6 Obstructions that can Derail a Customer Buying Journey

A strong customer buying journey is the key for better conversions and achieving the better ROI. Creating a goal and curating a journey route to achieve it, needs a careful and well-planned effort. This seems pretty achievable to design, however, does not reflect reality in case of D2C market as per global stats. A whopping 93% of purchase bounce rate or abandon rate occurs for Ecommerce industry, which derails the brand initiatives to achieve its business growth and goals.

So what makes this process so difficult for a marketer to understand?

This blog will discuss the crucial reasons for customer cart abandonment or buying dropout events during the customer buying process. 

The Basic Reasons or Needs for a Customer Buying Your Product or Service

Well, the famous Maslow’s Need Hierarchy represents the picture pretty clear when it comes to understanding mankind’s needs. Physical, Security, Emotional, Self Esteem, Self actualization are the criterias to classify a human need. 

So when it comes to D2C marketing, the product can be ranging from any one of the above mentioned categories. Below are the samples to make this more clear:

1- Physical Needs: Clothes – Personal hygiene, Food, Medical & health.

2- Security Needs: Housing & real estate, Financial security & Banking, Physical security, Social security.

3- Emotional Needs: Gifts and Dining, holiday & travel, Jewelry, Home Appliances etc, social networking.

4- Self-Esteem: High-end brand accessories, Cars & bikes, Lavish Family functions, etc.

5- Self-actualisation: Learning & Skills Development, Social & political contribution, Wellness programs.

All of the above, if needed from a provider, need a platform to initiate the customer buyer journey. This could be on a Website, on an App, or any digital interface or an offline engagement. For the course of this blog, let’s only delve into digital interfaces.

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6 Obstructions that Can Derail the Customer Buying Journey

1- Non Relevant Product Listing or Service

The majority of the bounces happen due to the irrelevancy factor. If the product or service is of no immediate need to a customer, he will most surely drop the journey to avoid waste of time.

2- Absence of Unique Element or Differentiator

If there are lots of alternatives to a product, ranging from similarities in pricing, quality rating, delivery time etc, then the customer might look for other choices and may drop out of the current product’s customer buyer journey.

3- Absence of frictionless Digital Experience During Buying

A smooth website for browsing the products and subsequent buying steps is of utmost importance. Any glitches in the process can upset the customer and create a door for him to exit midway.

It could be a technical or aesthetic factor that could make or break a deal for you. A slow page load, frequent transaction failure, unresponsive UI, misplaced options, too much of radio buttons for ticks etc can lead to a bad experience and consequent cart abandonment.

4- Understanding the Customer Sentiment

In a customer journey, keeping a tab on customer touchpoints and the sentiment during those points is very critical to ensure business success. If you do not reciprocate correctly to the actual sentiment, then that may put off a customer mentally.

This is the worst situation a marketer can imagine for a purchase journey, as it is very hard to overcome a customer’s mind who has lost interest in the product emotionally and who no longer connects with its needs. 

5- Lack of Business Urgency and Monetary Advantage

This is quite an impactful step that can be taken by a brand to click with the purchaser’s sentiment in a customer’s mind. Last stock clearance, timer-based discount, one time signup discount, all of these can prompt a customer to make a decision to buy. Longer the buyer journey, higher the chances are for abandonment.

6- Non-Strategized Chase & Recovery Approach

Retention and engagement are interconnected within a customer journey. If there is a lack of planned 1:1 chase communication made for an abandoned cart or process, then it becomes difficult to expect the customer to come back on his own and complete the buy. The customer feels unvalued as there was no effort to retain him for the ongoing buying process by the brand.

So what we saw now are the obstructions during a customer buyer journey, but let’s not end this on a problem note and make the best use of the blog to understand the remedy to overcome these obstacles.

Below are some of the measures that we can take to ensure this:

1- Personalization: To overcome the first challenge mentioned above, we can make use of behaviour based personalization and subsequent product listing as one of the key elements in helping customers realise the importance and need of the product as per his digitally captured behavior.

This may involve marketing automation or a customer data platform to be connected with digital assets for creating a customer persona.

2- Unique Content Design: Well-documented and explanatory content, that highlights the unique features of the product that makes it separate from the rest of the herd proves a point and becomes beneficial in customers mind . This addresses the emotional and self esteem needs of the customer.

3- Smooth Online Purchase Experience: Maintaining a glitch free website or app is something that doesn’t need to be compromised at any cost. Ultimately it is these places, where the deals are done, so they need high uptime, pleasant user interface, reduced steps as a minimum requirement.

Try loading the website/app with minimum external JS scripts for higher page turn around time, less adtech to make the screen look easy and pleasant to eyes and have smart steps or nudges to make a conversion deal happen within minutes if not seconds. 

4- Gauging the Customer Sentiment Effectively: Use feedback and surveys to know the customer pain points. You should have a customer journey map available for your customer, to know what they have gone through, before reaching this stage.

This will help at times to hit the right note with the customers, resulting in positive decisions on your side.

5- Create a Sense of Purchase Urgency: Do not lose customers during the most crucial stage of decisions. If the Customer is spending too much time making a decision, then give it a push from your side via Web messages or in app messages, or nudges to make the ball fall in your favor.

Instant one-time discount messages, or stock-out messages can create a sense of urgency within the customer’s mind and result in a faster buying activity.

6- Triggered Automated Buyer Abandonment Engagement: You need to have a cart recovery or a chase mechanism in place to reach out to your potential customers within timelines on a 1:1 basis. This would surely need workflow automation to be designed on a marketing automation platform, probably with the assistance of a martech consultant or a customer success manager.

Sending critical activity-based emails/sms/notifications to customers on their “left in art” products can have impactful results in your overall conversion counts. You can optimize with AI-based features such as preferred channels and product recommendations to make these communications more potent to achieve desired goals.

So the next time you find a situation where you are battling high dropouts in your customer buying journey, keep a short look on this blog, to ensure if you have ticked all the boxes correctly. Remember, even a small gap can lead into customer need reduction, which can give a denting blow to your business. 

Make your strategy by keeping all the points given above in place. Keep going strong! 

Further, If you can connect with our Engagement and Retention expert, Let’s connect over a quick call or drop your request at hello@enrcloud.com.

We are happy to make your customers more personalized and powerful.

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