Digital Customer Journey: Stages, and How to Optimize It for Sales

Mapping and optimizing the digital customer journey is key to creating successful connections with customers online. Customers form the core of organizations, yet Forrester’s 2024 Customer Experience Index highlights that a mere 3% of companies are consumer-focused.

These brands leave no stone unturned to make their users’ lives easier and fulfill their wants across touchpoints, from awareness to retention.

Learn strategies to boost customer engagement, improve retention, and drive higher profits with an optimized digital customer journey.

What is the digital customer journey?

The digital customer journey is the process a customer goes through when interacting with a brand online, from first awareness of a product or service to the final purchase and return. It maps the steps and touchpoints that customers experience as part of their decision-making process.

These include websites, social media platforms, email campaigns, search engine results, chatbots, mobile apps, and digital ads. A well-designed digital journey ensures that all of these marketing channels are cohesive and aligned with customer expectations.

Stages of the digital customer journey

Your customers embark on a journey from the discovery stage (point A) to the purchase (point B) point. Along the way, they interact with your brand to guide their decision, forming the basis for the digital customer journey.

For instance, your potential customers start their digital customer journey by becoming aware of your products and services. Through a series of virtual interactions, they learn more about your company, what you do best, and how you fare against your competitors before making a purchase.

To understand the digital customer journey, let’s explore its different stages, including: 

• Awareness: the first step in the digital customer journey is kick-started when an individual realizes a need for a product or service, like a new pair of sneakers or house cleaning. This need encourages them to go online and become aware of digital brands poised to fulfill their needs and desires. 
• Consideration: by this point, the individual has an inkling of what you do and is considering your company. So, they might engage with your brand, ask questions, and research further.
• Decision: when the individual decides to move forward with your brand, they make a purchase or complete a transaction and go from a qualifying lead to a paying customer.

• Retention: customer retention is the stage where companies offer post-sale service and ask customers for their feedback or leave a review, to turn them loyal and retain them for the foreseeable future.

Dive deep to discover your customers’ pain points and the decision paralysis keeping them from completing the cycle. However, not every customer will face similar issues or falter at the finish line for the same reasons. That’s where the personalization and digital footprint solution comes in.

Tips and tricks to improve the digital customer journey

Here are a few tips and tricks to ensure your customers always have a seamless digital customer journey.

1. Integrate CRM systems for better customer data management

Integrating CRM (customer relationship management) tools with customer mapping solutions will provide valuable insights. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes peek at their needs, wants, and preferences, ensuring your online advertising budget is put to good use and enhances your conversion rates.

Simultaneously, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of their points of contention. These insights will help you troubleshoot the issues, tweak the touchpoints based on consumer feedback, and offer customized solutions to users on the fence.

2. Create seamless transitions between channels

Although you want to meet your customers where they are and engage with them to drive awareness and boost conversion rates, a disconnect between your digital channels, like your social media channels and email marketing, can lead to confused users. You could also integrate social media into your website to enhance success.

To ensure your users have a seamless transaction each time, your digital channels must all work in tandem. Additionally, you don’t want to miss lucrative opportunities to answer their queries or engage with them, so be active and interact with your customers every step of the way.

3. Collecting feedback in the customer journey

You can follow the customer mapping journey best practices and still not see the desired results if you aren’t collecting feedback regularly. Make it a practice to share feedback forms with customers to discover the things you need to refine.

Go a step further and conduct interactive surveys with potential and existing customers to find their pain points in general and improve their digital journey with confidence.

4. Use A/B testing to optimize digital touchpoints

Want to become a customer-focused brand? Conduct split testing, aka A/B testing, and put forward two versions of your digital touchpoints for your users to test and vote on. 

Segregate them into two groups and expose each group to one variation of your ad, UX, or another digital touchpoint to gather data about which variation performs the best. As an example, you can test your cookie banner to find the version that gains the most consent and collects more customer data.

5. Incorporate reviews and social proof to build trust at critical stages

Incorporate reviews and social proof to build trust at critical stages and make it easier for your customers to make actionable decisions. This will help you build trust, ease their concerns, and show them how happy your existing customers are with your product or service, encouraging them to take similar action.

Common pitfalls to avoid in digital customer journeys

To anticipate and fulfill customers’ demands and stop your e-shop from losing customers, businesses must avoid common pitfalls. 

For instance, not optimizing their site for mobile devices. Ignoring to optimize your site for phones can become a glaring issue for your consumers.

Similarly, avoid overcomplicating the checkout process. Try to make it as smooth and seamless as possible. Offer one-click checkouts if possible.

You also don’t want to lose any opportunities to personalize communication, like various types of pop-ups, emails, or special offers, for different buyer personas. 

KPIs for digital customer journeys

While following a few tips and tricks will improve your customer’s digital journey, how do you measure their success? Through KPIs (key performance indicators) like: 

• Conversion rate: shows the number of website visitors that reach the fulfillment stage.
• CLTV (customer lifetime value): it measures the earnings of your company from a customer during the course (lifetime) of their account with you.
• CAC (customer acquisition cost): refers to the amount you spend to acquire a new consumer.
• Bounce rate: highlights the number of website visitors who leave without taking the desired action.
• CSAT (customer satisfaction score): this score conveys whether your product, service, and mapped digital journey satisfy user needs.
• Cart abandonment rate: computes the number of consumers who add your products to their shopping cart but leave without placing an order.
• NPS (net promoter score): this indicator looks at your customers’ willingness to recommend your business to their social circle to quantify customer loyalty.

Conclusion

By understanding the stages of the customer journey, from awareness to advocacy, businesses can deliver personalized experiences that meet customer expectations at every touchpoint.

An optimized customer journey isn’t just about driving sales; it’s about fostering loyalty and trust. By focusing on the customer needs and pain points, you can build lasting relationships, and keep customers satisfied.

Read also about ways to increase user engagement on your website