Analysis of the Customer Journey through Two Different E-Commerce Businesses

This document analyzes the customer journey in two different e-commerce businesses, focusing on the stages of awareness, consideration, and acquisition. It compares the homepage, navigation, offers, search tools, product information, adding an item, registration and checkout, customer engagement, and customer retention in both businesses. The analysis concludes with recommendations for improving the customer experience.

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Analysis of the Customer Journey through Two Different E-Commerce Businesses
Student’s Name
Foundation Course
Tutor
Institution
Department
Date

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Homepage........................................................................................................................................3
Getting started..................................................................................................................................4
Navigation....................................................................................................................................5
Offers...........................................................................................................................................6
Search tools and results................................................................................................................6
product information......................................................................................................................6
Adding an item................................................................................................................................6
Registration and check out...............................................................................................................7
Customer engagement…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….7
Customer retention………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..8
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..8

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Analysis of the Customer Journey through Two Different E-Commerce Businesses
Introduction
One of the key ways to establish a successful e-commerce business is by understanding
the customer journey. The customer journey is the sales funnel. A successful customer journey
leads to successful sales and profits which is at the heart of every business (Lee, 2018).
Analyzing them and understanding the process that the customer goes through before a sale is
done is critical in knowing which strategies to use to drive sales and knowing what areas to work
on along the way.
There are three major stages of the customer journey that each e-commerce is supposed
to understand to improve on their sales. The stages include the awareness, consideration and the
acquisition stage (Moon, 2016). Firstly, the awareness stage is when the customer first discovers
the e-commerce products and the products begin to make sense to the customer (Bilgihan, 2016).
Secondly is the consideration where the customer analyses and evaluate whether buying the
product is worth his or her money. Finally, the acquisition which is the hope for every e-
commerce vendor is the actual buying of the product. Through all these three stages the e-
commerce shops should be aware of the customer's feelings and the interaction with the website
for a successful customer journey.
Ocado and Sainsbury's Customer Journey Comparison
Homepage
The avocados home page is easy to use, and it displays the categories of items that a
customer could be interested in buying. The categories include the electronics, the fashion items,

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the groceries, the clothing, and the jewelry and so on. That means that a customer is not
overwhelmed with products placed all on the websites home page. There is also a cart that
enables the customers to add their desired product such that after a customer is done with his or
her window shopping, he or she can decide on what items to buy and what items to leave.
On the other hand, Sainsbury's e-commerce has a home page that has been designed to
include everything on the same page. There is a search button on their homepage such that a
customer just logs in and searches the item that they need to buy and it can be displayed based on
the price and quality that a customer desire (Moth, 2015). The Sainsbury's online shop utilizes
the search engine optimization tool to display what the customer searches. One of the
shortcomings of the Sainsbury's homepage is that it is not obvious that a customer will get what
he or she wants to acquire fast enough.
Getting Started
Ocado has invested in digital technology to enhance a user-friendly interface on the user's
side. They assure their customers that they have selected the best online grocer by presenting
their good and products in a presentable and easily accessible way. What Ocado has ensured is
that the customers are satisfied through the website interaction on their first encounter with the
website (Lauchlan, 2015). The appearance on the homepage has a simple design that new
customers do know have to inquire a lot of details to be able to use it. There is a category of the
prices as well where the customer inputs the range of the money that they want to spend. This
makes it easy for the customer because he or she does not have to go very many details to find an
item that suits his pocket and quality.

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With the Sainsbury’s the client has to search the item that they want to buy using the
search box located on the home page. That means that the customer must know the product that
they require and its price. The homepage does not give a client an opportunity to compare
different items which range the same price. Adding the products to the basket is also
cumbersome as the website user has to keep going back to the button labeled “basket” to achieve
that success.
Navigation
Ocado uses hover-to-open display menus on its side bar’s home page from the browse
shop. The sidebars menus give the customer an easy time during the navigation process as he or
she does not have to click the button every time that he requires to view an item. Ocado also
helps to make work easier for the customer by making sure that the navigation is simple (Lim et
al., 2016). Grouping goods and products enable the simplicity of the navigation into different
shops within the same website. The different shops contain the items which are closely related to
each other, but they may not be grouped in the same shelves in a supermarket. An example, the
online shop has a shop within the website for different types of foods. These are grouped, but the
customer can choose one easily.
Navigation of the pages in the Sainsbury's website needs a lot of clicking at each of the
product. The reason is that each product category carries with it different other products that may
belong to other groups (Mangiaracina et al., 2018). That means that the site is created to contain
categories and subcategories of products which might be very tedious to find especially for a
new customer. All of the subcategories consists of click-to-open and load new web pages. A
customer might be looking for one or two items but may end up loading ten web pages here.

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Offers
To keep the customers happy, both sites have web pages that have special offers for the
customers. In terms of beauty, Ocado largely emphasizes the product image which says that the
offer may not be obvious. In overall, Ocado is easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye
(Lauchlan, 2015).On the other hand, Sainsbury's uses an orange wall to advertise their offers
which all starts with the word “only.” The result is that the Sainsbury's offers do not lure the
customers to buy since they are not outstanding and appealing to the eye.
Search Tools and Results
Both the Ocado and the Sainsbury's websites have predictive search tools through the
Ocado's offers many predictive items at a go as compared to the Sainsbury's. Ocado offers many
substitute products to the customer, and that means that their predictive list is sometimes endless.
On the other hand, their counterpart does not have so much to offer so the client might end up
disappointed by the shopping experience.
Product Information
Both sites offer the product information to their customer, but the only difference is that
Ocado gives details and the pictures while the Sainsbury's information is only descriptive about
the product. That means the Ocado has the upper hand in terms of driving sales since customers
want to see more pictures than reading a lot of our text.
Adding an Item
In the Sainsbury's website, every time that the customer is logged in to their account, and
want to add an item to the basket, they will be directed to a new customer’s page for an account

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registration (Boss, 2018). The redirecting of a customer to the new page wastes times, and this
would not be a good shopping experience for new clients. In contrast, Ocado enables the
customers to add items to the basket before they register.
Registration and Checkout
Ocado encourages new customers to register with their Facebook accounts. The
experience saves the customer’s time as their details rea captured directly from their Facebook
pages. The time used to fill the shoppers form at Ocado is therefore short and convenient (Maras,
2018). After the billing is done, the next page is the checkout page which gives a welcome
message to the customer.
For the Sainsbury's a customer has to put their postcode and they give him or her five
reasons to shop with them again. The Salisbury webpage first gives its customers a delivery slot
before giving them a chance to add items to the basket which feel like a back-to-front process.
The full registration procedure is not needed for the Sainsbury's until a customer spends a
minimum of £25.
Customer Engagement
Both the Ocado and the Sainsbury's send an automated message to the customer after a
successful shopping journey. The schedule the products delivery time and notify the customer.
They also give an alternative method where the customer can collect the items from their stores.
In this step, the two online shops are convenient as they deliver the products without delay.

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Retention of the Customers
Ocado sends a thank you email and welcomes them back again. They also send emails to
the customers at any time that the shop has an offer or promotional discounts. This serves in
retaining their customer and preserves the customer's loyalty (Boss, 2018). On the other hand,
Sainsbury's also sends a thank you note to the customers for shopping with them. The only
difference is that Sainsbury's does not remind their customers of any promotional sales like the
black Friday discount sales.
Conclusion
The shopping journeys through the two online shops are quite different. Overall,
customers who shop with the Ocado have a better experience than those who shop with the
Sainsbury's. The simplicity of Ocado’s website makes the shopping at their shop a fun. The
recommendation is that the Sainsbury’s online shop should improve two areas. First, they should
make their website user-friendly. Secondly, they should seek customer loyalty and retention by
sending those emails anytime that they have a sales promotion.

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List of References
Boss, D. (2018). Sobeys predicts e-commerce dominance with Ocado. [Online] Supermarket
News. Available at: https://www.supermarketnews.com/retail-financial/sobeys-predicts-e-
commerce-dominance-ocado [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].
Bilgihan, A., 2016. Gen Y customer loyalty in online shopping: An integrated model of trust,
Lauchlan, S. (2015). Sainsbury's upgrades retail e-commerce ambitions as it rolls out Argos
digital stores. [Online] Diginomica. Available at: https://diginomica.com/sainsburys-upgrades-
retail-e-commerce-ambitions-as-it-rolls-out-argos-digital-stores/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].
Lee, H.C., 2018. Transaction method of online shopping and transaction system thereof. U.S.
Patent Application 15/473,271.
Lim, Y.J., Osman, A., Salahuddin, S.N., Rome, A.R. and Abdullah, S., 2016. Factors influencing
online shopping behavior: the mediating role of purchase intention. Procedia Economics and
Finance, 35, pp.401-410.
Hasan, B., 2016. Perceived irritation in online shopping: The impact of website design
characteristics. Computers in Human Behavior, 54, pp.224-230.
Moon, Y.J., 2016. The Effect of Online Consumers Shopping Values on Consumer Satisfaction
and Loyalty. Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society, 17(1), pp.349-356.
Mangiaracina, R., Brugnoli, G., and Perego, A. (2018). The eCommerce Customer Journey: A

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Model to assess and Compare the User Experience of the eCommerce Websites. [online]
Available at: http://www.icommercecentral.com/open-access/the-ecommerce-customer-journey-
a-model-to-assess-and-compare-the-user-experience-of-the-ecommerce-websites.php?aid=38368
[Accessed 26 Mar. 2019]
Moth, D. (2015). Ocado vs. Sainsbury’s: customer journey comparison. [online] Available at:
https://econsultancy.com/ocado-vs-sainsbury-s-customer-journey-comparison/ [Accessed 26
Mar. 2019].
Maras, E. (2018). How Ocado masters e-commerce grocery in the UK. [online] Available at:
https://www.retailcustomerexperience.com/articles/how-ocado-masters-e-commerce-grocery-in
the-uk/ [Accessed 26 Mar. 2019].