E-commerce Touchpoint Setup: Mapping the Customer Journey

Digital has become the main tool for every brand, be it a startup or a multinational, to boost their sales funnel. Therefore, it has now become cluttered with millions of ad campaigns. Brands looking for e-commerce website design need to focus and reinvent their business models around the consumer experience.

The term consumer experience means all the interactions of a consumer with the brand till the buying decision and beyond. To get a better knowledge of the consumer experience, you need to know about the customer journey.

What Is A Customer Journey?

Customer journey is the sum of all the interactions at every touchpoint and channel up till the purchase decision and even beyond. The visual representation of the entire process is known as the customer journey map.

Main E-commerce Touchpoints

Social Media

Social media platforms are an extremely important touchpoint that can greatly support your e-commerce website.

Social media marketing now shares a huge chunk of the total digital ad spend globally. The reason being simple: people love spending time on social media platforms. Statists, a business data platform states:

With over 70 percent of the U.S. population holding a social media account, these platforms and services have become some of the most popular online activities of the past decades.

Social media platforms that were initially created for socializing have now diverted their attention towards the potential of digital marketing. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are exceptional mediums for not just marketing your products, but also, now you can set up a mini e-store on these platforms as well.

If we only talk about Facebook, the platform offers so many valuable tools that have supported the online vendors a lot. Options like store setup and carousel ads are of great help to diverting the traffic to the website, which helps in conversions.

A robust social media presence is the key to enhancing the consumer experience. Therefore, you need to keep your social media pages updated and interactive 24/7.

Google Ads

Google is still the biggest search engine and the priority whenever people are looking for a new service or product. According to the stats, Google processes over 3.5 billion searches every day. Only this fact is sufficient to acknowledge the supremacy of Google in the digital world.

Google ads are one of the very reliable digital methods to get in touch with your prospects. Google, through their algorithms, knows what the people want and exactly shows them the ads which match their interests.

YouTube, which comes under Google, is also the most-watched online video platform. According to the platform itself, around 2 billion logged-in users visit YouTube each month, and every day people watch over a billion hours of video and generate billions of views.

Many people search for How-to videos and product reviews, making it a perfect place to display your ads.

Your Own E-commerce Website

Your e-commerce website design also plays a vital role in the consumer journey map. No doubt, social media marketing diverts massive traffic towards the website, but it is up to the website itself to convert prospects into loyal customers.

Landing page optimization is required if you need to further elevate the consumer experience. The reason is that it will be the last touchpoint, and therefore, it should be significant.

SEO and SEM are also crucial to improve the consumer experience; some other touchpoints are:

  • Product relevant blogs
  • Customer service support
  • Landing pages
  • Cart Page
  • Checkout Page
  • Register Page
  • Website Homepage

How Can a Customer Journey Map Be Productive for E-commerce?

Initially, customer journey mapping was used as a strategy tool, but now with the dominance of digital media, it has become a methodology to reshape business models, especially for e-commerce. The following are some points that reinforce the importance of a customer journey map for a well-functioning e-commerce website.

Helps Plan an Inbound Strategy

A customer journey map helps a brand to strategize how it wants a customer to discover it. By knowing about all the touchpoints and channels, a marketer can easily come up with engaging campaigns for every individual touchpoint.

Helps To Expand the Consumer Base

After figuring out the customer journey of your potential customers, now you can directly target everyone on the internet with similar purchasing habits by social media and search engine marketing. Businesses leveraging on customer journey maps have successfully generated massive revenues.

Helps To Determine a Company’s Priorities

Usually, e-commerce websites have a strict budget to follow, and they can’t blindly spend on every touchpoint. A consumer journey map helps these companies to identify the weaknesses and strengths in their strategies. Furthermore, it helps businesses to identify the channels and the touchpoints most favorable for their business; this allows the companies to only invest in the channels that will gain them huge profits.

Helps To Distribute Task within the Organization

A customer journey map has many phases, and every touchpoint favors different phases along the journey. Once these are identified, a company can then divide teams for different touchpoints with a specific goal to achieve. This way, you can efficiently devise strategies that will always keep you a step ahead.

Wrapping It Up

In the digital era, experiences have overvalued the products. In fact, they have become products. Now, if you can’t provide an exceptional experience, you are not selling anything – and that is for sure!

Customer journey mapping allows you to build your e-commerce website design around the consumer experience so that you can enjoy an upper hand over your competitors. Mapping the customer journey and developing a website around it ensures that consumers enjoy the buying process. In such a way, you can provide them with the right products at the right place and time. A consumer journey map provides a brand with new insights about the business and the consumer nature, which helps to come up with new effective marketing strategies.

However, customers’ needs are constantly evolving. To successfully meet their requirements, you as a brand need to update and improve your consumer journey map to stay relevant to your customers. Constantly monitoring the consumer trends on digital media will always keep your online business flourishing.

STAY UP TO DATE

Sign up today to stay informed with industry news & trends