Understanding your customers’ readiness to purchase and motivations can be challenging. However, it’s imperative if you want to decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate and convince people that it’s worth choosing your offer. What is a customer journey map and how to create it to better analyze the behavior of your potential buyers?

What is a customer journey map?

What is a customer journey mapping? It’s a detailed visualization of the steps your customer takes to complete a task or goal. It’s also known as a buyer’s journey.

Creating a customer journey map requires you to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and track their every move, both online and offline. Once you have a clear understanding of how they interact with your brand, you can optimize their experience to reduce friction and increase conversions.

There are typically four stages of a customer journey:

• Awareness – the customer realizes that they have a need or problem.
• Consideration – the customer is considering their options and researching solutions.
• Decision – the customer has decided on a solution and is ready to make a purchase.
• Loyalty – the customer has made a purchase and become the advocate of your product or service.

What is the difference between a customer journey map and an experience map?

The answer is simple: an experience map is a broad view of the customer’s interactions with your brand via multiple channels, while a customer journey map focuses on the experiences of your customer with a specific service or product.

8 steps to effective customer journey analysis

How to create a customer journey map? Focus on:

• analyzing the objectives of the CJM – what’s the reason for making the customer journey map? What do you want to learn and achieve? In order to answer these questions, you should create a buyer persona representing your average customer. Thanks to it, you’ll be able to consider data like demographics and psychographics when devising your strategy.

• understanding your target customers and their needs – what are their motivations? What are their fears and concerns? What type of language do they use? The answers to these questions will help you to better understand how to approach and talk to potential buyers.

• mapping out the steps of the customer journey – once you have a good understanding of your customer’s needs, it’s time for customer journey analysis. Collect data from a variety of sources such as website analytics, social media analytics, surveys, and customer interviews. Then, look for patterns and identify them.

• defining customer touchpoints – touchpoints are the interactions your customers have with your brand. They can include interactions that take place before the customer makes a purchase, during the purchase process, and after the customer has made a purchase.

• analyzing customer pain points – customer pain points are the areas where your customers experience the most friction. They can be caused by a number of factors such as a lack of clarity, too much choice, or a complicated purchase process. Analyzing them will help you find areas for improvement.

• put yourself in the customers’ shoes – in customer journey analysis, it’s crucial to understand the buyer’s perspective. Think how your recipients feel at each stage of the purchasing process and analyze what elements are crucial to them.

• implementing changes based on your findings – based on your evaluation, make changes to your customer journey map. Implement necessary data-driven modifications and monitor if they bring satisfactory results.

The takeaway

Customer journey analysis can seem a daunting task, but it’s worth it if you want to improve your understanding of customers and increase conversions. 

By following the steps above, you’ll learn how to create an effective customer journey map and engage potential buyers.