Customer touchpoints in ecommerce: a map for an online store, examples and metrics

A customer touchpoint is any place where a shopper meets your store: an ad, a search result, a product page, the cart, a call or chat, the shipping email, the parcel, a review request, the next offer. To find them, walk the shopper's path from search to repeat purchase and write down every such moment. Optimize the touchpoints where you lose the most shoppers — and you only see that when each touchpoint has its own metric.

The common mistake is listing touchpoints for the sake of the list. "Website, social media, email" tells you nothing until you know how many shoppers each point loses. Below is a touchpoint map for an online store with a check and a metric for each point, five steps to find your own, and a calculation on an illustrative funnel: which touchpoint to fix first.

When stores look into customer touchpoints

What types of customer touchpoints there are

The most useful split is by stage of the shopper's journey: before, during and after the purchase. At each stage the shopper has a question, and the touchpoint either answers it or loses the person.

• Before the purchase the shopper decides whether to trust you: ads, Google search, marketplaces, social media, reviews, the product page, price and shipping.
• During the purchase — whether it is easy to buy: the cart, checkout, payment, a call or message from a sales rep, the order confirmation.
• After the purchase — whether to buy again: the shipping notice, delivery, packaging, the product itself, returns, the review request, the next offer.

A second useful attribute is who controls the touchpoint. Your own touchpoints (website, sales reps, email) you change yourself. Third-party ones (your listing on a marketplace, reviews on other sites, the carrier) you cannot change, but you can prepare for them: reply to reviews, choose the carrier, warn about delivery times.

Customer touchpoint map for an online store

A touchpoint map is a table where each touchpoint has a check and a number that shows whether it works. Here is a base for an online store: take your rows from it and add the ones specific to your niche.

If a touchpoint has no metric, that is your first finding: nobody controls it. Most often this happens with calls (nobody measures response time) and with post-purchase touchpoints — the store sees the order but not how the delivery ended.

How to identify your customer touchpoints: 5 steps

You find your touchpoints in three ways at once: walk the path yourself, look at the data and ask customers. In this order:

1. Place a test order. Find your product the way a shopper does: via Google, a marketplace, an ad. Check out, write to the chat, call, receive the parcel, start a return. Write down every moment where you saw, waited for or received something.
2. Pull the data. In website analytics — where shoppers come from and on which page they leave. In orders — which channels they come from, how many are cancelled and returned. In support requests — what people ask most often: every frequent topic is a touchpoint that did not answer the question by itself.
3. Ask customers. One or two questions after delivery: "What almost stopped you from buying?", "What was inconvenient?". The answers show touchpoints that neither the test order nor the data revealed.
4. Assign an owner. Every touchpoint needs a person who changes it: product pages — the content manager, calls — the sales rep, delivery — the warehouse or logistics.
5. Set a metric. For each touchpoint, one number from the table above that you check every month. Without it, optimization turns into an argument about taste.

The result of these steps is the same touchpoint map, only yours. A customer journey map (CJM) is another name for the same thing, with an extra column for what the shopper feels. For a small store a table is enough: feelings show up in the metrics and customer answers.

Which touchpoint to optimize first: the calculation

Fix first the touchpoint whose improvement brings more kept orders for the same ad spend. You can calculate it on a funnel of four or five touchpoints.

Illustrative example for the arithmetic, not market averages. In a month, 1,000 people view product pages. 40 add a product to the cart (4%), 20 place an order (half the carts are abandoned), 15 keep the order (5 are returned), 3 buy again.

How it was calculated: product page — 1,000 × 5% = 50 carts, half become orders — 25, 75% kept — 18.75. Cart — 40 × 60% = 24 orders, × 75% = 18. Returns — 20 × 85% = 17.

The example shows two things. First: a touchpoint at the top of the funnel multiplies everything below it, so one percentage point of add-to-cart rate is worth more here than ten points of returns. Second: the decision depends on what the improvement costs. Adding delivery time and shipping cost to the product page is an hour of work; cutting returns means better photos, size guides and checking every order before dispatch. Run the same table on your numbers and start with the touchpoint where the gain is largest relative to the effort.

Post-purchase touchpoints stores forget

After the purchase the store keeps its cheapest sales channel — a customer who already trusts you, and these are the touchpoints most often left without control. In the example above, 3 repeat purchases out of 15 is 20%. If post-purchase touchpoints raise that to 30%, that is 1.5 more orders a month without spending anything on ads.

• Order status. An email or SMS with the tracking number right after dispatch removes most "where is my order" calls.
• The parcel. Packaging, an enclosed guide or card is an online store's only physical touchpoint. A mistake here (wrong color, a crushed box) cancels out everything before it.
• The review. Ask for it a few days after delivery, when the product has been used, and give a direct link to the form, not to the home page.
• The next offer. An offer tied to the purchase (consumables, accessories, the new season) works better than a generic newsletter. How to build rewards for repeat purchases — in loyalty programs for online stores.
• Returns and complaints. A customer who got a refund quickly and without arguments often comes back. The rules that make service work like this — in customer service for an online store.

When to bring touchpoints into one system

When you have more than three channels: a website, two or three marketplaces, messengers and the phone. Then touchpoints break at the joins: the rep does not see that the customer already wrote on WhatsApp, marketplace order statuses do not reach the shopper, and the metrics from the table above have to be collected by hand from five dashboards.

That is the job of an ecommerce CRM. In Elbuz, website and marketplace orders arrive in one list, and messages from WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and your website chat land in one window next to the customer record, with the whole history of purchases and conversations. Elbuz follows the parcel status and can notify the customer, and calls go into the same customer history.

Who does not need it yet: with one sales channel and a few orders a day, a spreadsheet is enough for the touchpoint map and its metrics. Come back to a system when collecting the numbers starts taking more time than analyzing them.

Ecommerce CRM in ElbuzOrders, customers and messages in one system, 14 days free

Frequently asked questions

What is a customer touchpoint?

It is any moment when a shopper meets the store: an ad, search, the product page, the cart, a call, a status message, the parcel, a review, the next offer. Each touchpoint either moves the shopper closer to buying or loses them.

What are the types of customer touchpoints?

By stage — before, during and after the purchase. By who controls them — your own (website, sales reps, email) and third-party (marketplaces, reviews on other sites, the carrier).

How do you identify customer touchpoints?

Place a test order from search to return, look at analytics, orders and support requests, and ask customers after delivery. Every moment where the shopper sees, waits for or receives something is a touchpoint.

What are some examples of touchpoints in the customer journey?

A search ad, a marketplace listing, reviews, the product page, the cart, payment, chat and phone, the email with the tracking number, the parcel, returns, the review request. The full map with metrics is in the table above.

What is a touchpoint map or customer journey map?

It is a table of the shopper's journey: stages, touchpoints at each stage, what to check and how to measure them. A customer journey map (CJM) adds the shopper's emotions at each step.

How do you measure a touchpoint's effectiveness?

With one number that shows how many shoppers the touchpoint lets through: add-to-cart rate, cart abandonment, response time, return rate, repeat customer rate. Which touchpoint to fix first shows up in the funnel calculation.