Through many marketing strategies on various platforms, you aim to attract visitors to your site with the aim of turning them into customers. Along with this journey for the customer, they experience your website and form their own perspectives based on these experiences. To make sure that their experience is a good one, it is important that you place yourself in their shoes so that you are better to understand their viewpoint. In doing so, any cracks in the journey that your potential customers may slip through are identified and addressed so your business and website can flourish.
What is Customer Journey Mapping?
Customer Journey Mapping is an effective method that businesses employ so that they are able to recognize what their customers encounter and deal with any points along the journey that may cause stress to the customer. When you do this, you can map out the path that is taken for the visitor to make a purchase and then aim to make it a less difficult one. As a customer, they seek an effortless process so that they are able to find what they are looking for quickly and efficiently. If you are still on the fence about this method, below is a list of the many benefits that you can gain from customer journey mapping.
What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?
- With customer journey mapping, you can easily identify the areas that when time, effort and money are invested into, there will be maximum returns which makes them effective.
- Compare the needs and wants of the customer with what your business provides. In doing so, you can refine and adjust to make the customer’s experience a good one.
- As the term used for this method, you can map out the customer’s journey from start to finish in a step by step fashion.
- Emphasize priorities for the development and improvement of the business.
How to create your own customer journey map?
When you are creating your business’ personalized customer journey map, it is important that you keep three important factors in mind.
- Know the start and end of the journey
Many businesses make the mistake of understanding the customer’s opinions when the customer is already along the journey to making a purchase and not grasping the concept before the journey. How did the customer become aware of your business? Is it by searching, blogs, refers or other social media platform. By simply being aware of the beginning of the journey, your business will be better able to convert that visitor into a paying customer.
After you have outlined the start of the journey, it is now time to describe the end. The end mostly refers to the desired end results. What is the outcome that the business hopes to receive at the end of a customer’s journey? Is it better sale conversions or lower rate of customer loss? Whatever it may be, make sure that you detail it when you are mapping out the customer’s journey.
- Make sure you understand the customer’s perspective
The aim of the customer journey map is to completely understand the customer’s viewpoint. To do this, it is vital that you gather this directly from both a current and former customer. This will lead to accurate and not misinformed information. Once you have compiled the accurate data, you can then create and outline your priorities for further growth and development of your business.
- Formulate the first draft
After you complete the start and end goal of the journey, it is now time to create a draft. Outline the customer’s experience while looking at the business through the customer’s eyes. In this map, make sure to bring to light the priorities, the target customer (persona), points of interaction (touch points) and the emotions that the customers are feeling. After identifying these you can then flesh it out on a timeline, that is also easy to read and visually appealing.
