With the rise of online shopping, the ecommerce customer journey has become significantly more complex.
Ecommerce players who grasp the nitty-gritty of their customer journey gain an edge, and ultimately increase their revenue and customer lifetime value.
They know where their customers come from, what they want, their considerations, triggers and ultimately, how to conveniently drive them to the purchase point.
This understanding is pivotal to providing a tailored, seamless shopping experience that catapults your customers from one-time buyers to loyalists and advocates for your brand.
Defining the Ecommerce Customer Journey
The “ecommerce customer journey” refers to the path that a customer takes from first learning about your brand or product to actually making a purchase, and beyond.
It's a step-by-step process that includes stages such as awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and advocacy.
It covers everything from that initial spark of interest to the point where the customer becomes a hardcore fan, shouting about your brand from the digital rooftops.
The ecommerce customer journey differs significantly from traditional retail.
In a physical store, customers passively receive impressions of products and may be influenced by location, store arrangement, or a sales assistant.
In contrast, online customers are more active in their journey.
They initiate searches, explore product pages, read reviews, and add products to the cart before making a purchase.
This engagement allows for more touchpoints, giving you more chances to influence their decision and enhance their experience.
However, it can also be a double-edged sword as customers can easily abandon their carts or exit your website if the experience isn’t streamlined or engaging.
Understanding the ecommerce customer journey helps you anticipate customer behavior, tailor the shopping experience to meet their needs, and, ultimately, boost your sales.
In practice, your customer journey will have various touchpoints and paths to the ultimate end destination of “Completed Check out”.
Every stage provides an opportunity to build a stronger relationship with the customer.
The more you know about what steps a customer takes, the more efficiently you can guide them to a purchase—and keep them coming back for more.
But what are those stages?
Let's start diving in.
Exploring the Ecommerce Customer Journey Stage-by-stage
Taking a closer look at the ecommerce customer journey, it's best understood when broken down into stages.
Each stage represents a critical phase in a customer's online shopping journey, showcasing a separate set of goals, behaviors, and opportunities for engagement.
They generally follow these stages:
Stage 1: Awareness
This is the initial interaction between consumers and your brand or products.
A potential customer stumbles upon an ad or perhaps hears about your online store from a friend.
This stage lays the foundation for brand recognition.
To capitalize on this awareness, it's essential to leverage eye-catching content and engage in strategic advertising placements.
The goal is to initiate interest and curiosity.
Stage 2: Consideration
As curiosity evolves into genuine interest, the potential buyer enters the consideration stage.
This is where they take a deeper dive - comparing your products with other alternatives in the market.
They might pore over product descriptions, read reviews, and weigh the pros and cons. Here, providing ample, convincing information about your products and maintaining transparent pricing and policies is crucial.
The aim is to facilitate informed decision-making.
Stage 3: Conversion
Here's where the magic happens - the point where interest converts into a purchase.
Successfully guiding a customer to this stage requires an easy-to-navigate website, secure and various payment options, and a seamless checkout process – no one likes surprises regarding shipping charges or delivery dates at the last step.
So keep it friendly and simple!
Stage 4: Retention
Making a sale is just half the battle won. Retaining the customer and encouraging repeat purchases is the other half.
It's vital to nurture your relationship with customers post-purchase.
This might mean stellar customer service, loyalty programs, or personalized post-purchase emails.
Remember, a retained customer is more likely to make future purchases and costs less than acquiring a new one.
Stage 5: Advocacy
The final, perhaps the most influential yet overlooked stage, is advocacy.
Satisfied customers can become your brand's biggest cheerleaders.
Harnessing their positive experiences can mean sharing their reviews, promoting user-generated content, or offering referral programs.
To put it simply: when your customers are happy, they talk about it.
Together, these stages paint a picture of the ecommerce customer journey.
Each stage presents unique challenges and opportunities - understanding the nuances can be the game-changer your online business needs.
Enhancing the Ecommerce Customer Journey
As varied and complex as the ecommerce customer journey can be, there are effective strategies any ecommerce business can deploy to enhance every stage, ultimately offering a far superior customer experience.
Awareness Stage Strategies
During the awareness stage, the following tactics can help increase brand visibility:
- Implementing effective SEO strategies
- Utilizing targeted social media advertising
- Providing engaging, well-placed content marketing to inform potential customers about your brand or products.
Consideration Stage Measures
For the consideration stage, investing in the following can help:
- High-quality, user-friendly website design
- Robust comparison tools on your site to help customers make informed decisions
Conversion Stage Enablers
At the conversion stage, consider the following to simplify purchasing:
- Streamlining the checkout process
- Introducing one-click buying options or eliminating mandatory registrations
- Offering flexible payment methods
Retention Stage Tactics
The retention stage calls for:
- Excellent after-sales support and customer service
- Frequent product line updates to keep your brand appealing
- Loyalty programs or exclusive deals to encourage repeat purchases
Advocacy Stage Techniques
For the advocacy stage, consider implementing strategies such as:
- Referral programs with rewards to motivate satisfied customers to promote your brand
- Encouraging reviews or testimonials to amplify positive experiences
Observing the concepts in action offers a clearer roadmap to successful customer journey enhancement.
An improved ecommerce customer journey not only boosts immediate revenue but also nurtures long-term customer relationships and loyalty.
These should always be significant considerations in your overall business strategies.
3 Common Challenges in the Ecommerce Customer Journey
The ecommerce customer journey often encounters various challenges that can disrupt the ideal path from discovery to purchase and beyond.
Understanding these challenges and implementing targeted solutions can help create a smoother, more satisfying customer experience.
Challenge #1: Website Abandonment
Website abandonment is one of the most common hurdles.
Potential customers visit your site, browse, maybe even add items to their cart, but fail to reach the checkout.
This could result from several factors, including a complex checkout process, unexpected shipping costs, or lack of payment options.
Some of the most common reasons for abandonment during checkout:
Solutions:
- User-Friendly Website Design:some text
- Streamline Navigation: Ensure your website is easy to navigate with clear categories, filters, and a search bar that makes finding products simple. Use breadcrumbs and intuitive layouts to guide your customers seamlessly through their shopping journey.
- Mobile Optimization: Since a significant portion of online shopping happens on mobile devices, ensure your site is mobile-friendly with responsive design and touch-friendly elements. Slow load times and poor mobile navigation can frustrate users and lead to abandonment.
- Transparency in Costs:some text
- Upfront Pricing: Display all additional costs, like taxes and shipping fees, early in the process. Provide a shipping cost calculator on the product page or at the start of the checkout.
- Free Shipping Thresholds: Clearly communicate any free shipping thresholds to encourage customers to increase their cart value to avoid shipping fees.
- Flexible Payment Options:some text
- Variety of Payment Methods: Offer multiple payment options, such as credit/debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Wallet, and buy-now-pay-later services like Afterpay or Klarna. This helps reduce friction for customers who prefer or trust different payment systems.
- One-Click Checkout: Implementing solutions like one-click checkout options (e.g., Amazon's one-click purchase button) can significantly cut down on abandonment by simplifying the purchasing process.
- Abandoned Cart Recovery:some text
- Personalized Abandoned Cart Emails: Send timely email reminders for abandoned carts, highlighting the items left behind and offering incentives like discounts or free shipping if they complete the purchase.
- Exit-Intent Popups: Use exit-intent popups to present special offers or reminders to customers attempting to leave the site with items still in their cart. Because’s exit-intent feature allows you to offer personalized discounts or free gifts to encourage completion of the sale.
Challenge #2: Lack of Personalized Shopping Experience
Ecommerce often lacks the human interaction of traditional stores, such as friendly smiles or tailored product suggestions.
This can make the shopping experience feel impersonal and generic.
Solutions:
- Personalization Software:some text
- Dynamic Product Recommendations: Use software to provide product recommendations based on customers' browsing history, previous purchases, and behavior on the site. Because’s intelligent recommendation engine can dynamically suggest relevant products, making the experience feel more tailored and helpful.
- Personalized Content: Display personalized banners, messages, and offers tailored to customer segments or behaviors, enhancing the relevance of your marketing efforts.
- AI and Machine Learning:some text
- Behavioral Targeting: Implement AI-driven algorithms that analyze user behavior to predict and suggest products that match their preferences. This can significantly improve engagement and satisfaction by presenting the most relevant items.
- Chatbots and Virtual Assistants: Deploy AI-powered chatbots that offer personalized assistance, answer customer queries in real-time, and suggest products, mimicking a human sales assistant's interaction in a store.
- Customer Data Utilization:some text
- Segmentation: Use customer data to create detailed segments and tailor marketing campaigns to these groups. Personalized email campaigns, loyalty rewards, and special offers based on customer history can increase engagement and loyalty.
- User Profiles: Allow customers to create profiles where they can save preferences, wishlists, and shopping history for a more personalized and seamless shopping experience each time they visit.
Challenge #3: Customer Retention
Retaining customers is crucial since competitors are just a click away.
Keeping customers loyal requires continuous engagement and delivering value beyond the initial purchase.
Solutions:
- Value-Add Strategies:some text
- Exclusive Content and Offers: Provide customers with access to exclusive content, early access to sales, or special promotions. Make them feel valued and part of an exclusive community.
- Post-Purchase Engagement: Follow up with personalized emails that thank them for their purchase, suggest complementary products, and share content that adds value, like product care tips or styling guides.
- Loyalty Programs:some text
- Points and Rewards: Implement loyalty programs where customers earn points for purchases that can be redeemed for discounts or free products. Because’s dynamic bar can display real-time updates on loyalty points and rewards, encouraging repeat business.
- Tiered Memberships: Offer tiered membership levels that provide increasing benefits and exclusivity, encouraging customers to reach higher levels through repeated purchases.
- Excellent Customer Service:some text
- Responsive Support: Provide timely, empathetic, and supportive customer service through various channels, including live chat, email, and phone support.
- Personal Touch: Train customer service representatives to personalize interactions and offer proactive support, enhancing the overall shopping experience.
- Feedback and Improvement:some text
- Surveys and Reviews: Regularly solicit customer feedback through surveys and reviews to understand their needs and improve your offerings.
- Actionable Insights: Use feedback to make data-driven decisions and implement improvements to products and services, showing customers that you value their input.
By addressing these challenges with targeted solutions and leveraging Because’s features, you can create a more engaging, seamless, and satisfying ecommerce customer journey, driving higher conversions, better retention rates, and fostering long-term customer loyalty.
How Because Can Help You Improve The Customer Journey
Tools that simplify and optimize customer interactions can make a significant difference. Because is an ideal solution for this, offering features that address the specific needs of each stage in the customer journey.
Here’s how different features of Because can be tied to each stage, enhancing the ecommerce experience:
Awareness Stage
The awareness stage is crucial because it sets the tone for the entire customer journey.
The goal is to capture attention, spark interest, and encourage further exploration of your site.
But sometimes new visitors don’t know what they should do on a site.
Because offers several features to effectively guide new site visitors and enhance their initial experience.
Because enables you to create dynamic content tailored to each visitor, making your site more engaging and personalized from the very first interaction.
Upon arrival, visitors are greeted with content that speaks directly to their interests and needs, whether they arrived via a Facebook ad promoting eco-friendly products or are in a specific Klaviyo segment:
Consideration Stage
At the consideration stage, customers often need guidance on additional products that complement their initial choices but may not naturally discover them.
A powerful solution here is to cross-sell related products.
By showcasing complementary items, you not only enhance the shopping experience but also increase the average order value (AOV).
This approach provides additional value to the customer, making their shopping experience more comprehensive and satisfying.
Because offers an intelligent product recommendation engine that automatically suggests related products based on what the customer is viewing.
This feature uses customer browsing data to make smart suggestions, encouraging additional purchases without requiring manual setup.
By seamlessly incorporating related product suggestions, you can drive higher sales per transaction and improve the overall shopping journey.
Conversion Stage
Optimizing the checkout process and other critical points in the customer journey is essential to minimize friction and increase conversions.
One of the most effective strategies for this is to A/B test everything.
Continuous optimization through A/B testing can significantly impact your conversion rates, helping you understand what design, layout, or messaging resonates best with your customers.
Because provides a no-code A/B testing tool that allows you to experiment with different variations of product pages, checkout processes, and call-to-action buttons.
This means your marketing team can run tests and gather insights without needing technical expertise.
By constantly refining elements based on real customer data, you ensure your website is always performing at its best, leading to higher conversion rates and a more streamlined shopping experience.
Another powerful tactic at the conversion stage is to offer a free gift with purchase.
This strategy can be particularly effective in convincing hesitant shoppers to finalize their purchases.
Here’s an example of how Truewerk dynamically includes a free gift with purchase based on the items of the cart and the value of the cart:
Offering a free gift provides an additional incentive and can make the decision to buy much easier.
It reduces cart abandonment and encourages customers to complete their purchases.
Because enables you to set up and promote offers such as “free gift with purchase” dynamically across your site. It allows you to launch and manage promotions effortlessly, providing that extra push customers might need.
Retention Stage
Keeping existing customers engaged and encouraging repeat purchases is crucial for long-term success.
One effective method is using a dynamic bar based on loyalty.
Loyal customers are more likely to make repeat purchases and advocate for your brand, so it's important to make them feel valued.
In this example below, a dynamic top bar is added based on the shopper being part of a “Platinum Tier Welcome” segment in Klaviyo:
Customized experiences can significantly enhance retention rates.
Because’s dynamic bar feature allows you to display personalized messages to loyal customers, such as reminding them about their loyalty points or offering exclusive discounts.
This dynamic personalization keeps your most valuable customers engaged and incentivizes them to continue shopping with you, strengthening their loyalty and increasing their lifetime value.
Advocacy Stage
Recovering lost sales from cart abandonments is a major challenge in ecommerce. Implementing abandoned cart messaging based on action is a highly effective solution.
Cart abandonment is a common issue, but personalized recovery efforts can dramatically boost your sales.
Because offers abandoned cart messaging that can be customized based on customer actions.
For example, if a customer abandons their cart after viewing the shipping costs, you can send a tailored message offering a discount on shipping.
This highly targeted approach increases the likelihood of converting abandoned carts into completed purchases.
It not only helps recover lost sales but also shows customers that you are attentive to their needs and willing to provide solutions, enhancing their overall experience with your brand.
Optimizing the ecommerce customer journey is essential for driving sales and building customer loyalty.
By leveraging Because features such as cross-selling related products, A/B testing, offering free gifts with purchases, dynamic loyalty bars, and personalized abandoned cart messages, you can effectively address the challenges at each stage of the customer journey.
Each feature not only meets specific challenges but also collectively contributes to a seamless and profitable customer journey.
These actionable strategies ensure that your customers have a comprehensive, engaging, and satisfying shopping experience, leading to higher conversions and long-term loyalty.
Want to demo how Because can help you increase revenue and improve your customer journey?
