Do you understand the customer buying journey?

The buying journey is the path a customer takes from their initial awareness of your business, services, products or solution, to making a purchase and beyond. 

In the digital realm, this journey is often a complex web of interactions across multiple touchpoints, including your website, social media, email marketing, and online advertising.

To truly understand the customer journey, you need to map out each step and consider the following:

• Awareness: How do customers first become aware of your business? Is it through search engines, social media, referrals, or other channels? How easily can they find you? Are you providing them with information about who they are buying from to build connection and trust?
• Consideration: What information do customers need to make an informed decision? Are they looking for product details, pricing, reviews, or comparisons? Do you have testimonials or other credibility-building metrics such as awards or media appearances built into your sales process?
• Decision: What factors influence the customer’s final decision to purchase? Is it price, convenience, trust, or something else? Have you experienced buying from your own store?
• Post-purchase: How is the customer’s experience after they make a purchase? Are they satisfied with the product or service? Do they need support or follow-up? What is your automation system like – do you even have a follow-up process or testimonial capture approach?

By meticulously mapping out the customer journey, you can identify potential pain points or sticky areas where sales can be lost, identify areas for improvement or simplicity, and find opportunities to enhance the overall buying experience.

Mystery Shopping: Putting Yourself in the Customer’s Shoes

One of the most effective ways to understand the customer journey is to “mystery shop” your own business. This involves experiencing your business as a customer would, both online and offline.

Here are some tips for mystery shopping your business:

• Start with your website: Navigate through your website as a customer would, paying attention to ease of use, clarity of information, and overall design. We suggest you do an incognito search to ensure none of the cookies on your browser are creating a false environment for you.
• Explore your social media: Interact with your social media channels as a customer would, looking for engaging content, responsiveness to comments and questions, and overall brand personality. Again, doing this incognito is ideal, so your own browsing history is not clouding your vision.
• Make a purchase: Go through the entire purchase process, from browsing products or services to completing the checkout. Note any friction points or areas for improvement. Check how many clicks it takes to get through, if there is type or content that is difficult to read, or some other distraction happening. This will also help you AB test landing pages and shopping carts to ensure you have the highest conversion ones working.
• Contact customer support: Reach out to your customer support team with questions or concerns, and evaluate their responsiveness and helpfulness. You might choose to get a family member or friend to do this as a mystery shopper! Make sure you let the Customer Services team know it is going to happen (just not when) so they don’t feel you are spying on them, but instead helping assist them to improve and be more effective.
• Visit your physical store (if applicable): If you have a brick-and-mortar store, visit it as a customer would, paying attention to the layout, product displays, and customer service. Or if it’s an online purchase, buy from yourself to check the process.

By experiencing your business through the customer’s eyes, you can gain valuable insights that can inform your digital marketing strategies and improve the overall customer experience.

The Self-Serve Sales Era: Embracing the Digital Customer Journey

Customers are increasingly comfortable with self-service and they expect to find the information they need to buy online, and to purchase easily without having to interact with another human. This shift towards self-service presents both challenges and opportunities for businesses.

To succeed in the self-serve sales era, you need to understand the buying process and create a digital customer journey that is seamless, intuitive, and informative. Your website should be easy to navigate, your content should be clear and concise, and your purchase process should be straightforward and secure.

Additionally, you need to provide customers with the resources they need to make informed decisions. This includes detailed product information, customer reviews, FAQs, and readily available customer support or chat accessibility.

If you consider the self-serve sales era as an opportunity to create a customer-centric online experience for your brand and business and invest the effort into trailing and testing it to make it work, you can empower customers to take control of their journey and drive higher levels of conversion.

Bridging the Gap: Online vs. In-Person Selling

Being successful in the self-serve sales era is all about understanding the value of in-person interactions and making the online experience mirror a personal approach. In many cases, online customers still crave the personal touch and the opportunity to connect with a knowledgeable salesperson.

The key is to bridge the gap between online and in-person selling by creating a consistent and seamless experience across all touchpoints.

This means:

• Providing consistent information: Ensure that the information on your website is accurate and up-to-date. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking a website is ‘set and forget’. You should be reviewing your entire site, all landing pages, shopping carts, success pages and automations, at least on a quarterly basis.
• Offering a personalised experience: Use data, CRM and technology to tailor the customer experience, making return customers feel valued and encouraging loyalty. Using their name in automations and welcoming them back to the shop is a simple method to show that you value them.
• Empowering your team: Train your team to provide exceptional customer service, both in person and online. Set up chatbots, but be prepared to answer the phone or have email conversations with customers if they require assistance or want to provide feedback. Remember, it’s an opportunity to improve!

This unified customer experience, built and developed across both real-world interactions and online transactions, is an opportunity for you to build trust, foster loyalty, and engage a loyal following of raving fan clients who refer others to buy from you.

Getting More Foot Traffic By Walking In Their Shoes

Driving foot traffic, both online and in-store, is essential for business growth and once you step into your customers’ shoes you get a much better view of their experience. This is how you can improve your customers’ experience and, as a result, your conversion rates. Here are some strategies to attract more customers by deeply understanding what they need:

• Optimise your website for search engines: Ensure your website is easily found by potential customers searching online by using plenty of relevant keywords and phrases. Then once they find you, make sure your site loads quickly, and has all the relevant and engaging content quickly available to them. Don’t make them trawl through pages to find what they need and avoid talking too much about yourself and your products/services. Put them and their needs at the centre of the situation – a tip here is to count how many times the content says ‘we, us, I, our’ versus ‘you’ and ‘your’s’!
• Create engaging content: Provide valuable and informative content that attracts and engages your target audience. This could be a weekly or monthly blog, a podcast or ‘How To’ videos. People love to read a story or see a transformation so including features, case studies or testimonials or 3rd party endorsements is ideal. You can also repurpose the content you create to include in your online promotions.
• Use social media to connect with customers: Build relationships with potential customers on social media platforms and make sure you offer value and relevant content for them. Mapping out what their life is like during the year and choosing timely topics to talk about will help. Benign regular and consistent is more important that simply posting for no reason. Having a marketing plan and content strategy will help.
• Offer promotions and incentives: Encourage customers to visit your store or website with special offers and discounts in the same way retailers do for Spring, Easter, Mother’s Day, EOFY, Christmas etc. You can also draw them back into your world through links shared on socials that lead to your blogs, podcasts, case studies or product FAQ’s.

Walking in your customer’s shoes is a powerful way to gain a deeper understanding of their journey and identify opportunities to improve their experience. Choosing a customer-centric approach means you can create a digital customer journey that is seamless, intuitive, and informative, ultimately increasing traffic, driving conversions and building lasting relationships.

 

Key Takeaways

• Understanding the customer journey is crucial for creating a successful online experience if you want to attract and retain customers.
• Mystery shopping your own business can provide valuable insights into the customer’s perspective and should be done regularly.
• Bridging the gap between online and in-person selling is essential for creating a unified customer experience of your brand.