When researching or making a purchase decision, potential buyers are looking for specific information based on where they are at in their buyer’s journey. Your website visitors tend to follow a rational behavior pattern as they select, investigate, as well as evaluate solution options to enhance their lives. This pattern is known as the buyer's journey.
Aligning with buyers and understanding their needs as they progress on this journey is a crucial step for marketing sales professionals and a prime determinant of their success.
No matter what purchasing thoughts buyers may have, they invariably maneuver through several buying phases in the journey; and as they make progress in each phase, their concerns vary in importance.
The buyer's journey is a systematic approach to understanding the stages a customer goes through when considering a purchase. The objective of optimizing website navigation is to make it as easy as possible for customers to find the information they need and take the desired action. Many business owners make the mistake of thinking their website visitors are looking for the same thing, but this couldn't be further from the truth.
Most purchasing journeys start after some kind of planning or analysis occurs. This gives buyers head-ups of potential opportunities or problems that should be addressed. After acknowledging an opportunity or problem, they enter into the phase of determining needs. At this phase, their key concern is to identify what they need to address the underlying issue, as well as the potential investment or cost requirements.
After determining the needs and costs, they enter into the phase of evaluating alternatives, where they compare as they examine different alternatives that are likely to meet their spending and requirements expectations. As they draw towards the end of the purchasing process, they now enter the phase of evaluating risk. At this stage, they will try to gauge the potential level of risk of making a purchase. This is also the last phase, and the cost of making a commitment will again come fresh in the minds of buyers.
From the buyer's perspective, the website is significant in helping them determine their needs and identifying potential solutions to meet those needs. At every stage of the buying process, there are inherent questions buyers ask themselves about the product or service that they intend to acquire. This is why it's also important to understand and be able to align your website with the buyer's journey.
Here are 3 key ways to align your website with marketing:
A customer persona is an in-depth idea of your target customers. It's designed after extensive research and analysis that enables you to create a persona report of your target customer. The report gives you the key details that highlight the influencing and preference factors in the buyer's journey. Aligning your website content around these factors will also help you get closer to your target customers and make sure they find their way to your website on their respective journeys.
Listed below are some examples of different kinds of motivations that could result in a different direction for a prospect. The website visitor could be looking for:
Aligning your website content around the buyer's journey will enable you to set the criteria for your sitemap structure. Thus, you can create a unique structure by adding relevant and helpful content according to your customer's vision for your business. This will also help guarantee efficient and effective navigation through the buyer's journey.
As you define your customer personas, you also need to make a sitemap that identifies the most relevant pages for your website. This will help attract the right kind of traffic to your site as well as assist with conversion rate optimization.
The most important part of the buyer's journey happens at the end; this is where they validate their need and make a commitment to action. The primary objective of your website should be to assist customers in evaluating the level of risk to take, thus converting them into buyers. This can be best achieved if you highlight your product or service at the end of every stage of your buyer's journey by creating an impactful call to action.
Understanding the buyer's journey is an important part of website design and maintenance. It also helps you ensure that your website matches the needs of your customers. No other approaches dictate these stages like the buyer's journey does, but this alone doesn't ensure that your website will work for every prospect. In fact, this is why all websites need to be tested to ensure they are aligned with these decision-making processes.
Every business owner who knows their audience should also have a test plan in place before they start building their site. Without a test plan, you're likely to make decisions that don't align with your audience's needs. A well-defined sales process that seamlessly aligns with the buyer's journey allows a harmonious collaboration between sellers and buyers' concerns, which guides them to make better buying decisions. This will realize higher levels of:
An effective website design should create the foundation of your marketing strategy. The more successful websites are the ones that can align with buyers' journeys; this will not only help establish a connection to your potential buyers will the right messaging, but, will also provide different pathways necessary for each stage of the journey to help increase your conversion rate.
Need your website navigation aligned with the buyer's journey? At Inbound Design Partners we have you covered! Our HubSpot CMS experts will help your design a website that not only provides a strategic approach to creating a better website experience for your leads but will boost your website performance. Contact us today to create a conversion-focused and user-friendly website that perfectly aligns with your marketing mission.
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Anabeth McConnell
