Insight into the Customer Purchase Journey
Not too many of us make the decision to purchase something the moment we find out about an interesting new product or service. If you’re like most shoppers, you spend time researching product reviews, downloading brochures, looking up competitor websites and other details about what captured your attention. As a business owner, though, it is wise to understand what these touchpoints are to better meet the needs of your customers.
What is the Customer Purchase Journey?
The customer purchase journey refers to the steps that a customer takes before making the decision to purchase an item. There are often many touchpoints and paths a customer will take before they first become aware of a product or service of interest and nearly 75% of buyers do more than half of their research online before making a purchase.
What is the Purpose of Mapping the Customer Purchase Journey?
The goal of mapping the customer purchase journey is to gain a better understanding of how customers interact with a business online. This gives clear insight into what channels are most effective for converting leads into prospects, and prospects into loyal customers.
Taking the time to map the steps your customer takes for an “add to cart” action, or “purchase now” decision gives valuable insight into future marketing strategies and promotions. And once you know more about what influences your customer to buy, and what paths were taken that led to that decision, your marketing strategies can be tailored to your target audience and into specific sales channels.
An Example of the Customer Purchasing Journey
Here’s a good example. Let’s say a homeowner visited a local coffee shop and noticed a posting on the community bulletin board about a pressure washing service and read the advertisement. The homeowner had considered having his fence and driveway pressure washed but had never looked into a service provider. About a week later, he spotted a service truck in his neighborhood from that same pressure washing business and he decided to do some online research. He finds out some basic information about the service, reads reviews, researches the price and service levels, and reads several of the online blogs that were posted by the company. There is also a brochure online about the service and he downloads the PDF to review it later. After talking to his neighbor and getting a good review, the homeowner returns to the website to schedule a service call.
In this example, there are seven unique touchpoints. Although the first two touchpoints are not trackable online, the consideration and the purchase actions were all completed online.
How is a Customer Journey Tracked?
Online marketing and tracking tools can help identify the mapping of a customer journey. Tracking tools help to gain insights into the journey and make it possible to find out what device the customer used to access your site. Website analytics also play a key role in the evaluation of bounce rate and time spent on a particular area of your website.
Something to keep in mind is that not every customer journey leads to a purchase. But the more touchpoints a consumer goes through may, in fact, lead to a future purchase. Even the registration for an email newsletter or request for more information can be the beginning of the customer purchase journey. Overall, businesses that use a mapping program to track the buyer and customer journey also average about an 80% increase in cross-selling and upselling revenues with related products. To discover what influences your customer and their touchpoints, the Cazarin Interactive marketing team can help you get started. Reach out to us at sales@cazarin.com to chat with one of our team members today!
