How much attention have you given lately to the issue of customer journey touchpoints? Touchpoints are the places where people interact with your brand. As they do so, they move through a series of successive stages on their way to making a purchase. These stages are knows as the customer journey, or the buyer journey. It will be up to you to improve the effectiveness of these areas.
Keep Your Site Upgraded
The official website you’ve launched to represent your business will be one of your most crucial touchpoints in the customer journey, although not the only one by any means. If your online website is the only storefront you have, it’s even more important. Potential customers should be able to go to anywhere your digital footprint is to learn more about your business. However, your website is the final stop before sale.
For service-oriented businesses, your website is only one touchpoint along the customer journey, and not necessarily the last one. If someone can contact you via phone, email or social media to discuss your services, your website may serve as a stepping stone rather than a destination.
B2B vs B2C, Product vs Service
Understanding the distinction for your particular brand of consumer, whether B2B or B2C, service or product, is important. Your website has to fulfill the purpose your visitor is there for; this changes based on the type of client, and whether you sell products or services. This is where website optimization services and conversion rate optimization come in.
Providing a clean, fast, quality website is paramount for both types of consumers:
- Keep dead links cleaned out.
- Make sure you use quality graphics.
- Get rid of anything that slows down the loading time.
- Make sure it’s mobile friendly.
Providing appropriate content is just as important, however. This goes beyond the obvious on-page optimization, keyword research and other internal linking. The tone and target make a huge difference in how your potential customers respond.
B2C Products and Services
B2C products often require content with an emotional connection, because you’re reaching out to a singular person. This content includes quality descriptions that show your products in the best light. They should make buyers feel like your products will make their lives easier, impress their friends, or show off their lifestyle.
B2B Products and Services
B2B products often require content that is problem oriented. Companies want most to smooth the ripples that reduce the bottom line. Therefore, the content should provide points that offer a concise overview of how your product is going to solve the organization’s problem.
Another key aspect to focus on will be social proof. High quality testimonials from past customers and clients will raise up the value of your website as a touchpoint along the customer journey. They’ll help you to gain a much needed level of credibility. If enough people are convinced by these testimonials, your sales can easily go through the roof.
Freshen Up Your Live Chat Services
Another major customer journey touchpoint occurs at the level of live chat. Whether you like the little chat windows in the corner of the screen that follow you around the website or not, the fact remains that live chat can solve serious revenue problems. According to TechJury and LiveChat, a single instance can mean an extra $249 on average in your company’s piggy bank.
Barely 100 conversations can mean almost $25,000.
Why is Chat Such a Big Deal?
In short, customers enjoy using your live chat services because it gives them a chance to interact with your business. It means immediate sales assistance. They like to have all of their questions, concerns, and comments answered in a timely manner.
Chat services are, therefore, a strong touchpoint along the customer journey for your business. The more effort you put into them, the better.
Having a live chat service on your site can increase customer satisfaction and reduce the bounce rate. This naturally leads to a higher level of conversions, resulting in higher sales. To garner the full fruits of this upgrade, you need to make sure that you are handling each customer chat in a fully professional and courteous manner.
If you don’t have the resources available to handle chat without taking focus off of your other activities, don’t panic. This is a touchpoint that can handled by a chatbot service. You can load up the chatbot with automated responses to FAQ’s. You can also program the chatbot to prioritize important chats that you want to handle directly.
Increase Your Live Interaction on Social Media
Another area you need to frequently improve your presence on is social media. This is a very valuable touchpoint because it gives new customers an entry point into your business, and current customers a way to easily reach out. It’s the place where a great many people will learn for the first time what your business is all about. Your social media presence needs to be constant.
Over a third of all people who use social media on a day to day basis will have at least one business page that they subscribe to. Why can’t it be yours? To gain this valuable attention, you need to do all in your power to make yourself more visible. You need to be using the most effective social marketing in the form of both content and visuals.
Make sure to post content on a daily basis. Mix it up by posting blogs, video content, and plenty of announcements for new items, as well as relevant links throughout the web. Make sure to put someone in charge of directly answering questions and comments that followers leave. This will give your business a face customers can respond to and regard as a valuable customer journey touchpoint.
Step Up Your Level of Online Marketing
Your next step should be to upgrade your level of online marketing. Marketing devices such as PPC (Pay Per Click) ads are a very valuable touchpoint. They’re specifically useful for new sites that want to get seen quickly, as well as when older sites have time-limited sales. These ads can appear all over the web, including on search engines and social media platforms.
You can enhance the value of this touchpoint by making sure your ad catches the eye in an appealing manner. Make sure the terms used are fully researched, and the ad is high quality. When possible, include an attractive visual that gives the customer a good idea of what you wish to sell to them.
Once they click on the ad, make sure the page they land on is fully optimized. It needs to include all of the details to convince them to buy this item. It also needs a clear path straight to the checkout page.
It’s Crucial to Know Your Customer Touchpoints
Knowing all of your potential customer journey touchpoints will be a matter of the highest importance. Learn where your customers stop along the way before finally deciding if they want to buy goods or services from your store. Empowered with that information, you will be able to make each one more attractive and, ultimately, increase your overall conversion rate.
Need help with your touchpoints? The Level343 team has the experience to find and optimize each point along the customer journey for better conversions. Let us take you to the next level.
