Digital Customer Journey: How to Design and Improve It
Key takeaways
- The digital customer journey covers every stage customers go through online, from search to support, on the website, the app, email or chat.
- Customers expect autonomy and simplicity there: every friction point can trigger an immediate drop-off, without them reporting it.
- A good digital journey starts from customers’ real needs, simplifies the steps and keeps a bridge to human contact.
- Friction is spotted by linking analytics data, which shows where customers drop off, to customer feedback, which explains why.
Summarize this article with:
A large part of the customer journey now happens online, often without any exchange with an advisor. Customers search, compare, sign up, buy, track their order and ask for help from a screen. When something gets in the way, they do not always say so: they give up, or they go elsewhere. Listening to the Voice of the Customer on these channels is therefore the most reliable way to know what they actually experience.
This article defines the digital customer journey, explains why it deserves particular attention, details its stages with examples by sector, presents the touchpoints to prioritize, then proposes a method for designing it and for spotting the friction points that make customers drop off. It is aimed at the marketing, digital, e-commerce and customer service teams that share responsibility for this journey, often without a common view of what customers actually experience from one screen to the next, or of where and why they give up.
What is a digital customer journey?
A digital customer journey is the set of stages a customer goes through online to interact with a brand: searching for information, browsing the website or app, signing up or buying, tracking an order, getting support and leaving a review. It takes place on screens, often independently, and leaves measurable traces at every stage.
The part of the customer journey that happens online
The digital customer journey is not a separate journey, independent of the rest of the relationship: it is the online portion of a broader journey. The customer journey describes the whole relationship between a customer and a brand, from discovery to recommendation, across every channel. The digital journey isolates the stages that take place on the website, the app, email, chat or social media.
For some customers, this portion represents almost the entire journey: they discover a brand online, buy on the website, track their order by email and contact customer service by chat. For others, it is only one part, preparing a store visit or a branch appointment.
In both cases, the digital journey follows its own rules. Customers are alone in front of the interface, with nobody to clear up a doubt or correct a mistake. The slightest hesitation, information that cannot be found or a poorly designed form can be enough to interrupt the process.
What sets it apart from a journey in store or in a branch
In a store or a branch, customers can ask a question, be reassured by an advisor and see the product. Some difficulties are resolved in the conversation. Online, this safety net does not exist: the interface must answer the questions customers ask themselves, at the moment they ask them.
The digital journey is also much faster and more volatile. Customers can leave a website in one click, compare several offers in neighboring tabs and come back later, or never. Their patience is shorter, and their expectations are shaped by the best experiences they have elsewhere, across all sectors.
Finally, the digital journey is measurable. Every page viewed, every click, every drop-off leaves a trace. This wealth of data is an asset, provided it is not mistaken for understanding the customer: the numbers show where customers drop off, rarely why.
Why take care of your digital customer journey?
The first challenge is autonomy. Customers want to be able to find information, complete a process or solve a simple problem without waiting and without going through an advisor. A digital journey that lets them do so easily is seen as a service; a journey that forces them to call is seen as a failure.
The second challenge is instant comparison. Online, the competition is one tab away. A customer who cannot quickly find what they are looking for, or who stumbles on a step, can abandon the process and pick it up with a competitor in seconds. The quality of the journey then becomes a direct driver of conversion.
The third challenge is the effect of friction on loyalty. A customer who ran into a difficulty online, even if they eventually complete the process, keeps a negative impression that weighs on their next purchase. A series of small friction points, each one trivial, can thus damage the relationship for a long time.
The last challenge lies in the wealth of data produced. The digital journey generates valuable information about what customers do and, through their reviews and messages, about what they feel. Used well, this data makes it possible to continuously improve customer experience, online and offline.
These four challenges reinforce one another. A simple journey supports autonomy, limits drop-offs, strengthens loyalty and produces more reliable data, because customers go further in the process and say more about what they experienced.
What are the stages of a digital customer journey?
A digital customer journey breaks down into main stages found in most sectors, even if their order and importance vary. The table below presents them with, for each one, the customer’s expectation, the most frequent friction point and the signal to track.
| Stage | Customer expectation | Frequent friction point | Signal to track |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Quickly find an answer to their need | Irrelevant results, conflicting information | Searches with no result, quick returns to the search engine |
| Discovering the website or app | Understand the offer and find their way easily | Confusing navigation, slow pages, hard-to-read mobile version | Bounce rate, exit pages, reviews about usability |
| Comparison | Compare offers, prices and conditions | Incomplete information, fees discovered late | Back-and-forth between pages, questions asked in chat |
| Sign-up or purchase | Complete simply, with no unpleasant surprise | Form too long, forced account creation, payment declined | Basket or form abandonment, input errors |
| Order or case tracking | Know where their request stands, without chasing | Unclear status, missed deadline, no notification | "Where is my order" contacts, complaints |
| Online support | Get a fast, useful answer | Chatbot going round in circles, impossible to reach a human | Repeat tickets, escalations, post-contact surveys |
| Reviews and recommendation | Share their experience and be heard | Review request badly timed, no response from the brand | Review ratings and verbatims, recommendation rate |
These stages take different forms depending on the sector. In e-commerce, the digital journey often covers most of the relationship: searching for a product, comparing, basket, payment, delivery tracking and any return. The sensitive moments are payment and delivery, where a missing piece of information is enough to generate a complaint.
In banking and insurance, two digital journeys concentrate expectations: opening an account and filing a claim. The first requires providing documents and signing online; the second happens at a moment that is already difficult for the customer, who expects a clear process, regular updates and the option of speaking to an advisor.
In automotive, the digital journey mainly serves to prepare a visit. Customers configure a vehicle, compare versions, then book an appointment for a test drive or servicing. The quality of the handover between online configuration and the welcome at the dealership often determines what happens next in the relationship.
In telecoms, subscription and cancellation are the two most scrutinized stages. The first must be quick and transparent about commitments; the second must remain accessible and simple, otherwise it becomes a lasting source of dissatisfaction and negative comments.
Your customers already say where they drop off in their reviews, surveys and messages. See what Glanceable brings out from your own data.
Book a demo →Which digital touchpoints should you prioritize?
Not all digital touchpoints carry the same weight. Some carry the customer’s process, others collect what they think of it. Both families deserve particular attention, because the first create the experience and the second make it possible to understand it.
Website, app, email, chat and social media
The website and the app are the pillars of the digital journey. They must make it possible to find information, complete a process and track a request effortlessly, on desktop and on mobile. The mobile version deserves particular attention: a page that is readable on a large screen can become unusable on a phone.
Email accompanies most stages: sign-up confirmation, order summary, tracking notification, reminder. Each touchpoint of this kind must provide useful information, at the right time, without flooding the customer with messages. A clear tracking email often prevents a call to customer service.
Chat and messaging make it possible to get a quick answer without leaving the journey. They are particularly useful at moments of hesitation, before a purchase or during a complex process. Their value nevertheless depends on the quality of the answers: an automated assistant that does not understand the question generates more frustration than it prevents.
Social media, finally, plays a dual role. It is used to discover a brand and ask questions, but also to publicly express dissatisfaction. A quick, useful response on these channels can turn a complaint into a demonstration of service quality.
Online reviews, surveys and messages to customer service
The digital journey also produces a large amount of feedback. Online reviews, published on the brand’s website or on external platforms, describe the experience from the customer’s point of view, often in great detail. They are read by future customers and weigh on their decision.
Satisfaction surveys, sent after a purchase, a delivery or a contact with customer service, make it possible to measure the experience at specific moments of the journey. Their open questions are particularly useful: that is where customers explain what worked and what did not.
Messages sent to customer service, by email, chat or contact form, are another valuable source. Each request reveals a difficulty that the journey could not resolve on its own. Grouped and analyzed, these messages draw a very precise map of the friction points in the digital journey.
These three sources have one thing in common: they are written by customers, in their own words. This spontaneous feedback is often more telling than a score. It complements browsing data by providing what it lacks most, the explanation of the behaviors observed.
How do you design or digitize a customer journey?
Designing a new digital journey, or digitizing a process previously handled in store, in a branch or by phone, means starting from the customer rather than from the tool. Three principles guide an effective approach.
Start from real needs and the pain points customers express
It is tempting to design a journey based on internal processes or available features. The result then reproduces the organization’s logic online, not the customer’s. Starting from real needs means asking what the customer is trying to accomplish, in what context and with what constraints.
The pain points customers express are the best starting point. Reviews, surveys and messages to customer service show precisely where customers get stuck today, including on non-digital channels. A process that generates many calls for simple questions is often a good candidate for digitization.
It is also useful to distinguish several customer profiles. An experienced customer and a customer discovering the service do not have the same expectations, and a journey designed for one can put off the other. Simple personas, built from real feedback, help keep these differences in mind.
Simplify the steps and automate without losing human contact
Each extra step is an opportunity for drop-off. Simplifying means removing unnecessary fields, asking for a piece of information only once, offering relevant default choices and clearly explaining what will happen next. The goal is for customers to always know where they are and what they still have to do.
Automation makes it possible to go further: auto-fill, instant confirmation, tracking notifications, automatic answers to frequently asked questions. It must nevertheless keep a way out. When the situation becomes complex or sensitive, customers must be able to reach a human easily, without starting from scratch.
A simple journey must also be accessible to everyone. The French general accessibility improvement framework (RGAA), published by the French interministerial digital directorate, brings together the criteria that make a website or app usable by people with disabilities. Meeting them often improves the experience for all customers.
Personalization, finally, can lighten the journey: picking up a process where the customer left off, offering the options that match their profile, reminding them of a forgotten step. It must remain discreet and respect the customer’s choices regarding data. Overly insistent personalization has the opposite of the intended effect: customers feel watched rather than supported.
Build bridges to the store, the branch or the phone
A successful digital journey does not lock customers online. It builds bridges to the other channels: in-store pickup, branch appointments, a callback from an advisor, chat with a human. These bridges reassure customers and make it possible to handle the situations that digital cannot manage alone, such as a complex request, an urgent problem or a sensitive complaint.
These bridges must work both ways. A customer moving from the website to the phone should not have to explain everything again, and one who starts a process in a branch should be able to finish it online. The omnichannel customer journey describes precisely these moves from one channel to another, and the conditions for them to happen without a break.
In practice, this means sharing information between channels: the advisor who takes the call must see what the customer did online, and the website must reflect what was agreed in the branch. Without this sharing, each bridge becomes yet another friction point.
Customer feedback makes it possible to check that these bridges work. When a customer explains being sent from chat to the phone, then from the phone to the website, it is a sign that a transition needs to be reviewed.
How do you spot friction in a digital journey?
Spotting friction means combining two types of information: what customers do, measured by analytics tools, and what they say, expressed in their feedback. Each sheds light on what the other leaves in the dark.
Link analytics data and customer feedback
Analytics data shows where customers drop off: a payment page that concentrates abandonments, a form that is rarely completed, a help section that is heavily visited. It makes it possible to locate friction precisely, but it rarely says what causes it.
Collecting this data must follow a framework. The CNIL, the French data protection authority, points out in particular that most trackers require the user’s prior consent, and that refusing must be as simple as accepting. A clear consent banner is also part of the experience: poorly designed, it becomes a friction point in itself.
Customer feedback provides the explanation. A review that mentions delivery fees discovered at the last moment, a survey that mentions a promo code that was refused, a message to customer service about a blocked payment: these verbatims give the cause of the drop-off observed in the numbers. Linking the two makes it possible to move from an observation to an action.
That is the role of an AI expert in Voice of the Customer like Glanceable: analyzing feedback from every channel, reviews, surveys, tickets, conversations, identifying pain points and their root causes, and linking them to the stage of the journey and the team involved. Teams thus know which friction points to address and why they occur.
Address first the friction that makes customers drop off, for example in e-commerce
Not all friction has the same effect. Some is annoying without stopping customers from completing their process; some makes them drop off. The latter must be addressed first, by combining how often it occurs, its effect on conversion or satisfaction, and the effort needed to fix it.
In e-commerce, the friction that makes customers drop off is often concentrated on a few stages: discovering delivery fees, forced account creation, payment, then tracking and returns. A VoC for e-commerce approach makes it possible to link each drop-off and each complaint to what customers say about it, from basket to delivery.
Once fixes are under way, their effect needs to be checked. If the friction has really been addressed, drop-offs at the stage concerned should fall, and feedback mentioning it should become rarer in the following weeks. If not, the cause lay elsewhere.
This short loop between measurement, listening, fixing and verification is what allows a digital journey to improve over time. It turns customer feedback into a roadmap for product, marketing and customer service teams.
Ultimately, a successful digital customer journey is not the one that offers the most features, but the one that lets customers reach their goal simply and independently, with a door open to a human when they need one. Designing it from real needs, then improving it by linking analytics data and customer feedback, makes it possible to address the friction that really matters.
Sources: French interministerial digital directorate (DINUM), "Référentiel général d’amélioration de l’accessibilité (RGAA)"; CNIL, "Cookies et traceurs : que dit la loi ?".
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FAQ
The digital buying journey focuses on the stages that lead to the decision and the online transaction: search, comparison, basket and payment. The digital customer journey is broader: it also includes order tracking, support, leaving reviews and every online process that follows the purchase, such as changing a contract or cancelling.
Pages must be readable and keyboard-navigable, images must have text alternatives, contrast must be sufficient and forms must be clear. The French general accessibility improvement framework serves as a guide. Testing the journey with people with disabilities helps spot obstacles that audits miss.
No. Digital is ideal for simple, frequent processes, but some situations call for a human exchange: an important decision, a sensitive complaint, a difficult moment for the customer. The goal is to digitize what makes customers’ lives easier and keep human contact easy to reach where it adds the most value.
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