Advice for effective online customer journey maps
Customer journey mapping software can be an incredible business tool for increasing your company’s online sales, offering meaningful insights that can lead to enhanced user experiences—but it’s important to make sure that your business is getting the most out of your software. If you’re new to the world of online customer journey maps, these tips can help you start off strong!
Look for the complete picture
It’s important to be sure that your business is starting out with a mapping solution that can ensure that the entire digital customer journey is captured effectively—regardless of web traffic source or type of device used, and inclusive of your mobile application. Software that doesn’t account for mobile app insights is skipping at least half of the picture.
Look for tools that don’t require tagging in order to be effective. These tools include all activities and events from your website and mobile app in the journey map so you don’t miss anything. An average digital session includes around 1000 technical events; traditional analytic tools which require tagging only capture approximately 1-5% of these events. Even when you add or change your site or app, customer journey solutions which don’t require tagging automatically adjust the map, unlike traditional web analytics platforms.
Take advantage of visualization tools
Utilize the journey mapping solution to its fullest advantage by viewing data visualizations that make it easier to understand how customers are navigating your site. Visual diagrams of your business’ online customer journey map simplify the process of spotting trends, identifying problem areas, and streamlining navigation by presenting the information gathered in a format that is easy to understand and follow. Journey map visualizations can also be incorporated into internal presentations and communications to help show internal stakeholders what is and isn’t working effectively while illustrating growth over time.
Know how each stage fits in
When reviewing customer journey maps, it’s important to be able to see how each stage affects the ultimate outcome. While there are several ways to conceptualize the customer journey stages, consider this framework for online sales:
- Interest & Awareness: Ensure your brand is visible to your target audience by creating and growing awareness and interest.
- Search & Research: Create a strong SEO presence to support further visibility when potential customers search for products or research your brand.
- Purchase: Create a positive and efficient online and mobile app purchasing experience.
- Experience: Manage the post-sales experience for a positive final impression to ensure a return customer in the future.
Pair with session replay software for a deeper dive
The best session replay tools can offer the perfect complement to online customer journey maps to help you go deeper into a specific issue or customer interaction with your site or mobile app. Session replay software captures and stores every second a visitor spends on your website, allowing you to watch replays of specific sessions and gain information on an individual level in addition to the macro insights that a customer journey map provides.
Look for a session replay tool that captures both what the customer sees and what’s happening under the surface in your website or native mobile app. Being able to see device and browser details as well as failed API or AJAX calls will reduce the time your technical teams spend reproducing errors and help you improve the digital customer experience faster—before errors impact your bottom line.
Incorporate insights to guide business improvements
Don’t just let the information you’ve gathered lie around collecting dust—share the insights gained with teams across your organization in order to transform business growth and strategically strengthen online sales. Customer journey map tools that help you quantify abandonment at each stage can help you identify the areas with the strongest opportunities for growth to focus on first to optimize early gains.
Time to get to work!
By incorporating these tips into how your business uses customer journey maps, you’ll be able to make the most of the tools at your disposal in order to strengthen online sales and stay on a path to positive growth.
