Customer Journey: Understanding How Your Customers Use Digital Platforms

Australian consumers are increasingly turning to digital platforms when it comes to their shopping habits. Monthly online retails sales in June 2024 totaled more than $4 million dollars in Australia. This statistic makes it clear that understanding how customers interact with your business online is more vital than ever. Small businesses have a golden opportunity to foster more personalized, closer relationships with their customers, which is imperative to boosting sales and increasing customer satisfaction. However, it is important to have a clear understanding of the journey customers take when interacting with your businesses online.

What is the Customer Journey?

You could think of a Digital Customer Journey as a map that outlines the entire experience a customer has with your business, from the moment a customer becomes aware of your brand, right through to post-purchase experience. It includes every interaction a customer has, including website visits, social media engagement, or whether they read your emails. It’s important for businesses to map their customer journey, as it provides valuable insights into needs, behaviours, and pain points, which provides an opportunity for businesses to make improvements and deliver a more personalized experience.

How Digital Platforms fit within the customer journey

With an increased reliance on digital technology, consumers are spending more time interacting with businesses across multiple digital channels – social media, websites, apps, and email. Each of these platforms represents a touchpoint in the customer journey and understanding how customers interact with them can help create a seamless experience, encouraging repeat buyers.

For example, a customer may become aware of a business through a social media post, visit the website to find out more information, and then choose to subscribe to email updates. Ensuring that customers can seamlessly move from one platform to the next can make it a satisfying experience for the customer, increasing the chances of the journey ending in a sale.

Digital platforms are not only beneficial to customers, but to businesses too. These platforms are another way to capture valuable customer data, allowing businesses to analyse how customers are interacting with them and keep track of pain points, contributing to strategic decision making for businesses.

Why mapping out a Digital Customer Journey is important

Mapping out a Digital Customer Journey involves identifying all the key touchpoints a customer has with your business online. These touchpoints generally include:

• Business website
• Social media channels
• Email campaigns
• Mobile Apps
• Any other digital platforms customers use to interact with your business (third party websites, discord servers etc).

Once these touchpoints have been identified and mapped out, it provides businesses with the foundation to understand their customer’s needs, behaviours, and goals and identify the ideal target market.

Having these target markets on hand allows businesses to modify the touchpoints of the customer journey, making it more personalized. For example, first-time website visitors may see different messaging on the website when compared to return visitors. Personalising customer journeys in this way ultimately leads to a more positive experience for customers.

Would you like to deepen your understanding of the customer journey and learn how to optimize it across the digital platforms of your business? We invite you to join our upcoming workshop, led by marketing expert George Green, who will guide you through the process of mapping the customer journey, identifying and resolving pain points, and crafting a seamless digital experience for your customers. Register here.

Delivered by Business Foundations as part of the Digital Solutions program.