How You Can Create an Effective Customer Journey Map

Digital marketing experts working around a table with a giant search bar at its center.

If you own an online retail store, you’ve probably noticed several customers who spend a significant amount of time browsing through your selection and adding products to the cart, but never take the final step and make a purchase. Instead, they just close the tab and leave.

You might be wondering how you can encourage these customers to move to the next stage and buy something. To discover the answer, you need to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and understand their thought process. Though this might sound almost impossible, there is a way to better understand your target audience—customer journey maps!

The customer journey map offers you insight into why consumers choose a particular brand and what makes them tick—knowledge you can leverage to optimize your marketing customer service systems to meet their needs at every stage of the customer journey and win over their trust and loyalty.

The modern customer acquisition process has four stages—awareness, consideration, decision, and retention. Remember, the buyer’s life cycle ends with the sale, so it also involves fostering a strong relationship with customers that lasts way beyond the initial purchase, not only making sure they keep coming back for more, but also ensuring they become loyal brand advocates.

In previous blogs, we’ve discussed the components of customer journey maps and how they can improve the customer experience. Here, we will look at how brands can create comprehensive customer journey maps and improve their conversion rates.

 

5 Steps to Creating Comprehensive Customer Journey Maps

Create Buyer Personas

In a nutshell, buyer personas are profiles that define specific segments within your target market. Without them, you can end up marketing to people who aren’t interested in your products or, worse, fail to reach interested prospects.

Before you start developing your buyer personas, remember that you require more than just one buyer persona as different people from various demographics and at different stages of the customer journey will interact with your brand in their unique way. So, each buyer persona you come up with will have their own unique customer journey.

For example, someone who is just researching car models will engage with your brand in a way that is different from someone who knows exactly what they want. It will be in your best interest to distinguish the customer journey for these different personas so you personalize your marketing strategy to target their specific pain points. This will also help improve your processes and train your staff to better serve the needs of various target segments.

Understand Your Buyer’s Goals and Pain Points

Once you’ve decided on your target buyer personas, it’s time to put in the research to understand what each of them want to achieve as they go through the customer journey. Try to find out what the ultimate goals of consumers at each stage are—so you can take the necessary steps to help them fulfill their goals.

The easiest way to understand your customers is to ask them. You can:

  • Request customers to fill in feedback forms.
  • Conduct surveys for different customer groups.
  • Analyze customer support emails or transcripts to see if there are any common complaints or queries.
  • Identify the most frequently asked questions by consumers at different stages.

Compile all the data you have to figure out what customers expect from your brand at different stages of the buyer’s journey. This will also give you an idea of any issues they may have with your brand and help you find out what’s stopping your customers from making a purchase—allowing you to do what’s needed to fix the problems.

 

Identify Possible Buyer Touchpoints

Digital marketing experts working around a table with a giant search bar at its center.

Touchpoints refer to the variety of ways in which customers come into contact with your brand—before, during, and after they make a purchase with you. Every touchpoint is important to nudge the consumer to the next stage.

The majority of buyers begin their customer journey at search engines. In fact, 82% of all smartphone users conduct “near me” searches. So, you need to optimize your website for local SEO to show up on the first page of search results—or risk losing customers to the competition.

Reviews are also a powerful touchpoint that has potential to generate significant buyer interest in your brand. When 91% of people between the ages of 18 and 35 rely on online reviews as much as personal recommendations, it’s vital that you focus on leveling up your reputation management strategy.

Social media is another powerful tool brands cannot ignore since most consumers turn to the internet to do research before choosing a product. Informative and engaging social media posts, blogs, tutorial videos, and more are a great way to reach potential prospects. This also has the added benefit of establishing you as an industry expert and enhancing your brand credibility.

Your website is your most important touchpoint, especially if you run an online retail store. If customers have a poor experience on your website, they will not come back to do business with you. So, make sure your website is fast, relevant, and easy to navigate.

Don’t let your relationship with a customer fizzle away after they’ve made a purchase. Send thank you messages post-purchase, email updates about new products or request them to fill in your feedback form. This will ensure that you stay in their mind even after they’ve bought something from your store.

 

Create Detailed Graphs

Your graphs must include both analytical and anecdotal research data. It should highlight when customers stop interacting or get frustrated, so your team can adjust its approach. Although it’s impossible to predict every possible scenario, knowing where the blips are is very useful.

Graphs are an excellent tool to visualize the customer journey, understand customer behavior, identify problems, and figure out success strategies.

 

Keep Updating

Creating customer journey maps is not a one-time process. Not only are consumer behaviors constantly evolving, the various ways through which customers can interact with your brand are increasing. Additionally, your products and services offered will also grow as your business does.

So, you need to constantly improve upon and update your customer journey maps to reflect the changes in your business and your consumers.

 

Grow Your Business with Assist90’s Business App

If you want to generate personalized user behavior reports, successfully identify consumer touchpoints, and efficiently map out your customer journey maps, Assist90’s Business App is just what you need. You can now view real-time feedback, respond to reviews, and streamline your overall customer experience—all from one easy-to-use dashboard!

To learn more about how to increase your brand awareness, visit our website or give us a call at (314) 560-5649 today to book an assessment.

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