How to Map Your eCommerce Customer Journey in 2 Simple Steps
This is the first post in a 2-part series about how to create a user-focused eCommerce website. In this step, I’ll show you how to quickly and easily identify information that your customers need to know and walk you through how to map it to the decision-making process. In part 2, we take things a step further and I’ll show you some concrete ideas on translating your customer’s needs to specific website content and design elements to improve your eCommerce UX.
I hear from a lot of small to medium business owners who just seem worried sick about how to compete with Amazon and other large retailers. The truth is that if you think you’re going to be able to compete with them and win when it comes to price or fulfillment or purchasing power, you’re wrong.
But all is not lost. Especially if you stop thinking about what you sell as a mere commodity and start thinking about the advantages you have to create an experience that the big guys simply can’t. The experience you create for your customers is the je ne sais quoi, the secret sauce that you offer that no one else can replicate.
Cultivating an exceptional user experience begins by understanding the path that customers take from discovering you to becoming lifelong fans. From there we can use what we’ve learned to create a user-focused eCommerce website that caters to different customer segments at each stage in their journey.
How To Map Your User’s Journey in 2 Simple Steps
If the phrase “user journey” kind of makes you want to roll your eyes because it seems super contrived and too much like marketer-speak, I don’t blame you. But it doesn’t have to be complicated! In my post about designing an effective home page, I actually gave you a quick way to be able to identify where customers are at on their user journey - even if I didn’t use that precise phrase.
So here it is. The only two questions you need to ask yourself to be able to understand your customer’s path from A -> Z:
What do customers need to know?
When do they need to know it?
That’s it. Your answers to these two simple questions will help you write better content, create a more engaging website, attract more customers and make more sales.
Activity
Get out a piece of paper or open up a blank doc. Make a list of what people need to know about your products and services. Don’t worry yet about the when, just focus on the what. Here are some writing prompts to get you started:
What’s the biggest problem your products or services solve?
What do customers need to know about how to purchase or how things work?
What do they need to know about your company, your process, your people?
What information will help people feel more confident in buying from you?
Remember, this list shouldn’t focus on what you want customers to know. What matters is what they need to know. The goal is to cut things down to the most basic, elemental key points. Customers don’t need to know your life story. There’s also no need to make this list super long. In fact, I would say the shorter and more concise you can make it, the better.
Example
Here’s an example using a fake company that I just made up right now called Fake Plant Co. that sells (real) plants. These are the things that my customers might need to know:
What types of plants are available
Why our plants are better than the kind from their local big box store
How we ship plants without killing them
Where plants are grown and sourced
How to decide which plants are best for them
What we do to guarantee their happiness
How to place an order and what happens next
How to care for their plant purchases
How they can subscribe or join our plant membership club
The 3 Stages of Decision-Making
If you google “decision-making process” you will get 1,001 variations of this flow:
Awareness → Consideration → Decision → Post-Purchase
This really just boils down to that for every purchase we all make, we move through each of these four phases: learning about the company and/or products, thinking about buying, making the purchase, and then whatever happens after that.
Activity
Can you see how this flow looks in your business? Below are some questions to help you think about the path your customers take. Jot down notes if you find them helpful, otherwise, just think about your average customer’s experience.
Do people move through each decision-making phase quickly (hello, impulse buys!)... or are things more drawn out?
Think about all the touchpoints that people have with your brand and how they fit into this flow. Some examples:
Are people initially finding you on social media without much awareness at all about your brand?
Do you have a newsletter you send out to a growing list of regulars?
What percentage of your sales are from past customers or referrals?
For your unique business are there any additional phases you would add or changes you would make to the flow?
Putting It Together
So now you should have your list of what people need to know and you’ve thought about the decision-making process as it applies to your business. Putting the two together is super simple. We’re just going to take our “what they need to know” lists and decide which phase each item fits into best to cover the “when do they need to know it” question.
Example
I’m a spreadsheet type of person so if it was me I’d make two columns with my items from the first step of this exercise in the WHAT in the first column and WHEN in the second but you do you. I mean, sketch this out on a cocktail napkin if that’s what you have handy. For each piece of information, I decided where it should fit into the decision-making process.
What do they need to know?
When do they need to know it?
What types of plants are available
Awareness Phase
Why our plants are better than the kind from their local big box store
Awareness Phase
How we ship plants without killing them
Consideration Phase
Where plants are grown and sourced
Consideration Phase
How to decide which plants are best for them
Consideration Phase
What we do to guarantee their happiness
Decision Phase
How to place an order and what happens next
Decision Phase
How to care for their plant purchases
Post-Purchase Phase
How they can subscribe or join our plant membership club
Post-Purchase Phase
Note: I think it’s important to consider each item one-by-one because it forces you to really think about where each piece of information fits. For example, in the case of my Fake Plant Co. above, I first had “where plants are grown and sourced” classified in the “awareness” phase. However, the more I thought about it the more it seemed like something that people wouldn’t really need to know until they were more seriously considering a purchase. Initially, it makes more sense to focus on why customers should buy from an independent online plant seller versus a local big box store and give them an idea of the types of plants sold. Another way to think about it is that knowing where something is sourced doesn’t really matter if you don’t know what the thing is or why you should even consider buying it in the first place.
Activity
Take your list and map each item to a phase. Don’t worry about putting the items in order to start - just assign them a phase. You can come back when you’re all done and put them in order.
Keep in mind that for your products or services there may be no clear right or wrong answers; this can be a little bit of a chicken or egg game of just trying to pick which should come first. The best part of this is that you have complete control over things. As a small business, you’re able to be nimble and adapt quickly to customer behavior. This means that if down the road your analytics are telling you that some messaging might be off you can always revisit this list and see if there are some adjustments you can make to better connect with your audience.
Bottom Line
The end result of this exercise should be a road map that spells out a path for you to create a unique, user-focused eCommerce website. You should now be super clear with what customers need to know every step of the way and you have a checklist of sorts that can help you identify holes on your website that need to be filled.
If you need some ideas for website design elements and layouts I would recommend for each phase of the decision-making process, click here to check out part 2 of this post. It features mockups of an actual website so you can see how to turn your what/when list into a great eCommerce experience for your customers.
