How can you use customer journey mapping to improve fashion sales?

1 Define your goals and personas

Before you start mapping your customer journey, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and who you are targeting. Your goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). For example, you may want to increase your online sales by 20% in the next six months. Your personas are fictional profiles of your ideal customers, based on your market research and data. They should include demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics, such as age, gender, lifestyle, preferences, motivations, and challenges. For example, you may have a persona named Emma, a 25-year-old professional who loves minimalist and sustainable fashion.

2 Map the stages and touchpoints

The next step is to map the stages and touchpoints of your customer journey. The stages are the phases that your customers go through from becoming aware of your brand to becoming loyal advocates. They may vary depending on your business model, but a common framework is awareness, consideration, purchase, retention, and advocacy. The touchpoints are the interactions that your customers have with your brand, products, and services across different channels and platforms. For example, your touchpoints may include your website, social media, email, ads, online reviews, store, packaging, customer service, etc. You should list all the possible touchpoints for each stage and prioritize the most important ones.

3 Analyze the customer experience

The next step is to analyze the customer experience at each touchpoint and stage. You should collect and analyze both qualitative and quantitative data from various sources, such as surveys, interviews, feedback forms, analytics, sales reports, etc. You should focus on three key aspects of the customer experience: what they do, what they think, and what they feel. What they do refers to their actions and behaviors, such as browsing, clicking, buying, returning, etc. What they think refers to their perceptions and expectations, such as quality, value, convenience, etc. What they feel refers to their emotions and satisfaction, such as happy, frustrated, loyal, etc.

4 Identify the gaps and opportunities

The next step is to identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement in your customer journey. You should compare the current state of your customer experience with the desired state that you want to achieve. The gaps are the discrepancies between what your customers expect and what they actually receive. The opportunities are the areas where you can enhance your customer experience and differentiate yourself from your competitors. For example, you may find that your website is slow and hard to navigate, which causes frustration and abandonment. This is a gap that you need to fix. You may also find that your customers appreciate your personalized recommendations and loyalty rewards, which increase their satisfaction and retention. This is an opportunity that you can leverage.