variety of ways. Here are some common ways:
- Referrals: Word-of-mouth referrals from friends, family members, or colleagues.
- Online search: Customers might search for a specific product or service or browse for recommendations in the local area.
- Social media: Social media platforms can be a great way for customers to discover new businesses through ads, recommendations from friends, or by following businesses that align with their interests.
- Advertising: Businesses can use targeted advertising through search engines, social media, or display (print) ads to reach potential customers.
- Events: Attending local events, trade shows, or community gatherings can also be a way for find and engage potential customers.
Overall, there are many ways that customers might first discover a business. There is no one size fits all approach to discovery, and varies considerable by industry how much effort is put into each way.
Planning for Consideration
The customer consideration step is where a potential customer is evaluating their options and deciding whether to make a purchase. Clarity is key at this stage. To ace this step is to understand your customer:
- What would you expect a potential customer to already know or not know?
- What should a potential customer know to make an informed decision?
- Where should you share this information on your website? For example, product pages provide information close to the point of purchase. Comparison tables for tiered service plans are another example.
Providing detailed information, high-quality and optimized visuals, and social proof (reviews, awards, certifications, testimonials) can all help to build trust and confidence. After all, you can solve their problem. In this stage you need to explain how.
Are customers not moving past this stage? Do you have high bounce rates on your website? You may want to revisit how you’re approaching this specific step before exploring the others.
Planning for Purchase
The website can play an important role in making the purchase process as easy and seamless as possible for the customer, even if the ‘purchase’ happens on another site or involves a consultation. Regardless if you sell products, your time, labor, or expertise (or a combination of these), there are some guiding principles to consider:
- Provide clear information and instructions. Make sure to provide clear information and instructions for customers on how to schedule a consultation or appointment. This might include providing a phone number or email address to contact, or offering an online scheduling tool.
- Offer multiple ways to transact. Whether multiple payment options, scheduling options, or other means to move forward.
- Convey confirmation. A thank you message, email or text message, or other means of assuring the transaction was successful.
In short, simplifying the checkout process, offering multiple payment or consultation options, ensuring security and trust, providing clear shipping and delivery information, and offering post-purchase support are all critical components of optimizing the purchasing step.
Planning for Post-Purchase
Finally, here are some things that you can do on you website to optimize the post-purchase step:
- Follow-up: Offering shipping information for products, as well as feedback for products and services. Loyalty programs communicated around the time of purchase (or related discounts) can help encourage later sales.
- Provide support and assistance: Make sure to provide support and assistance to customers after they complete their purchase. This can be a contact form, an FAQ, a resource page, or a chat bot to answer questions and provide assistance.
- Encourage reviews and feedback: Reviews and feedback can be incredibly valuable. They help to build trust and provide social proof to other potential customers. Encourage customers to leave reviews or feedback, and consider offering incentives or rewards for doing so.
- The next purchase: How will you encourage a future purchase? Will you have a newsletter to advertise future offers? Is your product or service a good candidate to offer as a subscription?
By optimizing the post-purchase step on the website, you can continue to engage with customers and build a positive relationship, which can lead to increased loyalty and repeat business. Sending order confirmation and shipment notifications, providing support and assistance, encouraging reviews and feedback, offering post-purchase promotions, and providing relevant and personalized recommendations are all critical components of optimizing the post-purchase step.
Putting it all together
Start by creating a visual representation of each step that a customer goes through when interacting with your business. The map typically includes touch-points, emotions, and pain points, and flows like a storyboard. This helps to identify initial opportunities for improvement. Next, focus on the website specifically with a user diagram. These show the steps someone takes to complete a task on your website. They help to identify areas where users might get confused or frustrated and can be used to optimize the user experience. Analytics tools can be used on your current site to do this for you. Finally, it’s important to gather qualitative feedback from customers at each step. This can be done through surveys, interviews, or online reviews (collectively retrospectives). This feedback can then be organized to identify areas for improvement that were not apparent earlier, and provide additional opportunities to delight customers.
