Like you, everyone is curious to know how customers use their website.
Some professionals use web analytics, but they can get only part information from it.
The best way is to create a visual representation of the path visitors take while using a website which is a customer journey map.
But do you know how to map customer journeys on your website? Here is a complete guide for the same.
What is a Customer Journey Map? What does it include?
Customers’ activities on your site, from entering to leaving, can be tracked through a customer journey map. All the ways with which customers interact with the site are shown in the customer journey map.
A customer journey map includes the following information:
- What pages do people visit, and in what sequence?
- What course of action do they take to obtain the results they want?
- Which particular page attracts them and which pushes them away?
You need to provide support right from the brand discovery through the post-purchase.
If you want to use these maps optimally, you need to know how to apply and use them.
All the customers love to buy from a company that knows what they are exactly looking for and that can give them a seamless buying experience.
The more the company connects with its customers, the better their chances of becoming loyal.
With the help of customer journey maps, pain points of the customers can be identified that can help the companies to retain them. It not only improves your marketing efforts to a great extent but helps you know and understand your customer in a better way.
How to Create a Customer Journey Map?
There can be different forms of customer journey maps.
They can be in the form of a collection of sticky notes on a whiteboard or complex flow charts with lines showing all the pathways customers take. A simple spreadsheet is an easiest and quickest way to create a customer journey map.
Before creating your site’s customer behaviour, you must choose your target customers, profiles of the customers who visit your site, etc.
Things like their basic demographics, priorities, buying behaviour, motivation, decision making etc., all should be noted. For each targeted customer, a customer journey map needs to be opened on a worksheet. You can divide the entire worksheet into columns like “Step 1”, “Step 2”, etc.
Rows under the “Current Customer State” should be used to collect all the vital data about the customer’s experience as they move step by step on your site.
You need to note things like customers’ motivations, like what they are thinking and feeling in each step they take while moving to your location, what customers do on each step they take, their problems, their pain areas, and their frustrations should be noted on each step.
Touchpoints should also be noted, like all the possible ways through which customers can contact the website or the company—clicking on a call to action or a link, e-mailing customer support, and activating live chat during each step help.
Do not forget to include suggestions, which should also enlist how to improve customer experience.
Though there is no official template for mapping customer journeys on your website, you can follow the best practices and designs depending on the business, product or service you are mapping.
You can be creative and give wings to your imagination to include the important things that you think are necessary.
Here are the steps to create fail-proof website customer journey maps
Get Started With Developing Buyers’ Personas:
When doing so, you need to understand that you have to get into your customers’ shoes to develop personas.
You need to know how they behave, what their likes and dislikes are, what they do and why they do so.
This way, you would be able to gain valuable customer insight. You will be able to get helpful guidance this way. Just take care of the fact that there cannot be just one buyer persona as different people use websites differently, and their behaviour at different buying stages differs.
Understand Your Buyers and Goals They Want to Achieve:
Once you are through with building the persona of your buyers, the next step is to find out what your buyers are trying to achieve in their journey as a customer.
You must explore your customers’ end goals, like why they visit your site. Do they want to ensure they are getting a fair price, explore different buying options, or reassure that they are equipped with all the necessary information?
You need to trace the path that visitors are taking on your site.
If visitors are your pre-existing customers, they will log in to the site, and after that, they can do other activities like browsing, comparing products, searching for new products and a lot more.
You need to identify customer questions in each phase, study customer support and use customers’ analytical tools.
Figure Out Buyers’ Touchpoints:
It is known as a touch point when a customer comes in contact with a brand before, during or after they purchase.
This may include the moments that may happen offline or online through marketing or over the phone.
Certain touchpoints may have a bad influence on the customers.
It is important to take into account all the possible touch points. You should not miss out on any opportunity to pay heed to what your customers actually need to make improvements and keeping them happy.
Figure Out the Pain Points of Customers:
You must identify potential roadblocks or pain points in your customers’ journey.
You need to figure out where you need to improve. Some possible questions you may ask yourself are: What is frustrating them, why are they leaving the site, and are the customers able to achieve their goals?
Fixing Their Roadblocks Should be Your Priority:
You need to put on the spectacles of your customers to find out what exactly they need. It is good to find out what is pushing them away.
Is something seriously wrong with your site that needs to be built up right from scratch, or is a few simple changes enough? Fixing roadblocks should be your priority. For instance, some visitors complain about the complicated sign-up process, while others may have website speed issues.
Whatever their issue may be, You can get the site revamped to get those issues fixed and make things easier.
If you really want to know how to improve customers’ experience, you may probably need to find out where from you can fix the roadblocks and let your customers have a fulfilling experience. If you really want to help your customers leave your site happily then you must focus on fixing their roadblocks.
Put Efforts on Updating and Improving:
Your customer journey map is a way to help your customers leave your website happily and satisfactorily.
However, your customers have changing demands, they evolve and grow. Hence your website should do so as well. You need to tweak it, incorporate changes and constantly strive towards tweaking it to include the desired changes and to get the needful done.
You should also aim to test, update and improve your customer journey map every six months.
The entire company can reap the long-term advantages of the customer journey map.
You can consider transforming your journey map insight into users’ stories, requirements, or KPIs. This will help you communicate in a better way with your customers.
Key Takeaway:
Creating a customer journey map may be difficult, but it is worth the efforts and money you spend on it.
If you fail to understand what your customers are actually looking for, meeting your business goals will be a far-fetched dream for you. So, get valuable insight to what your customers are doing and what they want exactly.
By shifting their focus to the customers’ perspective, brands can know and understand the needs and desires of consumers. With the help of a customer journey map, you can expect to have happy and satisfied customers that would simply love to be loyal to you.
