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Intent is the purpose behind an action or statement. Customer intent is what leads customers to interact with your brand. If you know the “why” behind a customer’s action, you can better serve them from discovery to purchase to advocate.
Ahead, learn more about what customer intent is, the different types of customer intent, and how to collect and use customer intent data to optimize the customer journey in your business.
What is customer intent?
Customer intent is what drives web visitors and/or passerby to find and interact with your brand. An interaction can happen when they visit your online or brick-and-mortar store, find your products in search results, or engage with your website or social media pages.
Customer intent signals your customers’ preferences, needs, and pain points. Using this information helps focus your marketing plan on consumers legitimately interested in your products rather than just passing by, a strategy called intent-based marketing.
Customer intent data also helps to develop better products, fine-tune your messaging at different points along the customer journey, and improve your customer experience (CX) design.
Types of online customer intent
Customer intent is a broad term that relates to buyer intent and purchase intent, or the likelihood a shopper will make a purchase decision.
It also encompasses search intent (sometimes known as user intent), or the “why” behind the search queries people type into Google. Search engines use a form of AI known as natural language processing to understand the intent behind each query and serve relevant results.
There are the four types of search intent:
- Informational intent. Shoppers are seeking information or an answer to a question. A potential customer is researching before considering a purchase.
- Commercial intent. A customer is considering a possible purchase and is comparing product offerings from different brands.
- Navigational intent. A customer is searching for a specific product or webpage. This intent typically indicates that they know where they want to go online.
- Transactional intent. A customer has decided which brand or specific product will satisfy their needs, so they search for the website where they can make their purchase.
These categories represent four different stages in the customer buying journey. A robust search engine optimization (SEO) strategy targets each stage with content designed to serve that intent.
For example:
- Blog posts often target informational intent, e.g., How to Use AI Agents for Sales and Marketing
- Comparative pages differentiating your products from competitors may target commercial intent, e.g., Shopify vs. Squarespace
- Pricing or category pages address navigational intent, e.g., Shopify Pricing or Shopify for Enterprise
- Product, Free Trial, or Contact pages support transactional intent, e.g., Shopify POS, Sidekick, or Start for Free
How to identify customer intent and collect data
The customer journey map often follows a meandering path of multiple interactions across a brand’s channels before a customer makes a purchase. To discover customer intent at different stages along this journey, collect data for your online store by doing the following:
1. Monitor website metrics
Website performance can indicate how well you’re meeting customer intent.
For example, if you see trends of a low average time on page and a high bounce rate from informational pages on your website, your users probably can’t find what they’re looking for.
This may be because the content is shallow, muddled, or poorly organized. It may also be a mismatch, such as a page about wedding bands, i.e., jewelry, when the search intent was bands to play at wedding receptions.
Using tools like Google Analytics, analyze web content metrics such as average session duration, social referrals, page views, and conversion rate. Look for points of dropoff, as these signal a failure to meet customer intent.
2. Analyze customer activities
Gather customer data by following the digital journey that users take across your website. Look for trends in where users navigate after visiting your homepage. This can reveal their stage of customer intent.
One way to track what shoppers do on your site is by using heat maps. You can use Shopify heat-map apps like Propel Replay and Mida Replay to analyze your online store.
Use what you find to refine the user experience (UX) design of your website.
If you see that first-time site visitors arrive at your online store and quickly navigate to your About page, for example, you know that customer intent at this stage centers on learning more about your business. You might then incorporate more information about your brand values or founding story into your homepage design.
3. Add customer intent data to a customer journey map
As you establish an understanding of customer behavior across various interactions and touchpoints, you can create and map a connected customer experience. This involves matching customer actions to each stage of the marketing funnel.
The end result is a funnel report, or a visualization of how customers progress through the ecommerce sales funnel. This can help you develop a plan for how to move customers from one stage to the next with the least amount of friction.
Ways to use customer intent data
With the right information about customer intent, you can engage shoppers at different stages of the customer journey with relevant messages that speak to their intent and move them down the sales funnel.
Here are a few practical ways to incorporate customer intent into your marketing strategy:
Refine your messaging
Understanding customer intent at different stages of the customer journey gives you the information you need to share the right brand messages at the right times.
“It’s really about having clear content roles and goals across your marketing activities and channels,” Shingly Lee, vice president of marketing at energy drink brand Guru, says on Shopify Masters.
“[We] map out our omnichannel journey—who our consumers are, where they are, where they shop, what their mindset and behavior is at each stage—and we tailor our content very specifically and accordingly.”
For customers with informational intent in the awareness stage, Guru focuses on selling the brand. This messaging involves sharing Guru’s brand story and values in order to build deep emotional connections with consumers.
Guru takes a different approach to messaging for customers with commercial intent. “When it comes to conversion and consideration content, it’s direct,” says Shingly. “It’s being tactical. It’s talking about the functional prowess of our product.”
Improve SEO
Google aims to display helpful, relevant content on every search engine results page (SERP). To be relevant and helpful, your content must address users’ search intent.
To help guide your SEO content strategy and improve your chances of ranking, use keyword research to determine which queries you want to target.
For example, if you believe your customers are searching for the keyword phrase “best baby clothes,” you might write a blog post targeting this commercial intent, positioning your products among your top competitors.
For a keyword with an informational search intent, like “how to clean baby food stains,” you might write an informative blog post with tips for stain removal.
Even though a consumer searching this phase is early in their buying journey and not ready to purchase, if they see your content and find it helpful, you’ll build brand awarenessand trust. When they’re ready to buy new baby clothes, they might think of your brand.
Reduce abandoned carts
If a potential customer adds items to their shopping cart, it demonstrates a strong intent to purchase. Some customers, however, leave their cart without finalizing their transaction.
With Shopify, you can track abandoned carts and follow up with those customers to encourage them to complete their purchase.
Use Shopify Messaging to send automated messages reminding them about the item they left behind. These can include product-specific images, descriptions, and prices. You might also consider offering additional incentives, such as limited-time exclusive discounts or free shipping.
Segment and retarget
If someone visits the same page of your website many times, this demonstrates commercial intent—meaning the customer is considering a purchase, but they’re not ready to buy yet. You can support these shoppers’ intent by retargeting them with ads.
One way to serve retargeting ads is by using data from a pixel. Pixels are lines of code that track user activity on your site.
Meta Pixel, for example, lets you display retargeting ads on Meta platforms including Instagram and Facebook. If a customer looks at a particular product but doesn’t buy it, you can show them an ad about that item. You can also use list-based retargeting tactics.
If your store runs on Shopify, use Shopify Segmentationbased on customer funnel stage, then target each with ads customized to that segment’s intent. You can also reach new audiences predicted to have high intent with Shopify Audiences.
Ceramics brand Jono Pandolfi Designs uses audience segmentation and retargeting to acquire new customers in their target market and increase the lifetime value of existing customers.
“The segments that we’re looking at are about their familiarity with their brand and where they are in the marketing funnel,” says Chief Operating Officer Nick Pandolfi. “Are they familiar with our brand? Have they been to our website, but not yet converted? Or are they an existing customer?”
This strategy has the added benefit of helping you organize your marketing budget. “We want to make sure when we are setting budgets that we are spending X number of dollars strictly on acquiring new customers, and then Y number of dollars on growing the lifetime value of our existing customers,” says owner Jono Pandolfi.
Customer intent FAQ
What is the meaning of customer intent?
Customer intent is the motivating factor behind a shopper’s interaction with a brand. There can be different intentions behind various customer interactions with your brand, such as searching for related products in Google or adding a product on your website to a shopping cart.
Why is customer intent important?
Understanding customer intent is important because it helps inform your marketing strategies for your target audience at various stages along the sales funnel. Customer intent reveals what information and products users are searching for and why.
What insight does customer intent provide?
Customer intent data provides actionable insights into potential customers’ needs and motivations, helping you develop relevant products, rank high on search engine results pages, and improve your website’s CX design.
