Pathway to Purchase: Transforming Customer Interactions | Rebuy X Swap

3 things brands can do to improve their customer journey and lead the path to purchase | NOVOS

Identify your customer journeys and how to reach them at every stage

The first step is to really understand the needs and wants of your customers along every stage of their customer journey. This will help you to understand what content you should create and how you can reach them and guide them to conversion and retention. Generally we focus on 5 main stages:

• Research/Awareness
  What are the main problems your product solves that customers might be looking for information on before they know about your specific product? For example, a shop selling eye masks might target content about people struggling to sleep, or about light pollution.
• Consideration
  What USPs does your product have versus competitors and how can you make this clear to potential customers?
• Conversion
  How will the customer find your product and is your site optimised to target these terms? This stage is generally targeted by category or product pages. For example, do you have the right information architecture on your site? If people are searching for specific product variations, do you have the correct categories to rank for these? For example, if you sell sweatshirts, do you have colour/material specific subcategories. Look to see what Google is prioritising to see if you need to create new subcategories to target, should optimise PDPs, or optimise existing subcateogires for secondary terms.
• Post-Conversion
  What information does your customer need to look after, or use the produce that you are selling? What are common customer queries you receive and how can you answer them? Make sure you provide a seamless experience for customers even after they have purchased so they want to keep coming back.

Many paid channels tend to be focused mainly around the conversion stage of the customer journey, which has the highest ROI. This is to be expected, but the benefits of reaching more potential customers early in their purchasing journey should not be underestimated when building a long term strategy and brand.

 Build hubs of content around your key product categories

Once you understand your customer journey you can prioritise which categories are important to build expertise around. This should be based on a number of factors and informed by data, including overall search opportunity, importance to the business, average order value, and competition.

Focussing on building out the customer journey for key categories benefits both customers and SEO – it shows both you are an expert within a particular product niche, allowing you to reach more customers with top-of-funnel content, whilst also helping transactional pages to rank more effectively because you are seen as experts that deserve to rank by search engines.

A lot of this content may be beneficial for other channels to use; for example building a successful blog can help to generate email sign ups which can be used for retargeting. Similarly, the content created can be leveraged by channels such as email marketing.

Great content can also be used to build links back to the site, either passively, or active using Digital PR. This can help reach more customers, whilst also building the external authority of your site to help rank for competitive transactional keywords.

Create content that matches customer intent

One of the most common questions about content that is created with SEO in mind is:

“How many words should this content be?”

However, this is a question that focuses on the wrong thing. Instead of an arbitrary word count, you should instead think about what the intent behind a search is and what content best answers that intent both in terms of length and format.

For example, if you’re creating category content that introduces a customer to your product collection the intent is to simply get an introduction and understanding, therefore a brief bit of copy would do, alongside potentially some supplementary FAQs below the product listings to answer common questions about the product or service.

If you’re creating content around something like “how to tie a tie” we can see that the search results are very visual and particularly walk-through video based. You’re therefore unlikely to need a lot of word, but would definitely benefit from video content if you wanted to compete for this term.

For something like “how to structure an essay”, the intent is to get a detailed guide on how to write complex documents, therefore a longer form guide, signposted clearly by how to tackle the different sections of an essay are required, suited for much longer form guides.

Think about what the intent of your customer is first, and choose your content format and length to best answer this.

How transforming the customer journey unlocks growth for eCommerce business | Swap

Overcoming cross-border blockages 

As global ecommerce sales will reach $6.3 trillion in 2024, they mark a 8.76% increase from 2023, underscoring the immense opportunity for retailers to tap into international markets and drive significant revenue growth.

Highlighting  the urgent need for brands to adapt their operations to meet the demands of cross-border ecommerce,  retailers can evolve to stay competitive and thrive in this expanding landscape by understanding diverse consumer behaviors, regulatory requirements, and the logistical challenges associated with international trade.

Streamlining the customer journey to enhance the shopping experience means incorporating elements like Delivery Duty Paid (DDP) shipping, automated tax remittance, and efficient international returns logistics. Solutions like Swap Global can address many pain points, offering transparency and convenience for both customers and brands. By implementing these strategies, retailers can offer a seamless ecommerce experience and unlock new markets with customer loyalty. By transforming and optimizing the customer journey, retailers can unlock new avenues for scaling in the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape.

Leveraging integrated tech to consolidate operations 

Retailer’s growth strategies for ecommerce highlighted the challenges posed by fragmented tech solutions across operations, marketing, and customer service. This fragmentation increases costs and complicates the integration of data points critical for understanding customer behavior and optimizing business performance.

The discussion emphasized the limitations of basic, all-in-one solutions that lack flexibility and scalability. Participants agreed that consolidating tech stacks can streamline operations and enhance analytics by centralizing data sources. This consolidation not only reduces complexity but also frees up resources to act swiftly on insights gained from analytics, thereby driving proactive business decisions.

Swap, a versatile eCommerce operating system, offers customizable solutions tailored to a brand’s current needs while accommodating future growth without compromising on functionality or technological capability. This adaptability ensures that brands can evolve their eCommerce strategies in tandem with market demands and customer expectations.

The roundtable underscored the transformative potential of integrating cohesive and adaptable tech solutions to optimize the customer journey. By leveraging consolidated platforms like Swap, retailers can enhance efficiency, improve customer experiences, and unlock sustainable growth in the competitive eCommerce landscape.

Optimizing customer service performance with integrated operations 

The strategies to transform the customer journey with key insights revealed the critical role of customer service in driving business success. Studies show that 90% of American shoppers consider customer service pivotal in their decision to engage with a brand, and a positive experience can lead 93% of consumers to return for future purchases.

The roundtable also addressed the impact of poor customer service on brand loyalty, with 49% of consumers admitting they would switch brands due to unsatisfactory service within a year. Meeting the evolving expectations of ecommerce customers, who increasingly seek quick solutions, is a significant challenge. Providing self-service options for returns, lost parcels, package tracking, and managing cross-border logistics emerged as effective strategies to enhance customer satisfaction and increase customer lifetime value (LTV).

For instance, implementing self-serve customer care options has been shown to be crucial, with 35% of customers valuing access to fully automated solutions for issue resolution. The adoption of such technologies not only improves efficiency but also frees up customer service teams, allowing them to focus on more complex queries and strategic initiatives, ultimately driving business growth and fostering lasting brand loyalty.