Understanding the Asian customers’ digital buying journey

It goes without saying that the customer journey – that is the experiences customers receive – is important to the success of any brand. Therefore, to deliver positive customer experiences, understanding a customer’s journey and how it progresses is key.

However, the digital buying journey is not simply the online equivalent of physical sales transactions, and in Asia, many companies fail to recognize some of the notable differences between digital and traditional touchpoints. Technology has empowered customers to do things on their own, while it has given businesses many more innovative options to engage those customers and create value in new ways.

However, this process must be easy to navigate and quick to implement.

Every touchpoint involves different interactions. The journey must take into account a customer's perspective and evaluate the experiences as a whole to clearly understand how one certain action leads to another. Understanding the customers’ behavior online can help you create a journey that delights and leads to conversion.

Easier Access to Information

Imagine the amount of content a customer consumes each day. Easy access to information makes it much more convenient for online shoppers to check one website after another before arriving at a decision. Consider the other actions that may be involved in this step – adding to cart, comparison, and review check, among others. The challenge is much bigger now that customers have more options. To make sure that they check out with your product, here are some things to consider:

1. Quality of Content
What consumer value does your content offer? It is not enough that your content is good, it must be engaging and compelling to sustain the interest of the audience. Most importantly, it must be relevant and easy to understand. Samsung took content marketing to the next level with the launch of the #YouMake campaign, allowing users to customize or personalize selected Samsung gadgets or appliances.

2. User Interface
An effective user interface must be able to facilitate effective interaction between your customer and your site or app. It must be easy to navigate, and the design must be clean, clear, and responsive. UX designers from Grab created a transport booking experience that has grabbed the attention of millions of people across Asia. The team continues to refine its UI design and the company’s growing popularity is solid proof of this.

3. Support Availability
For major purchases, some customers opt to interact with a support agent. If this service cannot be provided, ensure customers can access other options such as chatbots, knowledge base software, and other innovative self-service support. The friendly Singapore Airlines chatbot, Kris, is a great example of a powerful live chat experience for customers.

Online buyers take advantage of the freedom of information and accessibility. Companies that are not equipped or ready to provide the information customers need get left behind.

However, the digital buying journey is not always a sale transaction. This is an online experience. And the journey gets even more complicated when there are more available touchpoints. Think of it as a quest in the digital realm. As customers navigate the digital world, businesses try to outsmart each other to compete for their attention.

Mapping the customer journey

If you want to understand the entire journey that your customers take from the moment they first encounter your product, a customer journey map is the ideal tool. The map provides an overview of a customer’s actions, motivations, barriers, and opportunities and creating one helps deliver an experience that can establish a bond between the business and its customers.

Here’s a list of questions that can serve as your guide when mapping the customer journey:

• What are your customers doing at every stage of the journey?
• What motivates them to proceed from one step to another until they reach the end goal?
• What are the potential obstacles that might prevent them from continuing?
• What opportunities can your business create in every touch point?

Leveraging these insights is the first step to creating a customer journey that drives positive business results. If you know what a customer is doing and why they are doing it, it would be easier to strategize and provide solutions to every pain point your customers experience every step of the way.

By understanding all these, you can make the digital buying journey a pleasant experience, and you will likely achieve your business goals.