Clients go through 5 stages while making purchases. It is worth to analyze them all in order to create a customer journey map and to eliminate problems encountered by e-clients once they enter the site of your online store. The customer journey allows an owner of a store to check whether clients are loyal to the brand, whether they buy in the store on a regular basis, which communication channels they come from and in what way the brand keeps in touch with them. In the Customer Journey Mapping for eCommerce article, you can read about how to create such a map.
5 shopping steps of an e-consumer
What are the individual steps which clients take in order to make a purchase? These are awareness, thinking, purchase, keeping, satisfaction. All 5 steps are extremely important ─ although the last two are steps taken after the purchase has been made.
Awareness
Awareness is a step in which customers discover a product and the need to own it is born inside them. At this stage, customers look for information about that product. Therefore, it is worth to take care of good online visibility so that consumers can find your store right away.
Thinking
At this stage, e-consumers are sure that they want a particular product. Therefore, they are looking for it and compare online offers. Visibility of the brand on the Internet, but also price, delivery time or opinions can decide whether clients buy a given product. You need to make sure that the site is UX, but also that e-consumers see characteristics of a product right away – including its strong points.
Purchase
The purchase stage appears when e-consumers make a decision and makes a purchase. You can make it easier for them, by taking care of UX of your site and by simplifying the purchase step as much as possible on your site. Do not let this process be slowed down by the way your site looks, make sure that all information is communicated in a clear and transparent way. You should also enable users to pay with the quick transfer or with their smartphones.
Keeping
This is a part of the post-sale service. If you want to make sure your clients are satisfied, and to make them loyal to your brand and to return to you in the future, keep in touch with them. But don’t be pushy − you can use a newsletter for that purpose, a questionnaire that tests the level of satisfaction of a customer or remarketing.
Satisfaction
Make sure that customers are satisfied with purchases they made on your site and that they recommend it to others. Take care of a professional and quick post-warranty service – thanks to that you will improve the image of the brand and you can persuade other e-consumers who are at the second step of their purchase decision to choose you.
Take care of your clients before they become ones
Remember that consumers do not differentiate between online and offline shopping. That is the reason why so many people decide to sell their products mainly via the Internet. E-commerce has been growing in force and winning the products’ market much quicker that one could expect ─ if you do not want to fall behind you need to attract clients and encourage them to buying, but you also should remember about staying in touch with them and using 1:1 marketing.
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I do believe, professionalism together with customer and also quick post-warranty service is the most important challenge. And also encourage consumer to buying is probably the great coverage. By the way, the information you have been shared, it’s really very impressive and easy to understand please share more useful information like this.
Great tips, retargeting is one way to speed up the customers journey. In the past you wouldn’t be able to have so many touch points with your customer. That buying cycle has been reduced significantly over the years.
Hello Robin,
Consumers today have more places and ways to shop than ever. A standard model of consumer purchase decision making includes recognition of needs and wants, information search, evaluation of choices, purchase, and post-purchase evaluation.
Today’s online customers want the information they need when they need it, at the click of a mouse or a swipe of a tablet or smartphone and it should be considered by online marketers to improve customers experience every time when they visit.
Eventually, thanks for sharing your interesting experience with us.
With best wishes,
Amar Kumar