Are your online customers abandoning their shopping carts more often than not? Then, your customer journey map may need a little work.
If you’re unfamiliar with this term, the map gives you a visual representation of each customer’s journey with your business. Getting it right can transform your sales conversion rates, so use the six tips below to craft a foolproof customer journey map:
1. Make It Make Sense
When you create your map, you can use whatever you want to ensure the visuals make sense. Some people list everything – from the customer arriving on the website to the order reaching the e-commerce fulfillment company – on post-it notes and stick them on the wall. Other companies like to use smart technology to create their maps. The important thing is that everybody looking at the map and working on it understands what they see. Otherwise, it will seem irrelevant.
2. Include Touchpoints
Touchpoints in a customer journey map are moments where a customer can gain more of an opinion about your business. It can include physical interactions in-store, visiting your website, or reading reviews about your brand – there are many touchpoint varieties.
These touchpoints should be identified when you make your map so that you understand how customers can gain an opinion of you. Often, these are the same places you can leverage to improve your customer journey endlessly.
3. Gather Customer Feedback
Nearly half of businesses don’t actively listen to their customers. If you fall on the wrong side of this statistic, you’ll need to change that in order to make a foolproof customer journey map because customer feedback is essential. Surveys and reviews will help, and you can combine that with analytics that let you know more about customer behavior on your site.
4. Make a Plan
Only 21% of businesses start with a business plan. If that is you, you’ll need to change the way you do things because a customer journey map requires a business plan as its foundation.
Your customer journey map process needs to include the following:
- Clear goals for the map;
- Details about your target market and what they want from their customer journey;
- A list of touchpoints;
- Key elements of the customer journey;
- A plan covering what you have and what you need;
- Feedback from volunteers or professional website testers who have taken the customer journey.
From here, you can adjust and perfect your map until it hits all your goals.
5. Keep Emotions and Motivations in Mind
Approximately 94% of online shoppers say a business site has to be easy to navigate. This information is crucial for your journey map and should encourage you to find out where the pain points are and how to fix them.
The emotional drivers that cause people to leave the site or make a purchase are crucial to identify and understand. They will help you make the customer experience smoother overall.
6. Keep It a Work in Progress
Your customer journey map will take time to develop. However, during this time, technology will change, you will update your products, and customers will give you more feedback. Since your business will never stop evolving, your customer journey map must evolve too. It gives you the opportunity to grow and thrive as a business, so it should always be in the back of your mind as you improve your operations.
Are you ready to create an incredible customer journey map? Follow the tips above, and watch your customer experience go from strength to strength, hopefully resulting in better brand loyalty and increased sales.
