Known as customer experience mapping, customer journey optimisation is essential both online and off. Offline whilst a walk through your store will often tell you all you need to know about where your business is excelling and where things have gone wrong, crafting a smooth customer journey online is a little more complex.

For owners of ecommerce websites in particular, ensuring a smooth customer journey can mean the difference between getting consumers to the point of checkout and scaring them away. With news that UK shoppers spend more online than any other country in the world, crafting the perfect customer journey on your website has never been so important. In this blog post, our web design experts reveal their top tips so you can create a succinct, seamless journey for your target audience.

Do your own walk (or click) through 

The walk through is integral to customer journey optimisation offline, so why shouldn’t it be online too? Your walk/click through will tell you how your website delivers through your customer’s eyes so leave no stone unturned. Cover the entire customer journey through various points of entry. Whether your customer has entered the website through your social media channels, organically, via a PPC landing page or another point, map each and every path making detailed notes as you go.

Get others within your organisation, or ideally those completely detached from your business, to do the same. You’re certain to discover more from every account.

Take hints from your customers

Your existing customers have been there and done that, so don’t be afraid to ask about their experiences. Your customers’ experiences are integral to painting a full picture during journey mapping and will provide vital insights that may help you account for the drop offs and missed opportunities that are so common across all industries. Without this primary insight from customers, you won’t be able to generate the customer-led experience you intend to.

Your employees may also have various ideas about why or how your current customer journey is faltering so request feedback from workers at all levels.

Go back to the drawing board

Whether your research has highlighted just one or two areas of improvement, or signalled that an entire overhaul is required to get your brand and its customer experience on track, going back to the drawing board is essential for rectifying any issues identified. As well as noting our golden rules for ecommerce web design to make your customer journey clearer, work on the content that populates your pages.

Calls to action may seem like a small part of the equation, but work to direct visiting consumers to where they need to be. These CTA tips will help you transform your web pages for better conversion. Whatever direction your customer journey research takes you however, acknowledging and remedying customer frustrations will give you all you need to better connect the second time round and tailor the experience for improved interaction.

Want to improve your customer journey by updating your website? Let our designers and developers get to work on creating a platform that really resonates with your audience.