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In the world of ecommerce, customers have greater power now than ever before. Consumers have an incredible amount of information at their fingertips and are able to compare products and services easily. But it can be hard for brands to know exactly what their customers are thinking or why they’re doing what they’re doing online (like making purchases vs leaving items in their carts).
Your website is often the first experience a customer has with your brand. How can you differentiate yourself from your competition? How can you entice customers who visit your site to not only stay, but also buy? This is key!
What is a Customer Journey Map?
A customer’s journey encompasses all of the little touchpoints beginning when they are aware of a need and then ultimately ending when they make a purchase decision. Mapping this journey gives you a visual representation of the experience that a customer will have with your company – from your service and product offerings, to customer communications & marketing, to the flow of traffic on your website. It’s a way that your businesses can better understand your customer’s needs and can allow you to identify opportunities to improve their experience with your brand.
Customer journey maps can include a variety of elements, including customer goals, touchpoints with your company, the customers’ emotions and satisfaction level at each touchpoint (especially pain points), and your customer retention rate. These maps can be used in any industry – B2B and B2C – to help strengthen your brand.
How To Create a Customer Journey Map
Creating an effective customer journey map first involves understanding your customers’ needs, wants, and behaviors. Several critical aspects should be considered when constructing a customer journey map:
- Start with data – Gather customer data through surveys, interviews, or website/app behavior tracking. These real-time answers and stats will show you exactly how your customers are behaving.
- Identify different stages of the customer journey – This describes what phase the customer is in, such as awareness, consideration, or conversion. Each phase requires different touchpoints and messaging to prompt engagement.
- Map out touchpoints – These can include website visits, social media interactions, emails, phone calls, brochures, or in-store visits.
- Recognize moments of truth – A moment of truth is a marketing term for any opportunity a customer (or prospect) has to form an impression about a company, brand, product, or service. These are pivotal instances that determine customer loyalty.
- Develop strategies to improve the customer experience – Identify areas for improvement like enhancing your website’s usability and streamlining customer service procedures.
To enhance the customer experience, it is crucial to design a practical customer journey map. By recognizing the various stages of the customer journey and the pivotal moments of truth, you can formulate techniques to improve the customer experience and cultivate customer loyalty. Here are some other suggestions for creating efficient customer journey maps:
- Prioritize the customer – When creating a customer journey map, focus on understanding their perspectives and meeting their needs.
- Use visuals – A customer journey map should be visually appealing, with icons and symbols representing various stages and touchpoints.
- Collaborate – Involve individuals from different departments, including marketing, sales, and customer service, for a comprehensive perspective.
- Be flexible – Customer needs and wants are subject to change, so your customer journey map should be adaptable to those changes.
Next Steps: Using Customer Data to Improve
Enhancing the customer experience can be crucial to the success of your business. Use the information you’ve gathered to improve your messaging, sales techniques, customer service, and more. And revisit the customer journey map every time you launch a new product or service.
If you’re looking at doing some journey mapping, reach out to us today – we would be happy to discuss how to get this started and the tools and strategies you need to succeed.
