Want to grow revenue?

Mapping your customer journey will show you exactly where the opportunity lies. ‍

What is a customer journey?

All customers who visit your store will have slightly different journeys, but each must first visit your site, view the products you have available for sale, add them to a cart, and checkout. 

These are the major milestones for purchasing behavior.

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Why is the customer journey important?

It’s easy to get fixated on your conversion metric (we’ll explain how to measure in this article), but your conversion % won’t tell you where your potential customers are getting stuck. Do potential customers view your landing page but not look at any of your products? Are there a lot of potential customers filling up their carts with your products but not completing their checkouts? Do many customers purchase once, but not come back to repurchase?
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Mapping your customer journey will help show you where the growth opportunities are.

Using Peel, you can understand how each step of your customer journey is performing. Add data to each milestone of your customer journey to get a “birds eye view” of how many of your site visitors make it all the way to purchase.
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Mapping your store’s customer journey

In the next section we will identify the major milestones in an ecommerce customer journey and will use your Shopify and Peel Data to fill out your score for each. With your scores, we can help you find winning growth strategies tailored for your store.

Before you start - there are two ways to track your customer journey milestones: Shopify reporting and Google Analytics. 

Google Analytics 

Make sure you have Google Analytics enabled on your Shopify store. If you are unsure, check out this article to troubleshoot Google Analytics for Shopify. To access your customer journey milestones, find the “Ecommerce” option under the “Conversions” tab and select “Shopping Behavior”

Source: Google
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Shopify

Find your customer behaviour report in Shopify: It should be under The “Reports” tab with the title “Online Store Conversion Over Time”. Try filtering for the past 30 days. It will look like this:

Customer Journey Milestones

Sessions:

The number of visits to your site over a specific period. When looking at your milestones, and especially conversion rate, we will usually compare to the total number of sessions on your site. 

Where to find it: Peel Dashboard under “Web Analytics”

Benchmark: Varies by store size and type

Your store’s score: ______________

Bounce Rate:

Your store’s bounce rate is the number of sessions (visits) that view only one page before leaving your site. A high bounce rate would indicate that either your store traffic is low quality (the wrong demographic to purchase your products) or that your landing pages needs to be improved. Landing pages welcome visitors to your site, quickly present a value proposition, and push potential customers to view your products and make a purchase. Poor landing pages that don’t have a clear call to action will result in high bounce rates. We’ll explain how to optimize landing pages in Chapter 4: Boosting Customer Acquisition

Benchmark: 57% or better would put you at the Shopify average (according to Shopify). We recommend aiming for 40% or better.

Your store’s Bounce Rate: ______________

Adds to Cart:

This metric is the number of sessions that resulted in a product (or multiple products) being added to a cart. “Add-to-cart” is an indication of high buyer intent and likelihood to convert to a sale. 

Benchmark: The average average add to cart rate for Shopify stores is 4.4% of sessions (source: blendcommerce.com)

Your store’s Add to Cart Rate: ______________

Reached Checkout:

This is the number of sessions that resulted in a checkout being started. Starting a checkout demonstrates extremely high intent to purchase, and approx 50% of those who start checkouts will purchase

Benchmark: The average “reached checkout” rate for Shopify stores is 2.5% of sessions (source: blendcommerce.com)

Your store’s Reached Checkout Rate: ______________

Transactions:

This is the number of sessions that resulted in purchase! This is your store’s conversion rate.

Benchmark: 1.75% of sessions result in a transaction. Top performing Shopify stores have conversion rates closer to 8% (source: blendcommerce.com)

Your store’s score: ______________

Repeat Purchases:

The customer journey doesn’t end with the first purchase! Your goal should be to drive repeat purchases from your new customers. Existing customers are free to acquire (you can engage them through email or other channels) and are much more likely to convert to an additional sale

Where to find it: Peel Dashboard. Use the Repurchase Rate metric, and find the % of customers who have made a 2nd purchase (you can also toggle to see 3+, 4+, 5+, 10+ repurchases)

Benchmark: This is store dependent & hard to say what would make sense given the product you are selling and the expectations of when people repurchase. You can use Peel to not only see the % but also the absolute number across all your different cohorts so you can get an idea of what the pattern is across different cohort months. Are you acquiring customers in one month who have a particularly higher repurchase rate or are you acquiring customers who bought a specific product or via a unique payment method that tend to come back more often.

Your store’s score Repeat Purchase Rate: ____________

‍Your Customer Journey Map

Recap:

Supercharging your store starts with mapping your customer journey and knowing how your store lines up with Shopify benchmarks. Pinpointing your biggest opportunities will be dependent on your scores. High bounce rates will focus your strategy on improving your landing pages and ensuring your ads are targeting the correct audience. A low conversion to checkout rate would focus your strategy on refining your abandoned cart flow. 

I’m ready to supercharge my store. Where do I start?

We like to start with customer retention (repurchase rate). Your current customer base is a great place to look for growth. They are free to acquire because you have already acquired them. Depending on your product, acquiring new customers can be very expensive, especially if you are constantly needing to replace customers who are churning. Essentially, avoid trying to fill a bucket with a hole in the bottom. Plug the leak first!

Next Up

Chapter 3: Boosting your customer retention