We share 5 proven ways to improve the e-commerce customer journey

    E-commerce_journey_blog

    Quick summary 

    This article highlights common e-commerce pain points, including high cart abandonment, poor website navigation, and low customer loyalty. It emphasizes how optimizing the customer journey through tools like TheyDo can address these challenges and improve experiences.

    Struggling with high cart abandonment or low customer loyalty?

    A poorly optimized e-commerce customer journey can be a silent revenue killer. From abandoned shopping carts to customers who never return, these challenges highlight the frustration of shoppers navigating a disjointed experience. Every friction point pushes your customers closer to competitors.

    The good news? These pain points are fixable.

    In this article we’ll share 5 proven ways to improve the e-commerce customer journey, helping you transform frustration into loyalty and missed opportunities into meaningful growth.

    But first...

    Why listen to us?

    At TheyDo, we've helped e-commerce leaders like bol.com optimize their customer journey. By combining big and small data, bol.com gained a deeper understanding of its 36,000+ partners. With TheyDo, they aligned teams, identified key customer needs, and prioritized actions based on real insights, driving growth and improving the partner experience.

    Why the e-commerce customer journey matters

    The e-commerce customer journey represents every step your customers take with your brand, from discovering your products to their post-purchase experience. It spans multiple touchpoints, such as browsing your website, engaging with your emails, or seeking support, and each interaction shapes their overall perception of your business. 

    A well-crafted journey ensures these interactions are seamless, personalized, and leave a lasting positive impression.

    Why does this matter? Because optimizing the customer journey directly affects three key areas:

    • Customer Retention: Happy customers are more likely to return.

    • Customer Satisfaction: A smooth journey fosters trust and loyalty.

    • Revenue Growth: Companies prioritizing the customer experience achieve up to 1.8x higher revenue growth than competitors.

    Vinted, the leading European second-hand fashion marketplace, optimized their checkout process using TheyDo’s Journey AI. By consolidating years of historical research, they gained a clearer understanding of their customer’s pain points, allowing them to improve the user journey and drive growth.

    The key takeaway: Optimizing your e-commerce customer journey isn’t just about improving isolated touchpoints; it’s about integrating valuable insights across the entire experience to address customer pain points and create a more cohesive, effective journey.

    5 ways to improve the ecommerce customer journey

    1. Map and understand your customer journey

    Mapping your customer journey is essential for understanding and optimizing the entire shopping experience. By visualizing every touchpoint a customer interacts with, you can identify areas for improvement and ensure a smoother, more cohesive journey.

    Why journey mapping matters

    Journey mapping involves outlining each step of the customer’s interaction with your business, starting from discovering your brand to making a purchase and beyond. This helps you uncover pain points, friction, or drop-off moments and gives you the insights needed to refine the experience. 

    Whether you're using whiteboards, spreadsheets, or digital tools, the goal is the same: capture every touchpoint and gain an understanding of how customers perceive each stage.

    Tools and techniques for journey mapping

    Using the right tools is key to efficient journey mapping. Our platform, TheyDo, provides a structured framework that helps visualize customer journeys clearly and cohesively. With Journey AI, TheyDo quickly turns qualitative and quantitative research into actionable insights, allowing teams to identify high-impact opportunities for improvement.

    By aligning teams around these insights, TheyDo ensures a unified approach to enhancing the customer journey, while offering a centralized repository for journey data. This makes it easier for cross-functional teams to collaborate and focus on driving real improvements across touchpoints.

    2. Personalize customer experiences

    Personalized experiences build trust and loyalty. When customers see product recommendations or offers that match their interests, they’re more likely to engage and make purchases. Studies show that 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that provides personalized experiences. Beyond driving sales, personalization fosters deeper relationships with customers, transforming them into brand advocates.

    Here are practical ways to tailor your customer experiences:

    • Product Recommendations: Use customer browsing and purchase history to suggest items they’re likely to want. For instance, a shopper browsing hiking gear could see recommendations for complementary items like backpacks or waterproof boots.

    • Dynamic Email Marketing: Create email campaigns that address customers by name, reflect their past behavior, and suggest items they might find interesting. Segment your audience by demographics, purchase patterns, or engagement levels to make emails even more relevant.

    • Custom Landing Pages: Use targeted landing pages tailored to different customer segments. For example, a page highlighting winter apparel for customers in colder climates.

    • Exclusive Offers: Reward loyal customers with discounts or promotions based on their purchasing habits or milestones like birthdays or anniversaries.

    3. Optimize your website for seamless navigation

    A seamless website navigation experience is essential for keeping customers engaged and guiding them toward making a purchase. However, even the most user-friendly websites can face obstacles that slow down or frustrate the customer journey. 

    This is where TheyDo’s eCommerce Customer Journey Mapping comes into play. Here's how it can help:

    Pinpoint pain points

    By mapping user interactions, you can spot areas where customers encounter difficulties, such as complex navigation paths, cluttered product categories, or unresponsive elements. For example, if data shows a significant drop-off after customers land on a product page, this could indicate unclear navigation or slow load times.

    Use journey insights to improve design

    TheyDo's platform integrates both qualitative and quantitative data, so you can identify gaps between expectations and actual experiences. If customers are repeatedly struggling with specific site features, such as a confusing checkout process or poor mobile optimization, you’ll have the clarity needed to act. 

    For instance, streamlining your navigation with fewer clicks to key areas or redesigning a page with intuitive CTAs (call-to-action buttons) could significantly improve user experience.

    Cross-team collaboration

    Journey Mapping through TheyDo provides a centralized view for your team, allowing marketing, design, and development teams to work together to address pain points across both digital and in-store experiences. By aligning teams around shared customer insights, you ensure everyone is on the same page when optimizing the journey.

    Track & measure impact

    After making adjustments, it’s crucial to track how these changes influence customer behavior. With TheyDo’s built-in analytics, you can continuously monitor improvements and identify further opportunities to refine the journey, ensuring the website’s performance is always aligned with customer expectations.

    4. Strengthen post-purchase engagement

    Post-purchase support is critical to fostering loyalty, reducing churn, and turning first-time buyers into repeat customers. By implementing thoughtful post-purchase strategies, you can turn first-time buyers into lifelong customers.

    Why post-purchase engagement matters

    • Trust Building: Timely updates and support reassure customers and boost confidence in your brand.

    • Retention Impact: Exceptional post-purchase experiences increase the likelihood of repeat purchases by up to 60%.

    Ideas to enhance post-purchase engagement

    • Streamline Order Tracking: Offer real-time updates on shipping and delivery via email, SMS, or app notifications. 

    • Reduce Purchase Barriers: Using customer feedback tools like Qualtrics integrated with TheyDo, you can gather insights and detect potential dissatisfaction early. AI-driven insights can be used to proactively address issues before they escalate, enhancing customer satisfaction.

    • Proactively Resolve Issues: Use customer feedback tools and AI-driven insights to identify and address potential dissatisfaction before customers reach out.

    • Engage Beyond Delivery: Follow up with personalized recommendations, loyalty incentives, or satisfaction surveys to keep customers engaged post-purchase.

    • Focus on Post-Purchase Loyalty Programs: Reward returning customers with exclusive perks, personalized offers, or early access to new products. This fosters long-term relationships and increases lifetime value.

    5. Use data to identify and address pain points

    Leveraging customer data is essential for continuous improvement and enhancing the overall customer experience. By consistently gathering and analyzing data, businesses can uncover valuable insights into pain points within the customer journey, which can then be addressed to optimize the entire process.

    To effectively collect actionable insights, businesses need to use a combination of tools and methods, such as:

    • TheyDo’s Journey Mapping tool: ensures a structured view of the entire customer journey, enabling businesses to track interactions, measure satisfaction, and prioritize areas for enhancement. 

    • Surveys: Directly asking customers for feedback through surveys helps identify specific issues, preferences, and areas for improvement.

    • Analytics Platforms: Platforms like Google Analytics, customer behavior tracking tools, and heatmaps provide valuable data on user engagement, drop-offs, and interaction patterns across different touchpoints.

    • Customer Feedback Systems: Regularly collecting feedback through post-interaction surveys, support tickets, and social listening allows businesses to stay updated on customer sentiment and pain points.

    Manage your e-commerce customer journey with TheyDo

    Improving the e-commerce customer journey is key to building loyalty, increasing revenue, and standing out in a competitive market. From journey mapping to omnichannel integration, the right strategies drive meaningful results.

    And tools like TheyDo make this process smarter and more effective.

    At TheyDo, we empower businesses with cutting-edge journey management tools. Our AI-driven insights, seamless collaboration features, and centralized framework help identify and optimize touchpoints, ensuring a tailored and impactful customer experience.

    Get started for free at TheyDo and start transforming your e-commerce customer journey today!