The most important question that project managers should ask themselves is, “How do I help my customers achieve their goals on my website while still achieving mine?” Focusing on that question is the starting point for improving your website experience and building a customer journey map. The first goal for preparing a customer journey map is to identify the customers’ requirements and what they are seeking using your website. Your team (Designer/ Developer/ Tester) should understand the entire process your customers go through. The Journey Phases This implies the different stages in the customer’s journey. They may vary as per particular scenarios. Each company can use data to analyze what these phases are as per the corresponding situation. Here are some examples: For a B2B scenario (like rolling out an internal tool), the stages could be purchase, adoption, retention, expansion, advocacy. For a big (or luxury) purchase (like test driving and buying a car), the stages can be engagement, education, research, evaluation, justification. For an ecommerce scenario (like buying Bluetooth speakers), the stages can be – discovery, try, buy, use, seek support. This will help you determine your journey phases according to your business type. There’s a common saying that you can’t understand someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes – and that’s exactly what customer journey maps do. They help you put yourself in your customers’ shoes and understand your business from their point of view. Based on this rationale, you can’t deny the importance of a customer journey map. Thus, we’ve created the following steps for crafting the best map to help your company website improve. 1. Set clear objectives Before you can dive into creating your map, you need to ask yourself why you are making one in the first place. What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it specifically about? What experience is it based upon? You can start by writing down the objectives on sticky notes or use a customer journey template. A customer experience map will help you narrow down one specific interaction with your business. You can have individual customer experience maps for each of the following scenarios of your business: Reading your blog or exploring your website Interacting with a customer support agent Visiting your store or your ecommerce site Using your product at home or work Interacting with sales during the process of becoming a customer 2. Profile your personas and define their goals Next, you should conduct research. Some great ways to get valuable customer feedback is through questionnaires and user testing. The important thing is to only reach out to actual customers or prospects. You want the feedback of people who are interested in purchasing your products and services and who have interacted with your company before or plan to do so. TIP: It’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take while engaging with your business for the first time. You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each one and determine which would be the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map that’s specific to these customer types. 3. Monitor how your customers move on your site It’s important to understand how users move through your website. For example, if you’re offering a discount code to all first-time visitors, then why is the sales low? The offer (or, ability) might be great, but consumers still lack the motivation to buy. In this case, it doesn’t matter how much products are discounted. This common scenario can be uncovered with the Behavior Flow report from Google Analytics. Make sure to examine different segments of users, whether it’s first-time visitors, returning visitors, purchasers, or create a custom segment for visitors with long session durations but no purchases: Google Analytics: Behavior Flow Look for trends, like specific drop-off points were so many users are leaving your site without converting. What page do most first-time visitors view after landing on your homepage? 4. List out all the touchpoints Touchpoints are all the places on your website that your customers can interact with you. Based on your research on Google Analytics or basic research on your CMS dashboard, you should list out all the touchpoints your customers and prospects are currently using, as well as the ones you believe they should be used if there is no overlap. Apart from Analytics on your website, you need to determine how your customer might come across you online. These might include: Social channels Paid ads Email marketing Third-party review sites or mentions This is an important step in creating a customer journey map because it gives you insight into what actions your customers are performing. If the number is more than expected, it is likely that your website navigation is complicated. However, if they are using fewer touchpoints than expected, this may imply that they are not convinced with your offerings and may leave the website early. 5. Map the pain points Go back over the map and jot down pain points on sticky notes. Place them underneath the corresponding touchpoints on the journey. For added value, talk about the impact of each pain point. Is it trivial, or is it likely to necessitate some kind of hack or workaround? Even worse: does it cause the user to bounce off the website and leave their journey entirely? Get to know what roadblocks are stopping your customer from making their desired action. 6. Improvement Ideas Start by prioritizing which touchpoints or pages to address first. You can rank pages by cost-effectiveness and or how easy they are to change. Improvement ideas are usually integrations, services, or features that we can enable. Then, it’s a matter of determining what to test. For instance, if research suggests that customers worry about getting locked into a particular plan after they sign up, tweaking your copy on a relevant page could minimize their hesitations. Conclusion: Once you have a better understanding of the customer journey, you can use that knowledge to improve your site by honing your messaging to match customer needs, smoothing out frustration points, eliminating extra steps, and even creating content. This will ensure your website is providing a seamless and effective interaction for customers, which leads to a better user experience. The companies need to anticipate the routes their customers may take, and optimize their customer experience along the multiple touchpoints rather than relying on one assumed journey. About Galaxy Weblinks We specialize in delivering end-to-end software design & development services. Our digital product designers are creative problem-solvers with a decade of experience in all facets of digital and interactive design. We create compelling and human-focused experiences delivered through clean, and minimalist UI.