Compare and Evaluate Customer Journeys in E-commerce Businesses

This report analyzes and evaluates the customer journey experiences of Ryanair and H&M, two different e-commerce businesses. It examines customer engagement practices, calls to action, touchpoints, and content management strategies. The report concludes that both companies have successfully implemented customer experience strategies to enhance their brand identity and customer satisfaction.

COMPARE AND EVALUATE THE CUSTOMER JOURNEYS* THROUGH
TWO DIFFERENT E-COMMERCE BUSINESSES OF YOUR

Table of Contents
1.0 Introduction................................................................................................................................3
2.0 Customer engagement practices within and outside websites...................................................4
3.0 Calls to action............................................................................................................................5
4.0 Touchpoints...............................................................................................................................6
5.0 Content management.................................................................................................................7
6.0 Conclusion.................................................................................................................................8
References........................................................................................................................................9
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1.0 Introduction
Customer journey experience may be considered to be one of the most significant aspects of
marketing studies. The instant report deals with the analysis and evaluation of different aspects
of the customer journey experience in the context of two different business corporations namely
Ryanair and H&M.
Ryanair is a low-cost Irish airline company based in Dublin; whereas, H&M is a Swedish
multinational fashion retailer in clothing segments. The purpose of choosing these two
companies from different industry sector is to analyse the essence of marketing strategy that
revolves around customer journey experience and enhancement of the customer satisfaction
irrespective of the type of organisation.
At the very outset of the study, the researcher provides a brief introduction to the topic. In the
subsequent parts of the paper, a different concept like calls to action, touch points and also
context management has been evaluated with respect to both companies and a comparative
evaluation has been performed. Based on the discussion, the researcher finally provides a
concluding note.
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2.0 Customer engagement practices within and outside websites
It has been assessed that the primary goal of H&M is to improve its customers’ experiences by
customising its sites and applications and also creating greater integration of its store chains
through its both physical and digital channels. In the consideration of Kotler et al. (2015), it can
be noted that H&M has developed a new visual search feature for its customers, which allow
them to upload images from their social media accounts or phones to the H&M’s sites, wherein
return the customers would be offered similar style choices from the retailers. According to
Kingsnorth (2016), the brand has clubbed both its online and offline strategies to retain its
customer engagement. The chain had introduced a feature as “find in store” that allows its
customers to locate the items instore and purchase accordingly (Anderson, 2019). This option
has helped the organisation to maintain positive customer engagement.
On the other hand, significant improvements in the website of late are found in Ryanair.
However, the customer experience in term of the transaction is quite awful. However, the brand
has designed its shopping cart effectively to move the prospects well along with the purchase
funnel without creating much scope of distractions (Gleeson, 2019). Moreover, to make the site
more responsive in nature, the brand offers its customers a richer mobile experience when they
access to Ryanair.com. On the other side, beyond the website strategy, the brand has also
launched Ryanair Travel Credit, a new incentive scheme for customers, who book
accommodation. Herein, a customer who books hotel rooms or flight tickets through Ryanair
Rooms receives a 10% back in credit (Pre-Travel, 2019). The above strategy has been a smart
customer engagement effort strategized by the company has facilitated the customers to choose
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from over 1.2 million rooms across the world. Hence, customers show high engagements where
they are given to select their own accommodation facilities after viewing the entire lot.
3.0 Calls to action
As per Srivastava and Chopra (2016), the current business model of Ryanair is rooted in
relationship marketing in which, completed trip would no longer signal the end of the customer
transaction amount. With the latest developments, the widespread customer information the
company has access to is steadily used, which enable the brand to engage and retain customers
and at the same time serving the segments with dissimilar propositions as well. Moreover,
marketing the products on placing the service line through valuable content has been a
progressively more significant aspect of the company’s inbound promotional strategies. The
present call to action strategy has also benefited the organization to enhance its customer
acquisition rate, where customers show effective interest in reading the content designed to
describe its new facilitated service lines. As a result, customers show interest in pursuing the
service, which in turn helps Ryanair to pool more prospects.
On the other hand, Kingsnorth (2016) determined that H&M is explicitly designing its online
strategies and also using social media platforms to promote its latest products and pricing
schemes to reach more internet traffics. It maintains an interactive content which can actually
influence or trigger its prospect to raise their queries in terms of the latest service offered by the
brand. The content has been the primary aspect through the brand conducts its call to action
strategy. The brand also raises campaigns over the social media platforms, which allows the
viewers to comments, posts their views and raise queries regarding the campaign. This is how
the brand maintains a through engagement with its customers, where customers always stay
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updates with H&M’s latest strategies or upcoming products that would be launch within a short
span. For example, H&M has managed to attract 14 million fans on its Facebook page and
manage to posts several updates on a day except on weekends (Moth and Moth, 2019).
4.0 Touchpoints
It can be stated that H&M conduct several blogging outreaches and also link to its third-party
posts to reach greater prospects. The brand usually believes in promoting the live stream with
numerous posts inviting its fans to enjoy the event. On the similar context, Kotler et al. (2015)
denoted that although live streaming on the Facebook page is not a new idea, if conduct
effectively; it can definitely be the smart effort of rewarding fans and offering them the reason to
navigate in the brand’s page. Furthermore, seeking at the customer engagement strategy, H&M
manage to conduct a upright rate of user interactions for its every post yet, the photo galleries of
its products seem to be the most well-liked updates, with each of the photos gaining hundreds of
comments and an upwards of 30,000 ‘likes’ (Moth and Moth, 2019). This has been the touch
point effort of the organization, where it tends to maintain positive and interactive engagements
with its fans that wait for H&M’s upcoming posts.
On the other hand, it has been identified that in the place of price-focused promotion, Ryanair’s
marketing strategies for the upcoming years would enhancing emphasise on its customer service
upliftment and structuring the travel content business subsequent to investing in its in-house
studio in the previous year. In spite of the brand being hit with a swing of criticism last year after
the cancellation of its 2,000 flights for its staffing oversight, the management of the organisation
had announced of delivering a 12% increment in its profits, which is showing a figure of €106
million for its third quarter (Faull, 2019).
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5.0 Content management
As per the consideration of Moorman and Day (2016), it is important for every organisation to
design their content as per the framework, Content Lifecycle Management. The theory highlights
the most significant factors, intuitive, personal base, visual content, buy-in and adoption, right
management, measurement and forward thinking. The above-mentioned factors act as the
imperative elements that every organisation needs to consider while framing its online content
for the purpose of marketing and promotion. However, depending on the above discussion, it can
be stated that although both the companies have focussed effectively on their e-commerce
promotion and continuing their efforts to engage more customers through their online
promotions. Yet, Ryanair still needs to improve its e-commerce branding strategies in terms of
ensuring more customer interactions over its websites. The brand focuses more on physical or
offline marketing aspects, which somewhat hinders its e-commerce branding efforts. In the
similar context, Ashley and Tuten (2015) determined that with the passage of time, customers, as
well as passengers, are getting more inclined towards online services, therefore, it high time for
the brand to design more lucrative content to ensure greater customer responses over its portal.
Conversely, H&M’s content management is more lucrative than Ryanair. H&M uses the right
platform to place its content to seek greater engagements and interactions of internet users.
Contrary to Ryainar, H&M follows all seven aspects of the Content Lifecycle Management
framework, which facilitate the brand to receive more customer responses against its major
online posts. Hence, Ryanair needs to be precise with its overall e-commerce strategies and
content designing in order to ensure high customer management.
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6.0 Conclusion
Based on the discussion and analysis performed herein, it may be concluded that both the
companies have been successfully able to devise appropriate customer experience strategy that
has enhanced the value of their offering and also the identity of the brand name in the market.
Though there have been certain deviations from the strategic position of the organisations with
respect to the implementation of the strategies, in general, both the companies have gathered
strong reputation in the market by way of customer satisfaction and user experience. Therefore, it
may finally be concluded that a well-designed marketing strategy will significantly contribute to
the attainment of business objectives of sustainability in the long run in the most cost-effective
manner.
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References
Anderson, G. (2019). Can H&M finally become a serious online competitor? – RetailWire.
[online] Retailwire.com. Available at: https://www.retailwire.com/discussion/can-hm-finally-
become-a-serious-online-competitor/ [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].
Ashley, C. and Tuten, T., (2015). Creative strategies in social media marketing: An exploratory
study of branded social content and consumer engagement. Psychology & Marketing, 32(1),
pp.15-27.
Faull, J. (2019). Ryanair CMO says there will be more to its marketing than just price in 2018.
[online] The Drum. Available at: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2018/02/05/ryanair-cmo-says-
there-will-be-more-its-marketing-just-price-2018 [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].
Gleeson, A. (2019). Marketing Lessons from Ryanair — Customer Engagement. [online]
Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@alangleeson/what-ryanair-need-to-focus-on-in-
(2015)-4bea4247d799 [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].
Kingsnorth, S., (2016). Digital marketing strategy: an integrated approach to online marketing.
Kogan Page Publishers.
Kotler, P., Burton, S., Deans, K., Brown, L. and Armstrong, G., (2015). Marketing. Pearson
Higher Education AU.
Moorman, C. and Day, G.S., (2016). Organizing for marketing excellence. Journal of
Marketing, 80(6), pp.6-35.
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Moth, D. and Moth, D. (2019). How H&M uses Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ –
Econsultancy. [online] Econsultancy. Available at: https://econsultancy.com/how-h-m-uses-
facebook-twitter-pinterest-and-google/ [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].
Pre-Travel (2019). Ryanair's e-commerce drive continues with the launch of Ryanair Travel
Credit. [online] Future Travel Experience. Available at:
https://www.futuretravelexperience.com/2018/01/ryanairs-e-commerce-drive-continues-with-
launch-of-ryanair-travel-credit/ [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].
Srivastava, A. and Chopra, K., (2016). Impact of online marketing in molding consumer
behaviour. International Journal of Engineering and Management Research, 6(1), pp.478-486.
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