Today’s buyers are better versed in digital than ever before. When it comes to digital commerce, they have options. And if they don’t get what they need on your site, they will leave and head elsewhere.
Whether you’re redesigning your B2B ecommerce website or standardizing your product data, you must understand the expectations of your customer segments, and use them to inform your go-to-market strategy.
Collecting data from internal and external audiences
Ntara recommends a mixed method approach to collect data for any digital investment. Quantitative research provides customer data that is representative of your larger audience, while qualitative tactics give you context. Doing both allows you to identify customer expectation trends, while also giving you the “how” and “why” behind their behaviors.
To create an ecommerce experience that meets both customer and internal needs, you need both types of insights. Invest the resources upfront to learn about your audience, and it’ll pay dividends in better customer experiences.
Stakeholder interviews
Before you begin customer research, speak to decision-makers inside your company. Uncover what is most important to them and their departments. Learn about their expectations for your ecommerce website. Compare what you learn from each stakeholder and compile insights into one presentation. Then, present it to leadership to gain alignment on the goals for your project.
Prepare for your customer research by identifying any long-held beliefs about customers. What generalizations or assumptions do people often make? What do stakeholders wish they knew more about? Use these insights to inform your customer research strategy.
When prioritized and resourced properly, stakeholder interviews provide valuable input for your research strategy and ecommerce project. And, as an added bonus, they can generate buy-in for your project.
Customer research
Sure, the internet is filled with data about your industry and the general people you sell to. But you can’t build an ecommerce strategy with other people’s data. Businesses aren’t cookie cutter, and ecommerce is never one-size-fits all.
At Ntara, we like to begin every ecommerce project with some level of customer research. Yes, this requires an investment of both time and money, but it helps ensure your ecommerce website answers real customer need, and is created in an intuitive and effective way.
For example, an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) may not fully understand the lifecycle of their end customer because they don’t have visibility into dealer interactions.
Before that OEM moves to ecommerce, they should conduct a customer segmentation study to uncover customer needs and preferences. They should learn what information customers expect, from which channel partner, and in what format.
The goal here isn’t to create an ecommerce website that answers every need of every customer. It’s to gain a better understanding of what your customers need and expect, so you can align that with your business goals to create an optimal ecommerce experience.
Applying data to your ecommerce strategy
Often, businesses conduct research but struggle to turn insights into action. Don’t let the momentum fade after the final presentation! Data without action is wasted effort.
Create living personas to directionalize ecommerce
Personas often get a bad rap. That’s because they’re often created with broad brush strokes, based somewhat on data but more so on assumptions and heuristics. Persona not rooted in reality are unhelpful and, frankly, a total waste of time.
Personas should be accurate representations of your customer segments. They should be snapshots in time—backed by data and colored with context—that represent each of your unique customer segments.
They should summarize how different customer groups want to engage with your brand and what they expect. There are no hard or fast rules about what personas should include. Include what you can collect that could influence how you build your ecommerce website. That can include demographic, psychographic, attitudinal, and/or behavioral data. As long as the information is applicable, it’s worthy of being captured in your personas.
At Ntara, we call these “living personas” because they should be updated regularly. Think about it: If you did customer research in 2021, is it still relevant today? Absolutely not. Digital commerce professionals must keep their finger on the customers’ pulses. Revisit your personas every year or so. Add and adjust anything that’s changed. Continually speak with your customers to ensure your understanding of them is still accurate. And when the time comes, conduct new research.
Customer journey maps
If personas are a snapshot in time, customer journey maps are the panoramic view.
Journey maps tell the lifecycle story of each persona. They illustrate customer preference across the conversion funnel—from awareness to consideration to purchase and beyond.
With journey maps, you can see at a glance when each group of customers wants to engage with your brand, what questions they have, and who they want to receive information from when. Because these maps are backed by data, these insights help you determine the role your ecommerce website plays in their process. Whether the differences across segments are subtle or significant, they’re critical in planning for a customer-centric website.
User stories and user flows
Personas and customer journey maps are the tools you need to audit your existing website and evaluate how well it meets customer needs. We typically start this process with user stories that summarize the actions various personas need to take on your site.
From there, we recommend a UX mapping exercise to identify the paths they could take to complete these stories. At Ntara, we call these paths user flows. This is an important exercise because it helps ensure you meet those user expectations and identify any potential roadblocks.
If you’re upgrading ecommerce or launching for the first time, don’t do it without data. Conduct the research. Align your business goals with the expectations of your audience. In today’s ecommerce landscape, you must be customer-centric to win. Conducting primary research is the smartest way to get there.
Interested in learning more about how customer research drive revenue for your business? Drop us a line.