As a business owner, it is crucial to understand what your customers go through from the time they become aware of your product or service to the point where they make a purchase or become a client.
This journey, from initial awareness to final purchase, is commonly known as the user journey or customer journey. Understanding your customer’s journey is necessary for developing a strong strategy for your business, and it can help you build a more effective and a personalised experience for your customers.
What is a user journey?
A user journey is the series of steps a customer takes to interact with your products or service. The user journey can involve several stages, depending on your business, such as awareness, consideration, conversion, retention, and advocacy.
Another way of thinking about it is through these three key areas – Interest, Information and Inspiration.
Attract Interest
Interest is where a potential customer hears about your business and starts learning about your products or services. Typically, this is when potential customers find you through social media, advertising, search engines or referrals.
The person is considering what you offer, and getting a sense of who you are as well as your business. You want people to get to know you, like you and trust you so you are going to want to attract people to connect with you who will understand your motivations so you will be speaking to this audience who are interested in learning more about who you are and what you do.
Be Informative
The user may seek out additional information about your products, read reviews and compare you to competitors, in order to determine whether or not your product or service will meet their needs. At this point they may not have yet reached out to you, so they are basing all their insights into what they can find.
Thinking about why they are interested in what you are saying, your information will guide them to get to know you. Are you saying things that make your audience reactive to your ideas and viewpoints? What do you do with a user once they have started responding to your information – what journey do you take them on?
Inspire your audience
Inspiration happens when the user makes a decision about purchasing your product or service. They will initiate a relationship and want to build trust with you, utilising your products or services.
Inspiration helps users to talk about you to others, to refer you. They like what you offer and want to tell others about you. You want to continue to share your knowledge and information with your user, nurturing your relationship with the customer even further. For example, you may send out further information and offers to retain customer satisfaction, build up new opportunities or guide users to other items they may find interesting.
In order to develop a strong user journey, a business owner needs to understand the customer’s pain points and how the business can help them solve their issues. Business owners should start by reviewing their existing user journey and identifying any gaps and issues.
How do you create a strong customer experience?
The first step in creating a strong customer experience is to identify your target audience and understand what drives their decision-making process. Is your product or service something they want or need? How do they prefer to learn more about products or services? Create a clear path to purchase. The path to purchase must be easy to follow, with simple and clear calls-to-action. Your website and/or materials must be user-friendly and easy to navigate, and customers should be able to find what they are looking for with minimal effort.
Personalisation is vital in developing a strong user journey. Speak directly to your customer base, who will appreciate a personalised interaction with a business that take the time to understand their needs. Business owners can personalise the user journey by delivering targeted messaging and content based on the customer’s specific requirements, past behavior or purchasing history. You want to be able to get to the heart of what a person requires, and present information that speaks to this desire, and inspires the person to take the step forward.
By providing a seamless and effective user journey, you can increase your chances of attracting and retaining customers. Understanding the user journey and leveraging it to create a positive customer experience will ensure that businesses can build brand loyalty and ultimately, drive growth through interest, information and inspiration.
If you are looking for advice join the Blue Ninja Membership Academy today to help you move forward with your user journey.
