Optimizing the Customer Journey to Drive eCommerce Growth
Merchants Need a Multi-Dimensional Approach as Omni-Channel Becomes the Norm
In the early days of ecommerce, merchants might have thought of sales as a one-dimensional process—the customer makes a purchase, then the interaction is over. However, such limited engagement is no longer an option in our modern sales environment.
Salesforce released their annual State of Marketing 2016 report earlier this year, interpreting the result of a global survey of more than 4,000 online marketers and merchants. The report clearly shows that the days when sellers could get by having no direct interaction with their customers are long gone. Now, a multichannel, multidimensional approach is absolutely necessary.
Mapping the Customer Journey
Customers expect a high-touch environment to be at their command from beginning to end, and he best way to go about this is to map the customer journey.
A framework that maps out the stages of a customer’s lifecycle; enables merchants to improve the customer’s experience by helping merchants to understand how the customer interacts with the brand and in what areas the business should invest more energy and attention.
In order to understand how to map the customer journey, think about the process in broad terms at first: the behavioral stages of the customer throughout the purchasing process.
In the general sense, most customers will go through the following steps between realizing a want and evaluating whether a product fulfills that want. These include:
- Realization: The customer realizes a want for something
- Discover: The customer finds the merchant’s site
- Research: The customer compares options
- Choose: The customer decides which item to purchase
- Purchase: The customer completes the purchase
- Reception: The customer receives the good or service ordered
- Evaluation: The customer considers the merits of the purchase and decides if it fulfills the want
- Retain: The customer is satisfied and willing to return later, as well as recommend the merchant to others
Best Practices for Optimizing the Customer Experience
Gathering data regarding the customer experience is only part of the challenge. Merchants must also interpret the information and create a strategy to optimize success.
Differentiate between customer types and know what each group expects.
With the level of depth and clarity provided by mapping the customer journey, merchants can pinpoint problem areas in the customer experience which might lead to trouble.
For example, product descriptions for electronic equipment tend to be dense and filled with jargon, most of which the average consumer will not understand. This can deter potential customers from making a purchase. However, overly simplifying the content would be unhelpful for those who seek and understand the information.
The solution is to carefully analyze customer types and know the persona of each group. Meet the needs of each type of shopper, without omitting a group or compromising the needs of others.
Identify customer goals and ensure touch-points are optimized to meet those objectives.
Within each of these stages, merchants need to identify the different touch points at which customers come into contact with their brand. Merchants are expected to provide support, informative content, and efficient service at each touch-point along the way, both before and after the purchase.
Leverage available data and create customized KPI.
Create customized KPIs (key performance indicators) to evaluate each stage of the customer journey. For example:
| Discover | Research | Evaluation | Retain |
| What generates engagement? | How do competitor prices compare? | What does the merchant need to do to move the customer from one stage to the next? | Which campaign is most successful? |
| What builds loyalty and trust? | Are there ways to emphasize expertise? | What motivates the customer to move onto the next phase? | Does the actual ROI match the projection? |
| Is it possible to improve agility and scalability? | What barriers might stand between the customer and the final stages of the process? | What is the lifetime value of each customer? | |
| How has the business’s reputation improved? |
Customer Journey is the Way to Go
The customer journey strategy is more than just one of many proposed ideas for how to contend with the challenge of multichannel optimization. Many of the trendsetting ecommerce merchants consider understanding the customer journey a vital part of doing business.
To demonstrate, Salesforce’s survey of global merchants suggests that:
- 65% of high-performing marketers embrace a customer journey strategy
- 88% of adopters say the strategy is critical to their business
- 63% Marketers implementing new, digital-optimized solutions across their organization
Merchants really have little choice in this matter.
“The rise of the connected customer is forcing marketing to evolve from delivering outbound campaigns to managing personalized experiences that engage the customer from day one and guide them through a seamless journey with the brand…The results of our research show that high-performing marketers that change their mindsets, tactics and technology to embrace a customer journey strategy will reap the benefits.”
— Scott McCorkle, Salesforce
All of the data points to the fact that, in order to stay ahead of the changes, merchants need to adapt. As Salesforce Marketing Cloud CEO Scott McCorkle suggests, the new, highly connected consumer is forcing the industry to move toward personalized, engaging experiences.
In order to remain agile and profitable in the mobile-optimized, omni-channel “Age of the Customer,” merchants need a game plan to help them understand each step the customer passes on this journey.
Deliver the Service Customers Expect
The new omni-channel ecommerce environment presents many challenges for merchants.
It requires merchants to think in multiple dimensions, constantly examining not just where customers are, but where they could be. Failing to manage this new technology can lead to fewer customers, lost revenue, and increased chargeback liability.
At the same time however, it creates a host of new opportunities for merchants who are able to leverage that technology effectively.