The pandemic has altered nearly everything we know about business, and no matter what comes next, the buyer’s path has probably changed forever. Don’t panic quite yet – when it comes to customer journey mapping, you likely don’t need to throw out your current navigational tools, but rather adjust them a bit.
Today’s consumer won’t abide by the spray and pray tactics of the past. Their desires are simple: provide me with the experiences I want and need conveniently within the confines of what makes me feel comfortable. They’re not only buying products, they’re buying a feeling.
Unfortunately, far too many brands view the consumer as no more than a dollar sign. According to a study Forrester, a one point improvement in the Forrester CX Index score will result in an average $185M in revenue.
Should brands focus on the experience instead? What’s a retailer to do?
Understanding the online customer journey
Yes, times have changed. Even pre-pandemic, online shopping was starting to eclipse brick and mortar when it came to purchasing, while more than half of all retail purchases in the US are influenced by digital ads, social communities, or the like.
In China, the statistics look very different, however, and they’re a good indicator of where Generation Z (those born after 1995) will take the US economy as they gain financial independence.
According to Statista, more than 50% of retail sales in China occur online, accounting for nearly 80% of all online purchases globally.
There is both good and bad news in these numbers for retailers in the US:
The Good News:
There’s still so much revenue potential in e-commerce that’s unrecognized.
The Bad News:
The e-commerce customer journey is challenging to map, with affinity and technology being the two primary drivers.
As online purchases grow, this will become even more difficult to map and understand.
Linear commerce is the ideal online brand acquisition strategy. This law is explained by 2PM as: “for the brands that are most suited to the modern retail economy, media and commerce operations combine to optimize for audience and conversion. This is the efficient path for sustained growth, retention, and profitability.”
The quicker a brand can move to being less reliant on an internal ecosystem, the higher their customer loyalty and lower their cost of acquisition. However, this requires something many legacy brands aren’t experts at doing: building true community and thinking outside of the brand box.
The buyer’s journey, perfected: How brands can gain net-new buyers years before a product launch
Beauty brand Glossier is a fantastic example of how to map the online customer journey.
Years before Glossier ever sold a product, they first launched a thought leadership and how-to site, Into The Gloss, building up a massive audience of readers who trusted the site and their recommendations.
Then – and only after they had this high trust and affinity – did Glossier launch with a product offering from the beloved site.
The point is that in the modern online era, you need first to have an audience’s attention and trust in order to launch something successfully. Of course, you can also use paid media in the early days to begin acquiring customers, but true audience and community building requires content – and a constant dialogue.
Many brands falsely assume that the online customer journey begins with a social media or paid search ad. No, the online customer journey begins with that customer’s group of friends and their recommendations. The law of linear commerce and the further to the right you get on that chart, the more likely it will be your brand they recommend.
Customer journey mapping: Understand, then act
Mapping the e-commerce customer journey is difficult – but a simple understanding can help you wrap your head around it as you plan your marketing activities.
Remember, it’s important that you build a community, then find your top 100 customers and raving fans, and give them a platform to sing your praises as you help them accomplish their goals.
Similar to the lessons in the popular How to Win Friends and Influence People, the secret is to build real relationships with people – and your customers and partners. You do that by listening to what they say, encouraging them in their own journey, helping them to achieve their goals, celebrating their milestones, and sitting with them in their grief.
The best e-commerce online communities do this incredibly well, including Glossier, Outdoor Voices, and AirBnB, for example.
There are three main types of stages in a buyer’s journey:
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Awareness
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Conversion
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Loyalty
The awareness stage
In this stage, the customer is just getting to know your brand, or researching what they need to know.
This is where community building plays an important role, as word of mouth recommendations continue to be the biggest driver of sales for any online brand.
The conversion stage
At this stage, your site’s customer experience matters – a lot. Once the customer has converted from an online community to your retail/commerce site to make a purchase, you need to make it incredibly easy for them to do so.
Use various payment tools and options including Apple Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, etc. Also, do what you can to minimize the number of clicks it takes to purchase.
The loyalty stage
Every piece of your customer journey mapping comes into play once you reach the loyalty stage, including:
- Maintaining an online community
- Packaging and delivery
- Follow-up emails
- Customer service
- The entire customer experience of your brand, across every single touch point
This customer has now given you their money. If you ever want more of it, or for them to recommend to others, you need to impress them from here on out with fast shipping, great packaging, excellent and accessible customer service (including via social media), relevant emails, and more.
The benefits of customer journey mapping
When you begin to consider everything that goes into mapping the customer journey, you might become overwhelmed and wonder if it’s worth it.
It is.
Understanding each phase of the real buyer’s journey gives you an excellent idea of current customer touch points – including what’s working, what’s not working, and what you need to re-configure to attain long-term success.
- Improve your marketing strategy: By focusing on what’s appealing to customers (and potential customers), you can double-down on the kind of content that will draw consumers in, and keep them there, rather than spending vast sums of money on outbound marketing.
- Deliver better customer service: Understanding friction points in the customer journey allows you to proactively engage buyers and direct them to the best avenues for support, like chatbots, knowledge base, email, social, or a direct line.
- Boost customer retention and loyalty: As noted at the beginning of this post, as soon as you improve the customer experience, you improve brand loyalty, which improves bottom lines, which improves…yes, this topic is a flat circle.
No matter what else changes in business, digital is here to stay. Understanding and honing the customer journey will be crucial the the success of any organization from here on out.
