IowaBiz: The buyer journey and your website

by Alex Karei in Web Strategy
April 28, 2016

Alex Karei, marketing director for Webspec Design, blogs about web strategy.

As individuals in the business world, many of us have been tasked with helping clients move along the “buyer journey.” After all, without a buyer, we wouldn’t have a business, now would we? But, just in case you’re not sure what I’m referring to, the buyer journey is typically defined in three phases.

Stage one: Discovery

At this phase, your potential buyer doesn’t know you exist. They may not even know they have a need you can address as a company. Typically, they’re experiencing symptoms of a problem at this stage, and beginning research to address said problem.

Stage two: Consideration

Buyers know they have a solvable need, and they likely know about several companies that can address that need for them in different ways. In essence, the client has clearly defined the problem, and is now in full-on research mode for the best solution

Stage three: Decision

Here, your buyer has now decided what the best approach is to their need. They’ve identified vendors who can solve this problem, and are now narrowing the list to select the final vendor they’d like to go with.

As you consider your website and other digital marketing efforts, it’s important to keep the buyer journey in mind. Read and think about the following real-life situation. Do you think it’s realistic?

Susie Smith drives home from work, thinking through her to-do list for the evening. “I don’t have time to purchase groceries for dinner tonight,” she thinks. “Let’s see, I could go out to eat. Or maybe I should get takeout? Maybe ... Wouldn’t it be nice if someone would just shop for me? I hate spending all the time weaving through aisles. Wait! I know there’s a local grocery that will shop and deliver the food to my house for me. That’s what I’ll do.”

Now, you might have gotten the point that “Susie” was thinking about Hy-Vee’s newer Aisles Online service. However, Susie would have never known about that service if Hy-Vee hadn’t marketed it to her. And, if they didn’t? She wouldn’t have known that service was an option, and therefore, might have gone to the typical takeout solution automatically.

Now that we’ve clarified (on a high level) what a buyer’s journey is, I’m going to spend my next few posts on IowaBiz discussing some ways that each of these stages can be considered throughout your website and digital marketing strategies. I’m excited to help you think about how to better align those stages with what you’re doing in your current web strategy.

First up: why you should consider “Discovery” first and foremost for your company’s web strategy. Stay tuned!

Alex is the marketing director for Webspec Design, a website design and development and digital marketing agency in Urbandale. Connect with her via: