Quick Info:
| Why care? | You have less than 7 seconds to ensure your shopper can find what they’re looking for on your website before they get frustrated and you lose the sale. |
| Cost: | FREE |
| Who should do this: | All businesses with a website |
| Platform: | You have less than 7 seconds to ensure your shoppers can find what they’re looking for on your website before they get frustrated and you lose the sale. |
| How? | Read on… |
What is a customer journey?
When I talk about customer journeys, what I’m referring to is the steps that a person will take from becoming aware of you to becoming a repeat purchaser/brand advocate.
There are many different steps in that process, and today we want to look specifically at the stages of consideration and purchase, through the lens of your website shopping experience.
It begins from the moment they open your website and marks every interaction they have with your business until they make a purchase or leave.
That way, you can see how easy/complicated it is for your audience to arrive at your desired destination (the sale).
Travel the journeys yourself to spot holes
Our goal here is to make this as easy as possible. The more complicated it is, the more likely the person is to lose interest and leave.
First, consider all of the places this looker may have arrived from and where they landed:
Google? -> Homepage?
Social Media? -> Hopefully you were able to provide a specific link to help them find what they’re looking for.
Email? -> You absolutely should provide them with a specific link to the new collection you just released.
Next, ask yourself these questions:
- How many clicks does it take to get from the place they land to the cart?
- Can you easily navigate from one page to another without having to go back to the homepage?
- How easy is it to get lost in other parts of your website?
Simplify It
As a rule, you want your customers to reach their destination in less than seven seconds, and in as few clicks as possible.
On each page, I like to include:
- The main objective of the page itself
- A brief ‘About’ section with a link to the full page if more info is desired
- A highlighted collection, or ‘best sellers’ so the chopping process can start on any page
- Clear, understandable links out to any other pages.
Remove any unnecessary clicks, distracting images, or past links that no longer work, and make the journeys so easy that even a child can navigate them!
Get Feedback from Outside Eyes
Once you’ve taken a look yourself, it’s time to get outside feedback.
Pick a friend or person you trust to visit your website and navigate it.
Then, ask them to describe their customer journey:
- Where did they begin?
- Where did they end?
- How easy was it to get there?
- How many clicks did they use?
- Did they ever feel lost or distracted?
- Do they have any tips on making it better?
An outside opinion can be invaluable to the streamlining process because we often look at our own stuff all the time, so it’s easier for a fresh set of eyes to see things that we’ve become blind to.
Use their feedback to make any further adjustments.
Today’s task
✅ Ask a friend to give you honest feedback about how easy it is to navigate your website to find what they are looking for, using the guidelines above.
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