When entering into or maintaining an online status, it’s vital to keep your customer’s entire experience at the forefront of your strategy. From building awareness to building loyalty, it can be challenging pinpointing where your customer is in their buyer journey and how to reach them at that stage. However, these two major components of developing an eCommerce customer journey will make for a significant start.
The 4 Basic Stages of eCommerce Customer Journey
Simply put, you can break up an eCommerce customer journey into four parts:
- Awareness – In this stage, your focus should be on techniques that directly target potential customers and bring more awareness to your brand. This can be done through SEO, social media, exclusivity, testimonials, freebies, partnerships, and more.
- Decision – The decision stage is the part of your customer’s online journey where they’re considering their options. You’ll want to directly speak to customers in this stage by expressing how your brand resolves their problems more efficiently than the competition.
- Purchase – Consumers in this stage are ready to make a purchase, so they should be encouraged to take the proper steps to complete their transactions.
- Loyalty – eCommerce customer journey doesn’t stop when consumers make a purchase. In fact, it expands into keeping your audience loyal, engaged, and coming back for repeat business.
You can expand into more detailed steps by including customer consideration, delivery, loyalty, advocacy, retention, and more. The key is to go as in-depth as possible to gain as much understanding and knowledge on your customer’s buying journey and experience to best meet their expectations.
Make Customer Experience a Driving Factor
There’s no shortage of valuable ways to drive sales and encourage loyalty. However, the following suggestions are a great start to building customer experience throughout the entire eCommerce customer journey:
- 24/7 Customer Service – Availability plays a big part in customer service. No matter where a consumer is in their buying journey, it is up to you to have the proper solutions open for reference.
- Freebies and Contests – People love ‘free stuff’ whether it was won or given in addition to purchase. This added value encourages a closer relationship with your brand and exposes them to additional purchases if they enjoy the product.
- Free Shipping – Studies show that free shipping can be beneficial in several ways. In fact, 9 out of 10 consumers say free shipping is the topmost incentive to shop online more, orders with free shipping average around 30% higher in value, and 93% of online buyers are encouraged to buy more products if free shipping options are available.
- Post-Purchase Communication – Staying connected with your consumers after purchases can build a stronger relationship and brand loyalty. Making this extra effort can make a lasting impression — send an email or direct mail, and encourage feedback through social media, receipts, and customer support. Additional sales will likely follow when their experience influences product reviews, social media support, word-of-mouth marketing, and more.
Every interaction your customers have with your brand plays a vital role in your business’s success and growth. With special attention to customer experience and their eCommerce customer journey, you’ll be able to build and strengthen your brand in no time. When you’re ready, contact us for more insight into how we can help you reach those goals.
