From the moment a user lands on your page, you should take them on a journey from browser to buyer. Each step of the process requires different psychological factors and information. Knowing the phases your visitors go through and how to move them to the next one effectively makes a huge difference in your conversion rates.
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Their journey is intrinsically tied to the customer experience (CX). SuperOffice surveyed 1,920 business professionals about their priorities for the next five years. They found 45.9% of business leaders plan to focus on CX. When you run through the phases of the journey and try to make each layer offer the best CX possible, you create a winning combination.
How can you strengthen your buyer’s journey and turn visitors into leads? There are some steps you can take to improve the process and keep people engaged.
1. Know the Stages
The buyer’s journey has three distinct stages:
- Awareness – The buyer becomes aware of your product or brand as a potential solution to their problem.
- Consideration – They gather information and details about how your product works, the price and likely read reviews from others to see if it solved a similar problem.
- Decision – Final objections are overcome and the buyer puts the item in their cart and makes a purchase.
Knowing where your users are in the journey allows you to figure out the best language and content to move them to the next phase. Each page of your site should have a very distinct purpose tied toward moving them along.
2. Develop a Sales Process
The number one thing growing businesses need is a solid sales process. You need to know what your sales staff does if the buyer takes Path A versus Path B. Your sales process may change as your brand grows.
For example, if you have an inbound lead, who do you hand them off to. What happens if they ask for more information? What if they ghost you, how do you handle them going dark? When do you start pre boarding them?
The more solid your process, the better results you’ll have and the more conversions you’ll gain.
3. Answer the Right Questions
Talk to your current customers and find out what questions they had when they first learned about your company. You have to formulate content answering pain points buyers have at each phase of their journey.
If you do your job well and create solid FAQs and chatbots responding to common questions, you can move people to the next phase of the sales funnel with little additional effort. Your focus then turns to a personalized experience for each potential customer.
4. Show Them the Value
People want to know they’ll have a solid return on investment (ROI) when they buy from you. If you sell to other businesses, they want to know how your product helps them grow and bring in their own revenue. On the other hand, consumers want to know how your product solves their problem and saves them money.
Think about what makes your product unique from the competition. What value do you bring that competitors do not?
5. Retain Customers
Keeping the customers you have results in higher sales volume. Not only are they likely to buy from you again after a positive experience, but they’ll tell others and improve your word-of-mouth marketing.
Research shows companies have a 70% chance of selling to a current customer, but only a 20% chance of selling to a new prospect. Keeping your customers happy is a smart tactic to ramp up profits.
Part of your buyer’s journey should include follow-up after the sale. You want the customer to feel you appreciate their business and will be available and give them a similar positive interaction should they buy from you again.
6. Forget Linear Funnels
In the past, buyers went through a proverbial funnel with set layers. Today, they may start at any point in the journey, circle back and return. Think through the different reasons someone might be in the consideration stage, for example.
Someone might be learning about your brand for the first time. Alternatively, they may have already heard of your brand, considered it once and returned for additional details. Segmenting your audience gives you an opportunity to answer questions based on how familiar the person is with your business model.
You might even want to divide your landing pages into two or three options. Ask pertinent questions, such as whether they want information on A or B and direct them to the appropriate content best meeting their needs. Offering a more personalized experience gives you an edge over the competition.
7. Use Analytics
As your buyers go through each phase of the cycle, try to figure out what’s effective and what isn’t. With newsletters, you can see what the clickthrough rates are and make tweaks, so try to get users to sign up for a mailing list by offering a freebie, such as an ebook.
Look at heatmaps for your website. Where are people spending the most time? Conduct A/B tests and change things until you hit on the perfect conversion rates. The more information you have, the better you can serve your audience’s needs.
Research, Experiment and Repeat
Your buyer’s journey isn’t something you should revamp once and never look at again. Your customer base will change over time and your business model will grow. Take the time to research, try different tactics and run tests to see what works.
Then, repeat the process over and over, always trying something new to see what works with your potential customers. With ongoing efforts, your buyer’s journey will be one of the best around and your conversion rates will exceed industry averages.
Eleanor is the editor-in-chief of Designerly. She’s also a freelance web designer with a focus on customer experience. She lives in Philly with her husband and dog, Bear.