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Shopper Purchase Journey

A Step-by-Step guide to better understand your customers' online experience

What do you do before placing an order? And what do you do after that?

Sometimes, when we think about a marketing strategy, we tend to focus on the moment of purchase: it totally drives our communication.

A similar approach makes difficult to understand how to reach our customers. In this way, indeed, we don’t think about their true needs and we tend to deliver them the wrong message at the wrong time.

The best practice is to focus on the decision-making process: only if we truly understand each phase of the customer journey we will be able to communicate with our clients. Let’s take a look at this path!

STEP ONE: Awareness

How we communicate with consumers when they are looking for a product? Which is our solution to stand out in a crowd?

ADV, both online and offline, are essential in this phase. Based on our target, we have to choose carefully the most suitable social media platforms and remember to:

• Draft a strategy
• Define the goal
• Constantly post
• Create relevant contents
• Seek different ways to amaze the audience

STEP TWO: Research

Now that we’ve reached your target, our website should be easy to navigate.

Is it easy for customers to navigate through pages? Which kind of content will be they able to find? Is there an FAQ page? Is the information comprehensive?

If we prefer a “DIY” approach, the knowledge of our products could be a problem. What seems clearly understandable to us may not be considered as such by someone else who doesn’t know our brand at all. If we want to be sure about the effectiveness of the contents, the best thing is to ask other’s opinions.

STEP THREE: Opinions

It is common that a shopper wants to be sure about the product quality before making a purchase.

If a website hasn’t any kind of reviews’ section in which buyers are able to express their opinion, it is important to find out other ways to prove products usability and usefulness.

Influencers and bloggers are a powerful resource, but it’s difficult to find the perfect ones. Sometimes micro-influencers are better than big ones and, in the same way, a famous person may not be the right solution to better represent your company’s ideals.

To choose the perfect spokesperson it’s fundamental to listen to clients: before making a purchase it’s necessary to understand who they trust.

STEP FOUR: Reminders

There are infinite reasons why possible clients (or clients themselves) don’t purchase anything: lack of time, lack of attention, lack of interest or unforeseen occurrences. All these reasons shouldn’t be a problem for a business.

Newsletters, social media, discounts, personal notifications on the status of an abandoned chart are a few of the available solutions. We shouldn’t interrupt our interaction with clients only because a consumer forgets about us!

Marketing automation solutions could really help in this phase, especially concerning personalized discounts and notifications.

STEP FIVE: Purchase

The purchase process should be easy and secure: clients need to feel safe to provide their personal details and should have the possibility to customize this experience accordingly to their needs.

Can they choose the shipping method?
Do they have an estimated delivery time?
Can they track their purchases?
Is a gift packaging an available option?

STEP SIX: The Unboxing

Once the customer has its product, it is important to continue our communication – even if we haven’t any other product to offer.

Inside the box we need to offer our customers:

• A card in which we thank them for their purchase and ask to leave a feedback;
• A return form if they need to change the product;
• A business card with our social media accounts and contacts.

UNEXPECTED STEP: The Problem

Problems happen and there are only two things that we can do: try to prevent them and try to resolve them in the best way possible.

If a consumer has a problem, we have to be available (it is even better if we are available 24/7) and we need to quickly find a solution: we can’t just postpone the reply because we don’t know what to say or what to do. In these cases, timing is essential: it’s our duty to try our best to speed the process and keep the customer up-to-date about the status of its request.

Sometimes, to be heard, customers who have a problem leave an online review. Remember:

• Contacts should be easy to find;
• Promptly replies should be the rule.

If you haven’t already, learn more about chatbot!

Do you need to understand in a more specific way which is the purchase journey of your target audience and how to reach them?
Contact us for a first advice.