Ecommerce Customer Journey Mapping — How to Set Potential Shoppers Up to Buy [Tips & Template]

Whether you’re running an online store or managing marketing campaigns for an ecommerce brand, it’s worth your while to invest time and energy in creating an ecommerce customer journey map.

Ecommerce journeys may be faster than typical B2B buying cycles, but they still involve multiple customer touch points. Understanding the stages of your buyer’s journey and optimizing each touchpoint can make a significant difference in business outcomes — specifically, conversions, retention, and brand loyalty.

In this guide, I’ll show you how to improve and map your ecommerce company’s customer journey.

Table of Contents

What is the ecommerce customer journey? Why is the ecommerce customer journey important? Stages of the Ecommerce Customer Journey How to Improve Your Ecommerce Customer Journey Ecommerce Customer Journey Map How to Build an Ecommerce Customer Journey Map

In the awareness stage, potential customers find your brand or product through ads, search results, or word-of-mouth recommendations.

During consideration, they compare options, read reviews, and assess how your product fits their needs.

The decision stage is where they commit to a purchase, influenced by trust factors like product benefits, pricing, and social proof.

After buying, the retention stage kicks in — where product quality, onboarding, customer service, and follow-up communication determine whether they’ll return. If their experience is exceptional, they may progress to advocacy, recommending your brand to their friends and colleagues. I’m sure it’s not surprising that this directly correlates with your bottom line — 81% of consumers trust personal recommendations.

Pro tip: Don’t neglect new customer onboarding. Even in ecommerce, teaching them to use your product means they fall in love with it and are likely to continue to buy from you.

Focusing only on awareness, consideration, or decision at the expense of post-purchase experiences is a mistake. While you need a continual flow of new customers, new customer acquisition costs 5x more than customer retention, and a 5% retention increase correlates with a 25% increase in profitability.

Why is the ecommerce customer journey important?

If you only have a single takeaway about the ecommerce customer journey, it should be that tracking clicks is only the start. Instead, I want you to think of it as your key to decoding why customers are buying.

Even after years in marketing, mapping customer journeys remains my go-to process for uncovering invaluable insights into behavior, preferences, and points of friction.

Every touch point is an opportunity to improve the customer experience (CX) or fine-tune what you communicate. Why? From the moment they land at an online store to the final checkout process, every interaction shapes their perception, influences their likelihood of return, and cultivates brand loyalty.

To get started, I want you to use your customer data — quantitative and qualitative — to answer three questions:

Where do potential buyers hesitate? What triggers their interest? Why do they abandon their cart?

By answering these questions, you can find ways to improve the user experience, increase conversions, and more effectively market your products.

So what’s the takeaway here? An accurate map of your ecommerce customer journey leads to improved conversions, retention, and brand advocacy.

Stages of the Ecommerce Customer Journey

1. Awareness

Prospects become aware of their problem(s) and start researching potential solutions.

For example, if you sell productivity tools, someone struggling with time management might look for ways to stay organized. They might find you by:

Searching for how-to posts and landing on your blog. Engaging with organic posts, ads, or influencer recommendations. Downloading free resources (guides, checklists) or signing up for newsletters to learn more.

2. Consideration

At this stage, buyers actively evaluate different solutions, reading product descriptions, watching reviews, and comparing features. You can win them over with:

User-generated content like unboxing or testimonial videos. Great comparison charts and posts. Having a strong social media presence or email strategy.

Using the same example, they might search for the best productivity planners, read customer reviews, and explore your product’s unique benefits. They might also search ecommerce platforms like Amazon or even Google for available morning routine journals and evaluate reviews.

3. Decision

Here, customers narrow down their options and decide whether to buy. Factors that influence their choice include:

Price and perceived value. Shipping speed and costs. Customer reviews and testimonials. Discounts or promotional offers.

Ultimately, shoppers will buy your product if it satisfies their needs or desires. For instance, perhaps your journal includes tips to help them establish their new routine or fun stickers to make using it fun.

4. Retention

A great purchase experience isn’t enough — product quality and customer service are important for the customer retention stage. HubSpot’s 2024 Consumer Trends Report found the top purchasing factors for consumers include product quality (51%) and past experiences with a product or brand (25%).

If your morning routine journal arrives late or poor packaging has led to ripped pages, your customer might not check out your other products.

But it’s not enough to just deliver the bare minimum. The study suggests that a focus on quality can be a competitive advantage — while over 80% of shoppers were satisfied with a recent social purchase, only about 30% felt that what they bought was “high quality.”

If you delight your customers, you still want to stay top of mind by exposing them to products through strategic marketing like retargeting ads and social media posts. This means they’ll think of you first when it’s time to buy again.

You can boost retention with:

Loyalty programs that reward repeat purchases. Personalized follow-up emails with helpful product tips. Exclusive discounts for returning customers.

5. Advocacy

Satisfied customers naturally become brand advocates — or, as I call them, superfans. They share their experiences through reviews, word-of-mouth referrals, and social media mentions.

The best way to keep the love flowing is by continually delivering excellent experiences and rewarding them through loyalty programs and referral incentives. Most are happy to share or review a product they love, but they’ll keep doing it if there’s something in it for them.

With that in mind, your best advocacy strategies are:

Asking for reviews and testimonials. Creating a referral program and sharing it with your customers. Sharing user-generated content featuring your products.

You can deepen your understanding of the ecommerce customer journey with HubSpot Academy’s free Ecommerce Marketing Course.

How to Improve Your Ecommerce Customer Journey

Understanding the customer journey is only the first step — optimizing it is what drives business growth. In this section, I’ll show you how to use proven engagement principles to convert more customers.

1. Improve customer delight.

Customers who enjoy interacting with you are more likely to journey with your brand. The more you delight customers, the higher your campaigns’ conversion rates and the deeper customers engage with your brand.

Here’s how to get a sea of happy customers:

Personalize rewards for birthdays or special events. Host exclusive events. Provide branded swag. Cultivate a brand community. Surprise with flash sales or loyalty discounts. Engage one-on-one on social media.

Last year, I got this birthday email from Target Circle offering me 5% extra savings if I chose to spend money with them in the next 30 days. While not technically ecommerce, you can see how this plays out.

Pro tip: What delights my customers may not delight yours, so be creative and keep exploring ways to build lasting connections.

2. Create FOMO.

The fear of missing out (FOMO) is the anxiety of feeling left out from enjoyable experiences others are having. Renowned business psychologist and author Robert Cialdini popularized the idea in his book Influence.

FOMO is one of the most potent marketing tools I use across all customer journey stages.

SaaS ecommerce platform AppSumo does this particularly well with bold colors and big countdown timers that identify how much time is left on a particular deal.

You can rouse this feeling in any of these ways:

Display the number of products in stock. Add a sale countdown timer on the product page. Show a count of product views hourly or daily. Stress limited supplies. Spotlight event dates and set up a countdown email series.

At first, using FOMO may feel uncomfortable because you don’t want to come off as manipulative to buyers.

But FOMO is only a tool. It’s how you use it that makes it good or bad.

Pro tip: Consider using FOMO as a reminder to order while there’s a deal.

Customers have thanked me for notifying them that a product is on sale or an item they’re interested in will be out of stock soon.

3. Conduct surveys.

Search and market data give me a bird’s-eye view of patterns in customer behavior and demographic metrics, but surveys help me get personal with them. Talking to customers online or in person helps unearth insights other data collection methods might miss.

I like to use both real-time survey methods — like video or phone calls and in-person or online chats — as well as prerecorded options, such as forms, videos, SMS, website pop-ups, and emails.

Looking for a form option? I am partial to Typeform and VideoAsk (which is powered by Typeform) because of their UX.

When I create surveys, I aim to gather information that expounds on what I learned from my initial audience research. I typically ask my customers questions related to why they act or feel a certain way.

For example, I may ask:

Why choose us over competitors for this product? Which alternatives or competitors did you weigh before buying? What key issues do you need [product] to address? What’s your budget for this solution? What [product] features do you prioritize and why?

Pro tip: Use these insights to improve your product and update your product suite.

For instance, if Millennials are willing to spend $500 and Boomers $1,500 on my product, I might adjust my offerings and messaging to attract Boomers more.

4. Raise your social proof.

Customers have an easier time acting on recommendations and feeling confident when they see they’re not alone.

So, I engage the power of social proof.

Social proof is where people look to others’ actions or opinions to guide their behavior. And it works. Over 20% of consumers (and 36% of Millennials) have purchased a product in the last three months based on an influencer’s recommendation.

Here’s how I use it:

Showcase reviews and testimonials. Display purchase count. Feature social media mentions.

If I can ensure shoppers see that others like my products, it boosts their likelihood of buying from my brand.

Pro tip: People like what other people like, so get creative with how you amplify people sharing the love.

5. Personalize every touch point.

Nowadays, buyers expect you to call them by name. I go beyond this and create personalized journeys that meet customer needs and expectations using customer data from every touch point.

Here’s how I offer personalized experiences:

Include the contact’s name in messages. Customize offerings by location, purchase, or browsing history. Tailor exit pop-ups to each stage of the buyer journey. Craft offers that match prospective customers’ desires.

Need a visual? This customer journey map from Canva identifies some of those touch points and opportunities. From there, you can easily adapt it to individual touch points.

Thanks to HubSpot’s marketing automation software and my customer data, I can deliver unique experiences at scale. (As a HubSpot employee, I may be biased, but I’ve found that this tool is easy to use and can automate virtually any marketing task.)

Pro tip: Use social listening to pay attention to what your customers are saying and use it as a guide to future improvements.

For more tips, I recommend you read this article on customer journey thinking and watch the video below.

6. Optimize for mobile experiences.

Mobile is the future of ecommerce — it’s ranked #1 over all other devices for online shopping. So the last thing you want is a sluggish site, one that only works well on desktop, or pop-ups that derail the user experience.

If they have to change gears — or devices — to buy from a computer, they won’t do it unless they are highly motivated to buy from you. You can deliver a seamless mobile experience by:

Delivering fast load times. Optimizing the site for small screens. Creating mobile-friendly product pages and carts. Offering a one-click checkout. Using mobile-friendly popups.

Pro tip: Consider focusing on your social media shopping game as well as your mobile checkout.

Did you know that 47% of consumers are comfortable with buying directly from social media apps? In fact, the ecommerce app market is expected to grow 10% year-over-year.

7. Keep your checkout friction-free.

The more hoops your customers have to jump through, the more likely they are to abandon ship. And, it’s an uphill battle as it is. Less than one-third of all checkout visits result in a sale. According to YourCX, that number is even lower on mobile.

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Anecdotally, I definitely see this — I can’t tell you how many tabs I have open with carts on different sites as I comparison-shop on my phone.

So how can you improve this? While you can’t control for external distractions like kids, dogs, or people not having their credit card handy, there are definitely a few options to simplify your checkout experience:

Transparent pricing. Hidden fees at checkout can be a big turnoff for consumers. Required account creation. Offering a guest checkout can speed things up. Assurances of payment safety. Using trusted payment options like Stripe, Apple Pay, or Shopify to create a sense of security. Distraction-free checkouts. Remove any pop-ups, ads, or anything that might keep people from taking action.

Pro tip: Consider pre-filling the promo code with the current best deal if your software allows it.

More than once, I’ve gone back to the site to look for a promo code and gotten distracted before abandoning the cart.

8. Focus on the new customer experience.

The customer journey doesn’t end at checkout. As I mentioned above, it’s only the beginning. How you interact with buyers after their first purchase determines whether they return or forget about your brand.

Whether you’re selling noodles like Momofuku, dog toys like BarkBox, or Nut Butters like American Dream, you have an opportunity to create a ton of goodwill right away. (I’m currently staring at boxes from all three brands, so that’s why they’re top of mind.)

Your new customer experience could include:

A quick email offering simple ideas for using (or tasting) the products. A quick thank you email with the brand story. A follow-up email to collect feedback. Share tutorials for getting the most out of your product. Samples of another type of product. Interesting reading material inside the box. A handwritten note in the box. Packaging with an extra touch.

Pro tip: Consider providing instructions (and a reward) for recording an unboxing video.

This video provides a helpful overview:

Additionally, you can send notes to your customers following up on the sample or products, asking for a review, and offering them an incentive to reorder — perhaps a free gift with purchase or in exchange for user-generated content.

Want to learn how to get and use user-generated content? Grab our guide here.

Now that we understand how the ecommerce customer journey works and ways to make it better, let’s bring it to life with a map.

Ecommerce Customer Journey Map

An ecommerce customer journey map shows the different steps your customer goes through and helps you plan how to improve each customer touch point. It highlights where they are in the buying process, their goals, and how they interact with your ecommerce store at various stages.

Doing your journey map the right way means answering questions like:

What is the customer thinking or feeling? What actions are they taking at each stage? Where are they researching products? How can we guide them toward conversion?

HubSpot’s free customer journey map template offers the perfect starting point.

Let me walk you through how to use it to map your ecommerce customer journey.

What is the customer thinking or feeling?

Weigh your ideal customer’s thoughts and motivations across the awareness, consideration, and decision stages. Empathizing with, understanding, and addressing buyers’ expectations and worries helps guide them smoothly throughout the buying process.

Let’s assume a prospect is looking to go camping in the winter and exploring my outdoor gear web store for answers:

Awareness. They’re going camping in the winter for the first time and feel unsure about packing. They want to know what gear to buy and how to pack it in a simple and compact way. Consideration. They’re comparing winter camping gear and feel uncertain about what to buy. They seek advice through blog posts and forums on finding compact, easy-to-use equipment to make their camping trip successful and enjoyable. Decision. The prospect decides to buy my brand’s winter camping gear. They feel more confident and prepared for their first winter camping adventure. Retention. Their new gear helped make their winter camping trip a success. They trust my brand, feeling confident in the quality and reliability. Advocacy. Impressed by the gear’s performance, they share positive reviews online, encouraging others to buy the same equipment.

Pro tip: Remember that loyalty isn’t automatic.

Encouraging repeat purchases means strategically re-engaging past buyers. Consider post-purchase email sequences, surprise incentives for second purchases, or VIP loyalty perks that make them feel valued.

For instance, if someone buys hiking boots from your store, an automated follow-up email could offer them a discount on hiking socks or a waterproofing spray — items that naturally complement their first purchase.

Then again, you don’t have to do it via email. By including a post-purchase pop-up, you can upsell them and help them solve a problem before it starts. Something like this could work: “Want to protect your purchase? Add waterproofing spray to your order for just $9.99.”

What is the customer’s action?

In my experience, customers can move forward from, return to, or repeat a previous stage or drop off the flywheel at any point in their journey.

Here’s how it could play out using that prospective customer from the winter gear example:

Awareness. They want information about staying warm while camping in the winter, so they exchange their email address for my free warm-clothing guide and access to my community of winter camping buffs. Consideration. The prospective customer is considering thermal wear and other winter camping gear. So, they watch a live demo of how to combine thermal wear with other clothing items. Decision. The customer is serious about buying and is looking for a discount. Retention. The customer asks follow-up questions to help them use the thermal wear and returns for more equipment for future adventures. Advocacy. My responsiveness to their questions and support requests wins them over, so they subscribe to my referral program.

What or where is the buyer researching?

Buyers forage for information from disparate sources before reaching a decision.

So, here’s how their research journey will go:

Awareness. They engage with blogs, white papers, social posts, and short videos to find the information they need and answer questions about preparing for winter camping. Consideration. The prospect is now curious about camping gear, like outdoor heaters, lighters, lanterns, sleeping bags, camping chairs, thermal clothing, and backpacks to carry it all. So, they’re comparing the best options, reading case studies, and watching longer videos to help them understand the benefits and drawbacks of these items. Decision. They buy their preferred camping items from my website after weighing each product through buyer reviews, samples, and specification sheets and using my chatbot to ask questions. Retention. They might visit competitor websites or even buy competitor products to compare them with mine. They’ll also review post-purchase support documents. Advocacy. When referring a potential buyer, they’ll share my blog posts, guides, and knowledge base articles to educate their friends and contacts about my product.

How will we move the buyer along their journey with us in mind?

Using incentives in your calls-to-action (CTAs) can drive a faster response, and subtle messaging can guide buyers along their path.

Going back to the winter camping gear example, here’s what that could look like:

Awareness. I ask prospects for their email address in exchange for free guides on how to choose the best camping gear for their needs. Consideration. Once I have their contact information, I’ll engage my leads with more valuable content related to winter camping, warming them up to chat with my sales team or buy my camping gear. Decision. I demonstrate that I’m placing the customer’s interests ahead of profits by being honest about what my product can and can’t do. Whether the customer is ready to close a deal, sign up for a lesser offer, or part ways, I work to keep them in my flywheel for future sales or referral opportunities. Retention. I respond quickly to post-purchase questions and provide detailed user guides. I also offer free replacements for defective products. Advocacy. I proactively invite and incentivize customers to review and rate products and join my referral and loyalty programs.

Here’s what my map for the winter camping gear example would look like:

How to Build an Ecommerce Customer Journey Map

Ready to build your own map? Here are the steps I recommend, along with a few pro tips to help you get started.

Step 1: Define your objectives.

Clarify your goals before mapping out the journey. Are you looking to understand customer pain points, enhance the user experience, or optimize conversion rates? Setting a clear objective will help guide the mapping process.

Pro tip: I recommend going narrow to start. It’s tough to do it all at once, so choosing a specific goal and optimizing on that first makes it easier to get quick wins.

Need some ideas? Consider making sure your email automations are consistent or reducing cart abandonment.

Step 2: Identify your buyer personas.

Create a detailed customer persona based on real data, including demographics, behaviors, pain points, and purchasing motivations. A well-defined persona helps you visualize the ideal customer experience and tailor your journey map accordingly.

This is my favorite part, but I know some people find it overwhelming, so lean into available tools to find a starting point.

Pro tip: Use HubSpot’s free Buyer Persona Generator to streamline your process.

Step 3: List every customer touchpoint.

Identify all the ways customers interact with your brand — from initial awareness to post-purchase engagement. This includes website visits, email communications, social media interactions, product reviews, and customer support experiences.

Pro tip: Not all touchpoints are the same. Evaluate your problem areas based on impact and effort to find the low-hanging fruit (i.e., the highest impact for the lowest effort).

Consider taking the HubSpot Ecommerce Marketing Course to learn more about optimizing each touchpoint.

Step 4: Gather customer data.

Use both quantitative and qualitative research to understand customer behaviors at each stage.

Quantitative. This data focuses on the numbers and includes website analytics, conversion data, and cart abandonment rates. Qualitative. This type of data is all about words and sentiment. It includes customer surveys, feedback forms, and live chat conversations.

Real insights from your customers will highlight pain points and opportunities for improvement. And, paying attention to the extremes is helpful here — you can find things that get lost in “average” data trends.

Pro tip: Pay attention to competitor reviews as well as your reviews to find opportunities. How people talk about competitor problems might just reveal your competitive advantage.

Step 5: Map the current customer journey.

Visualize how your customers move through each stage of the buying process. Use a timeline or flowchart to plot key interactions and decisions. You can use journey mapping tools or a simple spreadsheet to create this visual representation.

Pro tip: A wall of sticky notes can be a great way to see the big picture before you put all the information into our template.

Step 6: Identify pain points and opportunities.

Where do customers experience friction? Are they dropping off at checkout? Are they confused about your product options? Identifying these roadblocks allows you to take targeted actions to enhance their experience.

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Pro tip: Read customer service transcripts and cart abandonment exit surveys — these firsthand insights tell you exactly where frustration happens.

Don’t have customer service transcripts? Consider implementing them. Additionally, talk to your customer service reps — they’ll have great insights into common problems and themes that might not always be apparent in the data.

Step 7: Develop solutions and improvements.

Brainstorm ways to remove friction and optimize each stage of the journey. This could include:

Improving website navigation. Personalizing email sequences. Reducing checkout steps. Offering live chat support.

Pro tip: Not everything has to be go-big-or-go-home. Small adjustments — like a single line of updated UX copy or added social proof — can have a big impact on conversions and retention.

By aiming for quick wins, you can get results quickly without investing a ton of time or effort into the process.

Step 8: Implement and test changes.

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Put your proposed solutions into action. This might involve adjusting website UX, refining ad targeting, or updating onboarding emails. A/B testing can help determine what works best for your audience.

Pro tip: Test one change at a time. If you adjust multiple things at once, you won’t know which one had the biggest impact.

Step 9: Track and continuously update.

Customer behaviors evolve, and so should your journey map. Continuously monitor key metrics, such as:

Bounce rates & conversion rates. Customer feedback & reviews. Repeat purchase behavior.

I recommend revisiting your customer journey map on a quarterly basis to ensure that you’re prioritizing the right things and that it’s still accurate. If you don’t get to it quarterly, aim for at least twice a year. Things shift quickly and it’s important to keep up with your customers’ expectations.

Pro tip: Set a check-in reminder on your calendar.

Creating the Best Ecommerce Customer Journey Possible

Mapping your ecommerce customer journey is vital for targeting the right audience and ensuring a great customer experience. Happy customers typically stick around longer and attract more buyers.

I’ve found the best online shopping experiences result from understanding how customers go through the buying stages. Although the ecommerce shopping cycle is swift, customers still interact with multiple touchpoints before they buy, so you must plan carefully.

As a marketer, I rely on data, templates, and proven strategies to optimize each stage of the ecommerce customer journey. Delighting customers, creating a sense of urgency, asking for feedback, showing off happy customers, and personalizing experiences are all proven ways to generate desirable results.

In the end, an accurate map of how customers experience your online shop helps you attract more buyers, keep them coming back, and get them talking about your brand.

Ready to start? Look below for free templates to map your ecommerce customer journey.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in April 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.