Today, most consumers choose to use social media to explore new brands and products. While some buy from the social media platforms, others navigate to brand sites to make the purchase, leading to most of social media revenue being underreported! 

Due to the difference in the paths consumers take to engage with brands or buy from them, businesses can be seen struggling to set aside the right resources - often guessworking their way through it. 

That’s where creating an eCommerce customer journey map for social media comes into play. 

In this post, we’re going to share everything you need to know about what a customer journey map is, why it is important and how to set it up. 

What is an eCommerce customer journey map? 

Today an average person spends over two and a half hours per day scrolling through social media. That's more than a shopper spending time on your website or landing page. 

So, it's easier for brands to grab the attention of their potential customers on social media, where they're already spending a considerable amount of time daily. However, it's easier said than done. 

Competition is high, and the unfollow button is just a click away. 

So brands need to be prompt in understanding the customer's requirements and pain points of their frustrations and solve them with their brand offering. Brands can only hit the bull's eye without going wrong by creating a customer journey map. 

From a social media perspective, a customer journey map visually represents how your prospective customers interact with your brand on different social media channels. For example, they may discover the product on Facebook, follow you on Instagram to educate themselves more, and finally purchase from TikTok. 

Why is an eCommerce customer journey map important? 

While mapping a customer’s journey may seem like a daunting task, here’s why we think it is worth the effort: 

1. Analyze competition 

As Statista mentions, eCommerce sales are projected to reach USD 4.9 trillion, with retail global sales targeted at 24.5% by 2025. This means that the opportunity for eCommerce brands is huge, but it also means that the competition is tough. 

Brands that get to know their customers well and reach them first have a competitive advantage over their peers. A customer journey map helps the brand to know its customers well so that it can strategize its sales and marketing efforts at the right touch points on social media.  

2. Identify converting channels 

Today, customers discover a product on one social channel and may purchase it on another. Or they may save it for later on social media and purchase it from the brand site. This multi-touch shopping behavior makes it difficult for brands to channel their efforts. 

Customer journey maps help brands to identify the key social channels that bring them actual store site visitors, and sales. This helps optimize campaigns to focus on enabling seamless buying journeys. 

3. Minimize bounce rate

We surveyed 1000 online US shoppers that started their shopping journey on a social media platform and found that the average cost of a customer bouncing off a brand website is USD 5.11. 

Customers who click through social to the product page and face any issues bounce off - and it’s more common than you think! 

Our research also found that 73% of online shoppers do not purchase after a bounce. This leaves a considerable gap, and brands leave money on the table. Customer mapping can help brands identify the points at which shoppers bounce.  

What are the key stages a social shopper goes through? 

A typical online shopping journey of a social shopper includes the following stages: 

• Brand awareness - As many as 60% of new customers discover new brands and products through social media channels, ads, or influencer collaborations.
• Research - Customers spend enough time researching and learning more about a brand on social media. This can be by reading reviews of other buyers, checking out the influencers the brand has collaborated with, or reading posts where the brand has been tagged. 
• Consideration and evaluation - At this stage, the buyer is considering the product. They are most likely comparing with other players in the category, asking questions to the brand via DMs and comments, and collating information to make informed decisions.
• Conversion or purchase - Once the customer has verified all the information, they can purchase through the social media app by clicking through the brand link on the app.

‍

How to create an eCommerce customer journey map for social media  

There are several ways to approach setting up eCommerce customer journey maps for social shoppers. But here are the steps we recommend following: 

1. Defining the customer persona

Most eCommerce brands do it wrong while defining their customer persona. They gather general demographic details to create a generalized customer persona. 

What they miss doing and what you should be doing is considering their purchase behavior, previous purchase history, and motivations to purchase online. 

Once you gather these details, you can create a narrow customer segment and hyper-target it. Here's an example of how your ideal customer persona should look like: 

‍

2. Understand their pains and goals

Once your customer persona is ready and you have segmented them, deep dive to understand what your buyers want to achieve - do they want to gather more reviews for reassurance or are they looking for the best deals? 

For instance, they may seek shopping assistance through direct messages on social media, but expect you to direct them to the product from the chat so they can make the purchase. Or they could use social media to engage with your brand, evaluate the options they have and then head over to your site to learn more. 

The idea is to understand their pains and goals to give them the shopping assistance they need at that stage. 

3. Map all the touch points

Try to look for every touch point and map them in your social media customer journey. Instead of looking at one channel at a time, look at the entire journey holistically, and map them as before, during and after purchase touch points. 

For example, DMs on social media can come in handy as before and during a purchase cycle. At the same time, retargeting shopping ads may be better to recover sales lost to cart abandonment. 

4. Set defined business goals and objectives 

As you map each touchpoint for your customers, ensure that you also assign a key performance metric. This metric should be a clear indication of whether the social media touchpoint is successful at driving the results you really need at that stage of the buyer journey. 

This can include increasing your share of voice, visitors to website, customer account page sign ups, wishlists created, products purchased, discounts availed in correlation to the promotions you’re running and the overall revenue generated from social commerce. 

5. Check your behavioral flow

Look at the social media path the customer is taking to reach the point of making a purchase from you. For example, you might be driving in a considerable amount of traffic to your site through Instagram, but the traffic that converts comes through the Snapchat ad campaigns. 

You can map the behavioral flow using Google Analytics or an eCommerce analytics tool that gives you a complete picture of the social commerce funnel. This way you can align your social budgets towards the funnel stage that leads to actual sales. 

6. Prioritize your social media channels 

Based on the different touchpoints, the business objective you have set for each and the stages of the funnel they service, assign priority to the platforms. With social media advertising spends and customer acquisition costs increasing by the day, doing so helps keep your budgets in check. 

This can also help you identify and use the right social commerce features on the right platforms - which can have a direct impact on how long it takes the buyer to make a purchase from your brand site. 

7. Measure and optimize 

No matter how thorough you are with creating an online shopping journey for your target audience, they may choose to take a different path. The goal of setting up a customer journey map is to be able to map their preferences closely and adapt to suit their preferences. 

Recommend how your audience is using each of the social media touchpoints you have set up. This helps set up marketing campaigns and social commerce features accordingly. 

Conclude 

The customer acquisition cost (CAC) for eCommerce brands has increased by 50% in the last five years as there is a sharp rise in competition among brands. 

Having a customer journey mapped for social media can help you understand clearly about your target audience and where they are spending their time. This can help you minimize the CAC and acquire customers more efficiently. 

Additionally, customer journey mapping also helps you measure the right metrics that aid business goals. So, if you’re not mapping your customer journey for social media yet, this is your cue to get started. 

‍

Download the Social Commerce Returns Playbook for insights on the social commerce returns experience, including consumer behavior, return rates, and strategies for improvement.

‍