What is the eCommerce Customer Journey?
The eCommerce customer journey refers to the full experience a customer has with an online retailer, from brand awareness, product discovery, to post-purchase experience and potential brand advocacy. Understanding and optimizing the customer journey helps retailers and brands enhance engagement and increase conversions.
Key stages of the eCommerce customer journey
The eCommerce customer journey can be broken down into five main stages:
- Awareness: Customers realise they have a need or problem and are exploring potential solutions. Touchpoints at this stage include social media (organic & paid), SEO, Google Shopping, or word-of-mouth referrals.
- Consideration: Customers are showing interest in the brand but are evaluating different options, comparing features, prices, and reviews.
- Decision: Customers make a purchasing decision. This is where streamlined checkout processes, limited-time offers, and clear calls to action can make a difference.
- Retention: Post-purchase, brands must focus on customer support and engagement, such as order updates, clear returns policies and loyalty programs to keep customers satisfied and encourage repeat business.
- Loyalty: Customers have not only returned to purchase again, but are now loyal to the brand, becoming advocates with a higher chance of referring friends, interacting on social media, or providing positive reviews.
Understanding each stage helps brands strategically plan content and campaigns to guide customers toward conversion and long-term loyalty.
How to map the eCommerce customer journey
Mapping the eCommerce customer journey involves understanding each interaction a customer has with your brand. Here’s how you can map out this journey:
- Create Buyer Personas: Start by identifying your main customer groups, including their goals, pain points, and preferred communication methods.
- List All Touchpoints: Map out every place a customer interacts with your brand, from social media to customer support.
- Analyze Data: Use analytics tools to gather insights into customer behavior, like bounce rates and average time spent on pages.
- Identify Pain Points: Find out where customers experience friction. For example, a high cart abandonment rate could indicate issues with your checkout process.
- Optimize and Test: Use the insights to improve your website, streamline navigation, and personalize the shopping experience. Continuously test and refine your approach to maximize engagement and conversion rates.
A well-mapped customer journey helps in delivering targeted content and addressing customer needs proactively.
How Taggstar can transform the customer journey
Whether it’s nudging consumers from the awareness to consideration stage, to add a products to cart, or the decision stage guiding consumers to purchase, Taggstar’s social proof messaging solutions can transform your customer journey strategy.
As the leading expert in enterprise social proof messaging, Taggstar helps retailers and brands deliver more dynamic and engaging shopping experiences, build customer trust and increase online conversions and sales.
Join the growing list of leading global brands & retailers that trust Taggstar to elevate their shopping experiences and drive significant sales lift. Get started today.
