The definition of perfect is subjective to every customer. From a casual browse and document user to a video editor, everyone uses a laptop in very different ways.

For example, giving my mom a 2018 Macbook pro would be the same as giving a farmer a Ferrari to do basic work. The term overkill wouldn’t do this any justice.

In this post, I will describe possible changes to the current buyer journey of a laptop so you don’t need to be a rocket scientist or spend multiple hours reading up on your IT skills to make a well-thought decision on your next laptop. To be fair, this will be for the person who doesn’t know what laptop suits him / her needs. If you have set your eye on that fully rigged out Dell XPS 15, let’s be honest, you already know what the best laptop is :D.

*disclaimer this post is based on my personal opinion. No customer feedback has been used to create this journey, so take everything with a grain of salt.

Problem

Laptops are one of those products where specs really matter, but every retailer suspects consumers are well informed on what suits there needs. Take Amazon for example

Amazon laptop section

Amazon uses the basic category filter approach. On the left are the “hard specs” like brands and price with products in the middle.

The problem is that these hard specs don’t say anything to customers who don’t know what they are used for.

For example, if someone wants a laptop for video editing do they need 6gb or 12gb RAM memory?

An example that I like that is the NZXT BLD program. This program is focussed on a big group (gamers) who want to plan games at a certain quality. In their journey they let customers pick the games they are planning to play and select at what quality/price. They are also very honest when the customer is expecting something that isn’t possible within their budget.

The problem with this journey is that the gamer group loves to spend hours on YouTube researching the best parts, visiting pcpartpicker.com 20 times and looking up their favorite streamer setups. But for the person who just wants the best result for the minimum amount of time spend research, this solution is great.

So let’s build something for the average joe (or Josephine)

Needs

Let’s look at who we are building for. I personally think the description below describes a big group of laptop buyers.

1. Spend as less time as possible on finding the perfect laptop.
2. No to little knowledge on specs.
3. The average lifespan of a laptop for this user is about 3 years.
4. Not a hardcore user, just some simple browse and documents.
5. Highly influenced by the son who knows a bit or two about laptops.

All and all this customer needs to be reassured they bought the right product right from the start.

Journey

For the sake of this post I created a journey that guides our customer (let’s refer to her/him a fan from now on, cause that’s our ultimate goal)

Researching for a laptop means talking to friends, reading about laptops online in the more general outlets like news sites. To be fair this phase of research for a lot of the people is very limited. They don’t know the difference between HDD and SSD, and to be honest, they don’t care. So It will ultimately come down in the elimination phase is to what a friend tells that is important in a laptop and what is within their budget. They will buy it at a retailer that they feel is reliable, but they don’t want to spend much more than competitors. This is also the group that still goes to shops and really see the product for them to get reassured. Now the phase where a retailer could really add the most value is when our fan is experiencing the product because they have no clue on what this new device can add to their daily lives. But more on that in our solution.

Solution

Now researching for a laptop for our fan can be very overwhelming, all these specs, brands, type of laptops these days (2–1, foldable, tablets etc). Now the main thing stuck in their head are :

1. Where do I want to use it for?
2. What can I afford?
3. What is the most reliable option for me?

So let’s translate all those variables into a language they do understand

Start of our journey

Let’s consider the fact that we did all the marketing to acquire our future fan. We did quest blog post, we made free guides, we created a youtube guide, we tested with some referral campaigns (staying away from the standard Google and Facebook strategies here).

And our future fan arrives at their destination, we are going to assist them in finding the perfect laptop

*disclaimer, this flow can be built in any platform you want, im not saying it needs to be web, it can also be WhatsApp. It’s just a visual representation of what the journey would look like.

The start of our your with our future fan

Next we will be translating those hard specs into a language our future fan understands, for example :

The fan doesn’t really care the RAM size, you could still show them if they ask for it, but from the start, this information would only create more chaos around there decision.

Now it’s time to finally reveal what we have in store for our future fan. This phase the need to know the following (besides the obvious product info like price and images)

1. They need to know why you are showing these laptops
2. They need confirmation this is the best option for them

The future fan will get confirmation when you tell them why these laptops are the best fit, but they need this confirmation because a big part of the research is also to confirm the checked all their boxes and if you would leave this part out the entire flow would be for nothing

The next step would be to show the fan where they can buy the product and show the difference between retailers in a similar fashion.

After they purchased the product a lot of retailers go straight into asking for reviews or only showing a delivery confirmation. But that’s not where the journey ends for a real fan. Why not send them something like :

You could even send them something 3 months in, asking about their experience and look for ways to help your fans out buy providing guides or products that enrich their experience.

A lot of retailers find it hard to add value to efforts spend after purchase, but keep in mind that a lot of dissatisfaction comes from the difference between your fans expectations and reality. Start with bring expectations as close to reality as possible, but don’t forget to guide your fans in the right direction even after purchase

You start to learn how to really drive after getting your license!

I hope you enjoy this first part of this serie. Do keep in mind, im not a designer, im not researching all this, im just showing what I think is a cool journey. If you do have any questions or have feedback do let me know!