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5 Step Customer Journey Map – Being Customer-Centric

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Most small business owners do not understand the importance of being customer-centric. They rarely understand that the wrong colors, verbiage, or even website layout can cost them sales every day. Smart customers are taking more control of digital innovation to reinvent the relationship between consumer and retailer.

“Build it and they will come does NOT work in today’s internet marketing environment,” Suzanne James

Customer trends are driving broad brand recognition that requires strong focus on customer experience management. This is not a onetime task. Today’s businesses cannot create a website and then expect it to perform indefinitely.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

This is a map that your marketing company outlines which allows you to walk through your website in your customer’s shoes as they interact with your company. When a marketing company bases this journey on solid research the customers are lead through the ‘buy now’ process reaching the call to action when they are ready to make a purchase.

There are 5 steps to selling to today’s customers.

1. Interaction

If you do not talk to your customers then you don’t know who is buying. Most of the people who visit a website are not interested in buying your product. They want information, entertainment, opportunities, and education. The only visitors a small business owner should focus on are the shoppers.

Once you identify the shoppers it is necessary to divide them into the comparison shoppers, researchers, and the ‘ready to buy’ shoppers. Their perspective and insights will be different than other demographics.

Once you identify your Target Demographic it is time to separate their ‘Must Have’ from their “Nice to Have.’  The customer may not even understand what their needs are. The business owner needs to understand how to educate the customer.

2. Design

A website design needs to create an easy to navigate journey through the buy now process. Smart Marketing companies never forget that the website also needs to incite an emotional response. There is no ‘one right way’ to approach the buy-now journey. Consumers should look and feel important to the organization. The website shouldn’t be purely illustrative.

Only 20% of people read articles, but most websites still write blogs that are uninteresting. This clearly disrespects the consumer, resulting in lost sales.

How many clicks between landing page and buy now page? This should never be more than 3 clicks, or scrolls. This doesn’t mean that you should add a buy now button on every page, or a contact page. It means that people should be able to find what they want, when they want.

3. Can you Understand the Journey?

If you cannot understand the buy now journey how can your consumers? The buy now journey should be easy to understand. It should engage and involve the consumers early in the process. It should be easy to follow so marketers can find holes in the process. It is important that the webmaster and analyst can track the consumer behavior on each page and improve low performing pages.

4. Take Action

Are you ready to take action to give consumers what they want? The journey should lead consumers to specific actions – not always buy now.

Don’t let them go? It is expensive and difficult to get people to your website, once there you should do everything possible to keep them.

5. Analytics

The moment you stop getting bigger is the moment you start getting smaller. This is true in all businesses. Analytics is the only way to measure what works, and what doesn’t.  It is the best way to prevent wasting money chasing after slow performing trends, or target demographics who do not want to buy.

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