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Online shopping is a dynamic experience for customers, sparked by the awareness of a specific need or desire.
As explored in “Mapping the customer journey for SEO and marketing success,” understanding your customers’ purchase path is vital.
This article explores the intricate relationship between customer journey mapping and SEO’s role in optimizing strategies for ecommerce.
The customer’s buying journey begins with recognizing a gap in the customer’s daily experience, such as a missing item, a lifestyle upgrade, or a solution to a workplace challenge.
In my previous article, “B2B SaaS SEO: Mapping your keywords to the customer journey,” I discussed strategically influencing B2B SaaS customer journeys through keyword analysis and content tagging.
Ecommerce might seem different, but it’s often quite similar, especially when buyers are thinking about expensive items like furniture or home decor.
The ecommerce customer journey encompasses the complete end-to-end experience, starting from the first interaction with a brand’s online store and culminating in the final purchase.
Understanding the five stages – Awareness, Consideration, Solution Selection, Conversion, Service, and Loyalty – is crucial. It highlights that the customer journey goes beyond the purchase, with service and loyalty being essential components.
An ecommerce customer journey map is a visual guide showing a customer’s entire experience with an online store, from the first interaction to the final purchase and beyond. It helps businesses understand and improve the different touchpoints and interactions customers have during their buying journey.
Creating this map provides insights into customer behavior, preferences, and challenges. This information enables businesses to customize their marketing, products, and support to enhance the customer experience.
In ecommerce, understanding the intricacies of the buyer’s journey is paramount, and SEO plays a pivotal role in each conversion funnel stage.
Let’s delve into how SEO strategically aligns with the five stages to enhance the online shopping experience and boost sales.
Dig deeper: Ecommerce SEO & UX: 4 simple tips to boost traffic and sales
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Understanding your customer’s journey is crucial as you embark on the process of tagging keywords for your ecommerce platform.
Following the step-by-step guide in keyword tagging for B2B, here’s how to tag your keywords for an ecommerce site that sells sneakers using Google Sheets.
Creating a ‘Journey stages’ tab with data validation
Utilizing the ‘Stages’ tab for keyword tagging
With the setup complete, it’s time to start tagging your ecommerce keywords. Despite the potentially overwhelming task, the process becomes smoother as you identify words or phrases aligning with distinct stages.
For example, in an ecommerce scenario, offering various terms like “best,” or “reviews,” may belong to the “Consideration” stage, and keywords that include brand names with the product name indicate a commitment to purchase.
Once you have followed the first few steps in keyword tagging, you should have a tab for “Stages” and the column next to “Volume” to start tagging.
Here’s where ecommerce keyword tagging can go quicker than tagging for B2B. You can simply create a formula to figure out your tagging for you.
Set up a “Filter” in your spreadsheet, sort by common words, and tag keywords accordingly.
For example, I created a tag in my Google Sheet for a word count since most searches with one word will be a broad or “awareness of need” stage search. Using the formula:
=LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE((A2), " ", ""))+1 (Note: Substitute “A2” for the keyword cell.)
For each word in a separate column, I can then use an “IF” formula saying that any keyword with one word equals “1 – Awareness of Need” and any keyword with two words equals “2 – Consideration.”
But we still have those brand/product-specific searches, which ultimately mean the user is ready to purchase.
So in my “IF” formula, I include that any mention from the list of brands equals “4 – Conversion”, with the remaining keywords being in the “3 – Solution Selection” stage.
Thus, the formula should look like this:
=IF(ARRAYFORMULA(PROPER(IFNA(REGEXEXTRACT(LOWER(A4), LOWER(TEXTJOIN("|", 1, Brands))))))<>"",Stage!$A$5,IF(D4=1,Stage!$A$2,IF(D4=2,Stage!$A$3,Stage!$A$4)))You can access the Google Sheet I created, make a copy (please don’t request access), and play around with the data as needed.
Once you have a handle on the keywords and their stage, you can use the data to start making smart marketing decisions and content that speaks to your audience.
The part of understanding your buyer’s journey for ecommerce as opposed to B2B goes beyond tagging and the stages themselves.
Users need more support from your website in an ecommerce environment. Meanwhile, B2B users get support from the sales team they interact with.
That means there should be much more consideration of the content being created for ecommerce than for B2B.
Mastering the ecommerce customer journey involves navigating the entire online purchasing process. Touchpoints span from initial awareness to eventual retention, encompassing social media ads, website interactions, and product searches.
Because there’s no direct interaction with a salesperson, your content must convincingly guide them, assuring them of a smart purchase decision and the trustworthiness of your website.
How it relates to SEO: Enhancing customer delight positively impacts website engagement metrics, a crucial factor in SEO algorithms. Engaging content and positive user experiences contribute to higher rankings.
How it relates to SEO: Urgency created through “fear of missing out” (FOMO) tactics can boost click-through rates and time spent on your site, signaling relevance to search engines.
How it relates to SEO: Understanding user preferences through surveys aids in tailoring content, potentially increasing organic traffic as your site becomes more aligned with user intent.
How it relates to SEO: Positive customer reviews and testimonials contribute to a positive online reputation, a factor that search engines consider in rankings.
How it relates to SEO: Personalization enhances user experience, contributing to lower bounce rates and higher session durations, positively influencing SEO.
Dig deeper: How to make your ecommerce content more helpful
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.
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