An ecommerce business might be your Field of Dreams, but there’s no guarantee that if you build it, customers will come. In reality, you need more than a great product or service—you need to know exactly who your customers are and have a marketing strategy that matches their online customer journey.
“You can’t see what somebody looks like behind the screen,” says direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing expert Nik Sharma on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. “But you can understand the type of person you’re going after and then build a pathway for them.” By mapping the digital customer journey, you can guide members of your target audience from awareness to purchase and beyond.
What is the digital customer journey?
The digital customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a product or brand, from first recognizing their need to post-purchase referrals. In today’s world of omnichannel experiences, digital customer journeys are rarely linear and can vary depending on the type of product you offer.
When reviewing the customer journey, consider what author Daniel Pink calls “system one” (intuitive) and “system two” (rational) thinking. Sometimes the customer journey should reduce friction and help them quickly make an emotion-based, system-one decision. Other times, it should provide detailed information to help a customer slow down and make a methodical, system-two decision.
The digital customer journey doesn’t end with the sale. Once a customer makes a purchase, the goal is to convert them into loyal fans who
Stages of the digital customer journey
Understanding the five stages of the digital customer journey will help you empathize with buyers and design a digital customer journey map that accurately reflects each phase:
1. Awareness
The awareness stage occurs when a potential customer has identified a problem but doesn’t yet know the solution. This is when they may first seek out your brand. During this discovery phase, the consumer seeks educational content and gathers information.
For example, an office manager might be tired of constantly replenishing the office’s coffee supply. They know they need a steady stream of dark roast coffee but aren’t sure about a solution. Through research, they discover coffee subscription services that make weekly deliveries.
Your goal is to reach the customer at the point of awareness. In the coffee supply example, this might look like running Google search ads for “coffee subscription” searches. Or it might look like building brand awareness so that potential customers already know about your brand when they realize they could use your products or services. For example, the coffee subscription service could partner with influencers who make content about office management and organization.
2. Consideration
In the consideration stage, the customer has identified a solution to their problem and evaluates their options. This is your chance to convince them you have the right product or service to solve their problem and that it’s a better option than the competition. For example, the office manager might now have a short list of ecommerce stores that stock dark roast beans and offer a subscription model.
Highlighting your unique value proposition (UVP) on your website and marketing materials can help you remain competitive and tip the scale in your favor. Can customers request different grinds? What delivery frequencies do you offer? A coffee subscription service website should answer these questions for potential customers.
3. Decision
The customer has now compared their options and is ready to purchase. In this pivotal moment, committing to your brand should be easy. Your purchase process should communicate value and reliability, and your checkout flow must be seamless to prevent cart abandonment.
Showcase positive reviews that provide reassurance and social proof, or offer an accelerated checkout option, like Shop Pay. At this point, our example coffee roaster ensures all subscription options are displayed clearly and described in detail so the potential customer feels confident in their choice.
4. Retention
Acquiring a new customer can be five to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing customer. To improve this part of the journey, gather valuable insight into the customer experience, like what problems they’re trying to solve and what motivates them to buy. Customer retention strategies involve tweaking your product to improve the customer experience and messaging accordingly to encourage future purchases.
During the retention stage, the coffee subscription service might maintain relevance with the office manager by sending emails about coffee accessories, exclusive offers on new roasts, and subscription anniversary gifts.
5. Advocacy
The best customers recommend your business to their friends, who then become loyal customers. Leverage customer-generated content like testimonials and word-of-mouth marketing to help build broader brand awareness. Referral programs are also a great opportunity to incentivize advocacy and customer loyalty.
How to perfect the digital customer journey
- Outline the five stages
- Create buyer personas
- Test the user’s journey
- Reduce friction
- Make it personal
- Review and improve
A digital customer journey map is a visual representation of all the touchpoints your customer has with your brand online—like email marketing, webpages, and social media posts. When you view the digital journey across multiple channels, you can identify gaps that might prevent potential customers from making a purchase. Here’s how:
1. Outline the five stages
Begin by creating a customer journey map that charts how a customer might move through the five stages of awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. Jot down all the touchpoints (moments when a customer interacts with your business) across digital channels, and organize them into each stage. These customer touchpoints might include:
- Paid ads
- Social media interactions
- Organic search results
- Emails (onboarding, marketing, support, renewal notices, etc.)
- Online reviews
Customer touchpoints shape the customer’s perspective of your brand and influence whether or not they’ll purchase your product. During the customer journey mapping process, pay attention to how each interaction feeds into the next.
2. Create buyer personas
To optimize your digital customer journey, you must deeply understand your customer. Creating buyer personas can help foster this deep understanding. This helps you consider the specific pains of your unique persona and speak directly to their problems in their terms.
Determine what social media platforms they use, their fears and goals, and the information they need to decide to purchase. Summarize this in a profile for your team to use for product development and sales messaging.
3. Test the user’s journey
Your digital customer journey map must reflect the realities of your customers’ journeys. Go through the process, putting yourself in your buyer persona’s shoes. Enlist your employees and friends to test the journey to flag moments of frustration or delight—from Googling to post-purchase. Be sure to include the product experience in this exercise; even unboxing is an important part of the customer experience.
4. Reduce friction
Shoppers abandon 70% of online shopping carts. If you don’t understand why, you’ll leave money on the table. Your customer journey map can help you identify opportunities to reduce friction and make it easier for customers to complete a purchase. Some examples of reducing friction include:
- Accepting multiple payment methods
- Removing confusing web copy from product descriptions
- Improving navigation
- Providing upfront information on shipping, returns, and taxes
5. Make it personal
Personalizing your customer journey can help you move more products (and fast-growing companies tend to be the ones that leverage personalization). Consider displaying personalized product recommendations on product pages based on previous interactions or purchases, or suggest contextual products during the checkout process.
Track website visitors with pixels (tracking code embedded in your website), then use dynamic retargeting ads to display the exact product the customer was browsing along with customized messaging. Using a tool like FERMAT, you can also customize the post-click customer experience, creating multiple versions of online shops or landing pages.
Tailor abandoned cart emails to reference the specific product they abandoned, including related or complementary product suggestions and a limited-time discount to push conversions.
6. Review and improve
Mapping your digital customer journey is not a “set it and forget it” exercise. There will always be something new to adjust for and new ways to create an exceptional experience that inspires customer loyalty. Customer expectations shift alongside digital trends, so keep an eye out for new forms of content you might incorporate, like virtual reality try-on technology. Stay abreast of competitor offerings to ensure you’re meeting market expectations.
Digital customer journey FAQ
What are the five stages of a digital customer journey?
The digital customer journey extends from the first time a customer hears about you to the review they leave post-purchase. It has five distinct phases: awareness, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy.
How do you create a digital customer journey?
The best way to create a digital customer journey is to start by clarifying who your buyers are and what their actions are when deciding whether to buy from you. Create customer personas, then map out every touchpoint your customer might have with your brand, from purchase to retention.
What data can you collect from a digital customer journey?
Using customer journey analytics, track customer interactions across different channels to measure how their behavior impacts business outcomes. For example, you might study website or mobile app engagement, conversion rates, ad click-through rates, repurchase rates, and customer feedback.
