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How do we solve customer problems before they happen?
It’s all too easy to get caught up in the hustle of running a business and chasing sales targets, but let’s not forget the heart of it all… the customers! Without them, there is no business. That’s why understanding, listening, and responding to your customers is key to long-term success.
Equally, your perception of who your customers are, and who they actually are, might not be as closely aligned as you think. This is why having a dedicated session to map out who your customers are, find out their needs, pain points, and expectations, and what can be done to serve them is massively beneficial.
Our Customer Journey Mapping sessions take a deep dive into your brand and its customers. These sessions are one of the core stages to any design or development project, and are to help you get to grips with your customers giving you the insights needed to truly optimise your brand experience. Let’s take a look at what these sessions entail and why you should run one for yourself if you want to truly understand your brand and customers.
Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) is a crucial step in building an eCommerce business, letting you see the full picture of how customers interact with your brand - from the first moment they hear about you, to browsing, purchasing, and even post-purchase.
There are countless touchpoints in your customer’s journey that are crucial to each of these stages. Making sure these touchpoints are smooth, intuitive, and rewarding is what CJM is all about.
CJM looks further into each step a customer takes to get to your site, as well as the steps they take once they’re there. It’s key to explore the areas customers currently engage with, identify any frustrations they might face, and find ways to guide them smoothly towards making a purchase and coming back for more. Every brand’s journey is different, influenced by factors like the products you sell, your customers’ income, lifestyle, and hobbies. By getting to know these elements inside out, you can ensure that all of your channels, including social media and your site are built to meet their needs at every step.
Why run a Customer Journey Mapping session?
It’s simple, these sessions help brands understand their customers better, and in turn, help customers connect more deeply with the brand.
By uncovering your customers needs, identifying key touchpoints, and addressing pain points, you can focus on what really matters to them. This insight enables you to shape your site in a way that feels personal and relevant to your customers, enhancing their experience.
When your site evolves to fit your customers needs, the results are clear… better conversions, improved retention, and stronger brand loyalty.
Understanding the customer
Before diving fully into CJM, it’s key to truly understand who your customers are on a personal level. This means getting to know who they are from their age, demographic, and location to their personal values, buying habits, and media consumption.
Each of these considerations is a crucial discussion, allowing you to identify how you refine the site accordingly.
Once you’ve nailed down these customer personas, you're ready to start shaping the CJM process. This deeper understanding is the foundation that helps us create a personalised website tailored to your customers needs and expectations.
Grabbing your customer’s attention is the first crucial step in the journey. Without this, there’s no sales! At this stage, a customer might not even be actively searching for your brand or your product, but they’re starting to become aware of it and how it could meet a need or solve a problem they have.
This is where understanding how they consume media comes in. Customers can stumble upon your brand in so many ways; through ads, social media, word of mouth, search engines, or broader marketing campaigns. Optimising your reach across these channels is essential to making that first connection.
The goal? Catching their eye, sparking some interest, and getting them to your site.
At the consideration stage, your customer is weighing up their options. They’ve found your site, but now they’re thinking;
“Should I check out competitors?”
“What makes this brand stand out?”
“Why is this brand better than any other?”
It’s human nature, we all want the best value for our money, time, and effort, so comparing options is inevitable. We can’t stop this, but we can push the user to come back to your site rather than anyone else's!
CJM can identify how that initial interest can be nurtured, and how you can give customers every reason to stay.
Do you provide a customer with sufficient information? Detailed product descriptions, case studies, blog posts, customer reviews, and even user-generated content can all help build credibility and trust. And if you’re already doing this, is there space for it to be better tailored to your specific customers. Hopefully you believe your product is the best choice for your customers, but you need to make sure they know that too.
Now comes the crucial moment…the purchase. The customer has weighed their options and is ready to buy, but how can we make this process smooth and stress-free, reducing the risk of abandoned carts or incomplete sales?
The steps are simple, they add products to the cart, enter their details, and complete the transaction.
Yeah right, we all know it’s rarely that simple.
It’s not just about getting them to this point and pushing them to complete the checkout stages, it’s about reassuring them that they’re making the right choice throughout this journey, whilst still providing a sleek, seamless checkout experience.
CJM seeks to understand your customer’s mindset at this stage of the buying cycle. Some may feel hesitation, so offering clear customer support and easy-to-find return policies can give that extra bit of confidence. But diving deeper into what that looks like for your brand is key.
The goal? A quick and easy checkout with minimal form fields, multiple payment options, transparent shipping and tax costs, and strong security measures that build trust, but every brand is unique of course, and your purchase requirements may look a bit different.
When it all works smoothly, you’re not gaining sales, you’re building customer confidence that could lead to repeat purchases. And CJM can identify a pathway to get there.
A singular sale should not be the end goal, but getting those repeat customers. The next stage of any CJM session should identify how you keep your customers engaged and coming back for more. This stage is all about building long-term relationships that can eventually lead to loyal advocates of your brand.
Keeping customers engaged means staying on their radar through various touchpoints, whether it’s via email, loyalty programs, social media, or something else entirely. You need to be ready to connect and keep the conversation going from all angles. Again, with knowledge of your customer personas, we can identify what the best options for customer support are, whether they’re already in place within your business, and what steps need to be taken next.
The last stage of the buying cycle to touch on in a CJM session is the advocacy stage. This is where your happiest customers turn into your biggest champions, recommending your products to others through word of mouth, social media, or glowing reviews - all as important as the other. Advocacy is key to building a strong, trusted brand that attracts new customers and reinforces the consideration and reassurance stages we talked about earlier.
CJM can identify any issues you're having converting customers into advocates, and what extra steps can be put in place to encourage them to leave those reviews. After all, when customers become advocates, they start doing some of the heavy lifting for you, meaning your brand begins to build its presence, authority, and trust organically.
These sessions are all about uncovering the customer’s mindset and aligning it with the brand’s objectives.
By doing this, you can refine your strategies and optimise the user experience at every stage. From that first interaction to building loyalty and advocacy, you can ensure the process is seamless and impactful.
Whether you’re planning on running one of these sessions yourself, or want to discuss how a session led by a team of eCommerce experts could benefit you - Customer Journey Mapping is one of the most impactful sessions you can have for your business in the long term.
Want to learn more about Customer Journey Mapping and how we make excellent eCommerce experiences at every stage? Contact us!
Olivia joined Cake as a Junior Account Executive fresh off from the oft travelled digital marketing fast track course at Birmingham City University.
Bringing with her a wealth of experience working in social media management and client facing content creation, Olivia has got stuck right into the world of eCommerce and delivering projects for our vast range of clients. Assisting in managing some of our toughest projects from ideation through to completion across the full mix of digital marketing channels, Olivia ensures that our work is to the high standard that we pride ourselves on, that our clients are happy, and that everything is finished on time.
