How to create a customer journey map in your eCommerce?

Improving your customers' user experience is essential to making your online business successful. However, first you have to know what you need to be able to offer it to them and make them loyal to your brand as much as possible. In this sense, creating a customer journey map is basic. But do you know what it is and what are the phases you must follow to create it? Here we tell you.

What is the customer journey map?

A “customer lifecycle map” or “customer journey map”. These are the most accurate translations that can be made of the customer journey map concept. It is a diagram that shows the path that the user follows from the moment they meet the company until they buy through its online store and enjoy its products at home. The purpose of a journey map is to understand the customer. That is, knowing what they think of both your company and the product you sell to provide them with the most positive experience possible and fully tailored to their needs. This will put your brand image and corporate reputation at stake. But, if you map the customer correctly, it can only have positive effects.

Types of customer journey maps

Before talking to you about how to create them, you need to know that there are two types of customer journeys, which are:

Customer journey as-is: Its objective is to show the user experience that your online store is offering to its users at this precise moment.

Customer journey to be: Try to show the future experience that you want to offer to customers once the designed changes are implemented.

It is true that, as a general rule, the customer journey map is usually focused on representing the entire sales process. However, it can be done only in part.

How to make a customer journey map.

Before starting to create a journey map, you must work on some important points that will allow you to prepare it successfully.

Objectives : You must determine the objectives of creating this map, that is, be very clear about what you intend to achieve by doing it and what are the types of clients that we want to evaluate and take into account, to develop their life cycle.

Buyer persona: it is really important that before developing the customer journey map you design your buyer persona. To do this, you have to collect as much information as possible about your clients and potential clients, such as: age, location, hobbies, work experience... The more relevant information you have about your clients, the more detailed your journey map can be. and the more effective it will be. In fact, if these users have already interacted with your brand, it would be good for you to take a moment to analyze what they liked the most and also the things that caused them the most rejection when deciding on you.

Timeline: It must be taken into account that the customer's decision, purchase and post-sale process will take time, sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, but we must always detail all the processes that the customer will undergo. customer over time. It is very important to pay special attention to the first contact that the client will have with our brand and the last.

Customer emotions: It is closely linked to the timeline, since the customer will experience different emotions throughout the purchasing decision process, positive and negative, all of them must be included in the timeline to see the process that has occurred. our buyer persona suffered when making their purchase.

Touchpoints: These are the points at which the customer comes into contact with your ecommerce during the customer journey. We must analyze all these points and try to make the customer's experience with our brand truly satisfactory for them, resolving all their doubts and positioning ourselves in the consumer's mind.

If we take all these points into account and evaluate what happens in each of them, we can improve them and create a truly effective customer journey map.

How to create a customer journey map.

To build a customer journey map you must consider, on the one hand, the stages of the journey (pre-sale, sale and post-sale) and the feelings that each of them may harbor (positive, negative or neutral). In addition, you need to anticipate the interactions or touchpoints that you will have with it along the way.

First phase: Pre-sale

This is the most important part, since without it, the potential customer will not even consider the option of purchasing from your online store. In this sense, you have to understand the positive emotions that drive you to want to purchase one of the products you sell and work on them:

• Reason: He wants to buy what you sell. For example, a bicycle with which you can exercise and go to work every morning in a more sustainable and efficient way.
• Attraction: Before choosing a bicycle you want to know more about the subject. You get them hooked by offering useful content about the benefits of using a bike on a daily basis.

Obviously, this phase also contains some critical stages. We talk, specifically, about past experiences you may have had buying a bicycle or any other product online. Generating trust is essential for you to relegate your insecurities and proceed to the purchase. Also, you must avoid comparing yourself with your competition. In this sense, you have to highlight what you are going to do for him that no other company can do.

Second phase: sale

You have done so well in the pre-sale phase that the customer has decided to buy one of the bikes you have in stock. Now, you must offer him an expert view on the subject through reviews and similar content to help him find the one recommended for him. This is a unique opportunity to generate positive emotions. But here there are also critical points that you must face. Are these:

• Payment methods: Clarity, simplicity and security. The client must feel comfortable throughout the entire process. Request only those data that are essential for the purchase, show the certificates that guarantee the encryption of the data and allow the user to review the information at any time before finalizing. Show them information about what to do to cancel the order or contact your customer service in case of an error.
• Uncertainty: The length of time between payment execution and the arrival of the confirmation email is key. The longer the customer has to wait, the more negative feelings it will generate. Automate the process so that it is sent immediately. It also provides the necessary information to track the products.
  

Third phase: after-sales

Your customer journey map does not end when the customer makes the payment. Not even when you receive the product at your home. This stage goes much further.

First of all, to generate positive emotions, it is essential that the order arrives within the established deadline. Sometimes it is better to be conservative and add a little more margin than to offer a very short delivery time frame and then have it arrive late.

The customer must also know that they have an after-sales service at their disposal, in case they need to make a return or obtain additional information on any topic. You must also be clear about the warranty and withdrawal periods.

If everything goes well, the journey map will end with the customer becoming loyal and sharing their positive purchasing experience with their loved ones and through their social media profiles. This is what is called word of mouth and can have more important effects on your sales volume than any digital marketing strategy.

In short, building the phases of the customer journey map based on objective and verifiable data using a design thinking tool is the only way to faithfully know the user experience of your online store. At Webmefy, we always support our actions and strategies with data analysis. This is known as Data Driven, a key concept for creating customer journey maps and a guarantee of success for your business.

It may interest you:

Keys to improve the performance of your online store

How to improve the Sales Funnel in your Ecommerce & Shopify

How to install Google Tag Manager on your Shopify store