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How to create an effective user journey map

No matter what you’re working on, the key to customer satisfaction and business growth is understanding your users. A user journey map helps you uncover pain points, explore the touchpoints from their perspective, and learn how to improve your product.

Imagine you just launched a new ecommerce platform. Shoppers fill their carts with products, but they abandon their carts before checkout. With a user journey map, you can pinpoint where the customer experience is going wrong, and how to enable more successful checkouts.

Read on to find out:

• What is a user journey map, and how it captures user flows and customer touchpoints
• Benefits of user journey mapping to refine UX design and reach business goals
• How to make user journey maps in five steps, using FigJam’s user journey map template

What is a user journey map?

Think about the path a user takes to explore your product or website. How would you design the best way to get there? User journey maps (or user experience maps) help team members and stakeholders align on user needs throughout the design process, starting with user research. As you trace users' steps through your user flows, notice: Where do users get lost, backtrack, or drop off?

User journey maps help you flag pain points and churn, so your team can see where the user experience may be confusing or frustrating for your audience. Then you can use your map to identify key customer touchpoints and find opportunities for optimization.

How to read a user journey map

Most user journey maps are flowcharts or grids showing the user experience from end to end. Consider this real-life journey map example of a freelancing app from Figma's design community. The journey starts with a buyer persona needing freelance services, and a freelancer looking for a gig. Ideally, the journey ends with service delivery and payment—but customer pain points could interrupt the flow.

Start your user journey map with FigJam

5 key user journey map phases.

Take a look at another Figma community user journey template , which uses a simple grid. Columns capture the five key stages of the user journey: awareness, consideration, decision, purchase, and retention (see below). Rows show customer experiences across these stages—their thoughts, feelings, and pain points. These experiences are rated as good, neutral, and bad.

To see how this works, consider a practical example. Suppose a new pet parent wants to learn how to train their puppy and discovers your dog-training app. Here's how you might map out the five key user journey stages:

• Awareness. The user sees a puppy-training video on social media with a link to your product website. They're intrigued—a positive experience.
• Consideration. The user visits your product website to preview your app. If they can't find a video preview easily, this could be a neutral or negative experience.
• Decision. The user clicks on a link to the app store and reads reviews of your app and compares it to others. They might think your app reviews are good, but your price is high—a negative or neutral experience.
• Purchase. The user buys your app and completes the onboarding process. If this process is smooth, it's a positive experience. If not, the customer experience could turn negative at this point.
• Retention. The user receives follow-up emails featuring premium puppy-training services or special offers. Depending on their perception of these emails, the experience can range from good (helpful support) to bad (too much spam).

2 types of user journey maps—and when to use them

User journey maps are helpful across the product design and development process, especially at two crucial moments: during product development and for UX troubleshooting. These scenarios call for different user journey maps: current-state and future-state.

Current-state user journey maps

A current-state user journey map shows existing customer interactions with your product. It gives you a snapshot of what's happening, and pinpoints how to enhance the user experience.

Take the puppy training app, for example. A current-state customer journey map might reveal that users are abandoning their shopping carts before making in-app purchases. Look at it from your customers' point of view: Maybe they aren't convinced their credit cards will be secure or the shipping address workflow takes too long. These pain points show where you might tweak functionality to boost user experience and build customer loyalty.

Future-state user journey maps

A future-state user journey map is like a vision board : it shows the ideal customer journey, supported by exceptional customer experiences. Sketch out your best guesses about user behavior on an ideal journey, then put them to the test with usability testing. Once you've identified your north star, you can explore new product or site features that will optimize user experience.

How to make a user journey map in 5 steps

To start user journey mapping, follow this step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Define user personas and goals.

Gather user research and data like demographics, psychographics, and shopping behavior to create detailed customer personas representing your target audience.  In your dog-training app example, one key demographic may be parents. What’s their goal? It isn't necessarily "hire a puppy trainer"—it could be "teach kids how to interact with a puppy."

Step 2: Identify customer touch points.

Locate the points along the user journey where the user encounters or interacts with your product. In the dog training app example, touchpoints might include social media videos, app website, app store category search (e.g., pets), app reviews, app store checkout, in-app onboarding, and app customer support.

Step 3: Visualize journey phases.

Create a visual representation of user journey phases across key touchpoints with user flow diagrams , flowcharts , or storyboards .

Step 4: Capture user actions and responses.

For each journey stage, capture the user story: at this juncture, what are they doing, thinking, and feeling ? This could be simple, such as: "Potential customer feels frustrated when the product image takes too long to load."

Step 5: Validate and iterate.

Finally, show your map to real users. Get honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t with user testing , website metrics , or surveys . To use the dog-training app example, you might ask users: Are they interested in subscribing to premium how-to video content by a professional dog trainer? Apply user feedback to refine your map and ensure it reflects customer needs.

Jumpstart your user journey map with FigJam

Lead your team's user journey mapping effort with FigJam, the online collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming, designing, and idea-sharing. Choose a user journey map template from Figma's design community as your guide. With Figma's drag-and-drop design features, you can quickly produce your own professional, presentation-ready user journey map.

Pro tip: Use a service blueprint template to capture behind-the-scenes processes that support the user journey, bridging the gap between user experience and service delivery.

Ready to improve UX with user journey mapping?

How the User Journey Impacts Your Success

User journeys play a large role in business success. Learn what a customer journey map should include, read examples, and discover how to improve your customers' experience.

A user or customer journey, sometimes visualized as a journey map, is the path a person follows as they discover a product, service, or brand, learn about it, consider spending money on it, and then make a decision to purchase—or not. Not every user journey ends in a conversion, but it is typically the goal.

Creating a customer journey map can help drive sales, because when you better understand your user's journey, you can provide the information or encouragement they need to commit and become a customer.

Let's look at a couple of examples of user journeys.

User Journey Example: Under-caffeinated Chuck

Chuck is downtown and he wants a cup of coffee. His journey might look something like this:

• Chuck feels drowsy on the way to work and realizes that he wants coffee. He is in a downtown area and has several choices.
• He looks around and sees a local cafe with organic fairtrade coffee, a cheap coffee chain that also offers donuts, and another internationally franchised cafe known for their sustainably grown coffee.
• He considers distance from his current location, expected prep time, his budget, and his values—he appreciates both sustainable agriculture and supporting local businesses.
• He knows that 2 or the 3 options offer coffee that match his ethics about food, and although the franchised cafe with sustainable coffee is slightly closer, he prefers going to the local cafe where he can also do more to boost his city’s economy. The local cafe is also typically faster because it’s less crowded.
• He chooses the local cafe with sustainably sourced coffee.

This is a straightforward example of a user journey. A more in-depth example might include asking an employee for information or, if the journey is entirely online, searching for information, looking up reviews, comparing the competition, and considering the cost.

How to create an accurate user journey

To map an accurate customer journey, you need to know your customers and how they discover your brand. To create customer profiles, begin by learning about the demographics of customers who already shop with your brand. This profile is an outline of your target customer’s interests, pain points, income level, age range, location, and more. The entry point is where they become aware of your brand. In the 2 examples above, both had street-level entry points, but other entry points include online searches, word-of-mouth recommendations, as well as social media, television, and print ads.

Consider all the entry points that might lead customers to your brand. Then generate user journeys from those points using your customer profiles to target similar audiences. After that, you'll need to refine your journey maps to turn shoppers into buyers.

Your goal is to guide your potential customers along their journey as much as possible. This will also help you reduce or eliminate barriers to conversion like by answering questions, making the right offers, and providing clarity when it’s needed.

The stages of the user journey

Each user journey is unique. But no matter what customer profile you're dealing with, or what their point of entry is, the structure of all customer journeys has stages in common:

Consideration

Your goal at each of the first 3 phases of the journey is to improve the chances of purchase and retention. Every point on the journey has a connection to every other point, especially when the goal is to motivate and maintain customer loyalty and drive customers through retention and back through the whole process again.

In the awareness phase, the user learns about or is reminded of your product or service, usually as a response to something they need or desire. The awareness phase can follow a previous purchase, which means that the retention phase was a success, leading them around to begin the cycle again.

Here, the user looks at the virtues and the flaws of your brand and any other brands also up for consideration. This is when pricing, value, customer service, branding, communication, and other factors come into play.

At this point, the user has looked at the relevant differences among the available options. If there's any information about your product or service that the customer hasn't been able to find at this point, it could mean losing the sale.

Here, the user either makes a purchase or doesn't. But this isn't the end of the journey—keep in mind that they may be buying from you because another brand is not available to serve their needs at the moment. This is your chance to curry favor with such customers: Your e-commerce platform should be easy to navigate, your customer service should be on point, and any discounts you may have on offer should be extended.

Now that a customer has purchased from you, you want to retain their loyalty. It's a good idea to check in with them after their purchase: Ask for feedback, tell them about complementary products or updates to your services, and try to discover ways to increase their satisfaction in the future. When they reenter the awareness phase, you want positive interactions and friendly and complete customer service to follow them into the next round of consideration.

How to improve a user’s journey

The key to getting the most out of the user's journey is to know your customer as well as possible. This is why a customer profile and all the possible entry points into the journey are important to understand as you define your customer journey . You want an extensive, complete, and accurate profile of the various kinds of people who shop for the products or services you offer.

You need to consider possible entry points into the user's journey. Here’s an example: A woman named Carla is in search of new headphones. She knows that she could travel to her local mall to search for just the right pair, and then she wouldn’t have to wait for them to be delivered. But she also knows that by shopping online, she can more easily compare more options. In this example, a business that sells headphones would need to consider all of the paths that Carla may take to find their products. She could visit a store where they are sold, she might search online, or she might find the right pair through an ad on social media or an email promotion.

The customer profile, the entry point into their journey, and what you have on your shelves (whether brick-and-mortar or online) should all flow together to make a coherent experience for each potential customer.

Build user journey maps

A user journey can be mapped with flow charts or diagrams that take the needs, wants, and habits from a given customer profile and trace a journey from entry point and awareness to retention and back through again. Ideally, you want a journey map for each user starting at each possible point of entry. You're going to need several versions of each user journey map, with different paths based on entry point, previous purchases, email engagement, and so on.

Your goal is to be able to anticipate and answer questions a customer might have before they move on to make a purchase. After they've made a purchase, you want to make sure that the retention phase directs them back to the beginning of the journey. It's all about communication—you need to keep in touch to let them know how you can meet their needs, promote new products or services you have on offer, and get them hooked via rewards and discounts.

That's where Mailchimp's Customer Journey Builder comes in. Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing and e-commerce platform, allowing you to send marketing emails, newsletters, product and service updates, and everything else you need to keep your customers engaged and satisfied. With Mailchimp, you can also create your business website, employing best practices that will help you turn potential customers into brand-loyal repeat customers. Remember, the customer journey doesn't have to end with the purchase, and Mailchimp is here to make sure it doesn't.

Keep customers coming back for more with Mailchimp’s free Customer Retention Kit

Whether you’re looking to improve existing strategies or seeking fresh insights into who your customers are, this kit is a comprehensive collection of resources designed to cultivate lasting relationships with valued customers.

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Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: May 04, 2023

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

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While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

What is a customer journey map, benefits of customer journey mapping, customer journey stages.

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

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The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer’s journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

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User Journey Map Guide with Examples & FREE Templates

18 April, 2024

Senior UX Researcher

Customer journey mapping is also a popular workshop task to align user understanding within teams. If backed up by user data and research, they can be a high-level inventory that helps discover strategic oversights, knowledge gaps, and future opportunities.

Yet, if you ask two different people, you will likely get at least three different opinions as to what a user journey looks like and whether it is worth the hassle. Read on if you want to understand whether a UX journey map is what you currently need and how to create one.

You can get the templates here:

Click here to download a high-resolution PDF of this template.

What is user journey mapping?

Imagine your product is a supermarket and your user is the person wanting to refill their fridge. They need to: 

Decide what to buy, and in what supermarket will they be able to find and afford it

Remember to bring their coupons

Park there 

Find everything

Save the new coupons for the next shopping trip

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3 ways to understand user journey maps

Now, there are at least three ways to look at the customer journey.

1. Workflow maps for usability optimization 

Some imagine a user journey map as a wireframe or detailed analysis of  specific flows in their app . This could be, for example, a sign-up flow or the flow for inviting others to a document. In our supermarket example, it’s a closer look at what they do inside your supermarket, maybe even only in the frozen section. Or you could define what you want them to do in the frozen aisle.

.css-61w915{margin-right:8px;margin-top:8px;max-height:30px;}@media screen and (min-width: 768px){.css-61w915{margin-right:38px;max-height:unset;}} The focus here is on getting the details of the execution right, not how it fits into the bigger picture of what the user needs.

It is more or less a wireframe from a user perspective. Such a product-focused understanding is not what we want to discuss in this article, though many examples for the best user journey maps you might come across are exactly this. There are good reasons to do such an analysis as well, since it helps you smooth out usability for the people who have already found their way into your supermarket because of your excellent ice cream selection. Workflow maps won’t help you notice that your lack of parking spots is one of the reasons why you are missing out on potential customers in the first place. By only looking at what they do inside the supermarket, you might also miss out on an opportunity for user retention: You could help them get their ice cream home before it melts.

2. Holistic user journey maps for strategic insights

With a more holistic view of what people experience when trying to achieve a goal, product makers gain strategic insights on how their product fits into the big picture and what could be in the future. Because this journey document covers so much ground, it is usually a linear simplification of what all the steps would look like if they were completed. Going back to our supermarket example, it would start from the moment the person starts planning to fill the fridge and ends when the fridge is full again — even if the supermarket building is only relevant in a few phases of this journey. Creating this version of a user journey map requires quite some time and research effort. But it can be an invaluable tool for product and business strategy. It is an inventory of user needs that can help you discover knowledge gaps and future opportunities.  Service blueprints   are the most comprehensive version of a user journey map  since they also lay out the behind-the-scenes of a service, usually called backstage. In our supermarket example, that could be:

the advertising efforts

logistics required to keep all shelves stocked

protocols the staffers follow when communicating with customers

3. Journey mapping workshops as an alignment method

In a user journey mapping workshop, stakeholders and team members share their knowledge and assumptions about the users. Some of these assumptions might need to be challenged — which is part of the process. The goal is not the perfect output, but rather to get everyone into one room and work out a common understanding of the users they are building products for. It forces everyone to organize their thoughts, spell out what they know and assumed was common knowledge — and ideally meet real users as part of the workshop. If done right, this establishes a more comprehensive understanding of what users go through and helps overcome the very superficial ideas one might have about the lives and needs of people outside their own social bubble.

Hence, such a workshop helps create aha moments and gives the consequences of great and poor product decisions a face. So at the end of the day, it is one of many methods to evangelize user-centricity in an organization.

What are the benefits of user experience (UX) mapping?

We already discussed the benefits and shortcomings of workflow maps, but what are the reasons you should consider a UX journey map and/or a journey mapping workshop ?

1. Switching perspectives

Empathy:  Like any other UX method and user research output, user journey maps are supposed to foster empathy and help product makers put themselves into the shoes of a user. Awareness:  It creates awareness of why users do all the things they do. And it challenges product makers to resist the temptation of building something because it’s feasible, not because it’s needed that way.

2. Aligned understanding

Given the team is involved in creating the user experience map (either as a workshop, in expert interviews, observing the user research, or at least as a results presentation), it forces a conversation and offers a shared mental model and terminology — the foundation for a shared vision. 

3. Seeing the big picture

Imagine the vastly different perceptions Sales reps, Customer Support teams, C-level, and backend engineers might have since they all meet very different segments at very different stages of their journey. Day-to-day, it makes sense to be an expert in the stages of a user journey you are responsible for. A journey map helps to step back from this and see the bigger picture, where your work fits in, and where assumptions about the majority of users were wrong. It might even help define KPIs across teams that don’t cancel each other out.

4. Uncovering blind spots and opportunities

A user journey map gives you a structured and comprehensive overview of which user needs are already tackled by your product and which ones are either underserved or solved with other tools and touchpoints. Which moments of truth do not get enough attention yet? These are the opportunities and blind spots you can work on in the future.

When is customer journey mapping just a waste of time?

In all honesty, there are also moments when creating a user journey map or running a journey mapping workshop is destined to fail and should better be put on hold. It’s a lot of work, so don’t let this energy go to waste.  User journey maps only make sense when there is an intention to collaboratively work on and with them.  Here are some of the scenarios and indicators that it’s the wrong moment for a journey map:

No buy-in for the workshop: The requirements of a successful journey workshop are not met, e.g., there is not enough time (60 minutes over lunch won’t do the trick), only a few team members are willing to attend, and/or key stakeholders refuse to have their assumptions challenged.

Isolated creation: The whole creation process of the user journey map happens isolated from the team, e.g., it is outsourced to an agency or an intern. Nobody from the team observes or runs the user research, or is consulted for input or feedback on the first drafts. There is no event or presentation planned that walks the team through the output. Finally, a very detailed, 10-foot-long poster appears in a hallway, and none of the team members ever find time to read, process, or discuss it with each other.

UX theater: For one reason or another, there is no time/resources allocated to user research or reviewing existing insights whilst creating the map (usability tests with non-users do not count in this case, though). Such an approach, also known as, can do more harm than good since the resulting user journey may only reinforce wrong assumptions and wishful thinking about your users.

Unclear objectives: The user journey map is only created because it is on your UX design checklist, but the purpose is unclear. If you are unsure what you or your stakeholders want to achieve with this journey map, clarify expectations and desired output before investing more energy into this. E.g., there is a chance you were only meant to do a usability review of a bumpy app workflow.

Lack of follow-through: Creating a user journey map is just the start. Without a plan to implement changes based on insights gathered, the map is merely a paper exercise. This lack of action can result from limited resources, lack of authority, or inertia. It's vital to establish a process for turning insights from the map into design improvements or strategy adjustments. This includes assigning tasks, setting deadlines, and defining success metrics to ensure the map drives real change and doesn't end up forgotten.

Overcomplication: Sometimes, to capture every nuance and detail of the user experience, teams can create an overly complex user journey map. This can make the map difficult to understand and use, particularly for team members who weren't involved in its creation. A good user journey map should balance detail and clarity, providing insightful and actionable information without overwhelming its users.

Failure to update: User expectations, behaviors, and the digital landscape constantly evolve. A user journey map that remains static will quickly become outdated. Regular reviews and updates are necessary to ensure that the map reflects the current state of user experiences. This requires a commitment to ongoing user research and a willingness to adjust your understanding of the user's path as new information becomes available.

The good news is: UX maturity in an organization can change rapidly, so even if you run into one of the obstacles above, it is worth revisiting the idea in the future. Once you’re good to go, you can get started with the user journey map examples and templates below.

User journey mapping: examples, templates & tools

There is more than one way to do it right and design a great user journey map. Every organization and industry has its own templates, tools and approaches to what elements are most important to them. The following examples and template will give you an idea of what a user journey map can look like if you decide to create one yourself. Make it your own, and change up the sections and design so they make sense for your product and use cases.

User journey map template and checklist

To give you a first orientation, you can use this user journey template and check the two fictional examples below to see how you could adapt it for two very different industries: instant meal delivery and healthcare.

Click here to download a high-resolution PDF of the user journey map template. 

While there is no official standard, most other user journey maps contain the following elements or variations of them:

Key phases (or ‘stages’) start when users become aware of a problem they need to solve or a goal they want to achieve and may end when they evaluate whether they achieved their goal or enter a maintenance phase. E.g., user journeys for e-commerce could be structured along the classic funnel of:

Consideration

Delivery & use

Loyalty & advocacy

2. Jobs to be done

Whilst some other user journey templates might call this section ‘steps’ or ‘tasks’, it can be very beneficial to structure the stages into ‘jobs to be done’ (JTBD) instead. This framework helps you distinguish better between the actual goal of a user vs. the tasks required to get there . For example, safe online payments are never a goal of a user, this is just one of many jobs on the long way to get new sneakers on their feet. Ideally, users ‘hire’ your product/service to assist them with some of the JTBD on their journey. Phrase your JTBD as verb + object + context . Examples:

Install app on phone

Tip delivery driver

Buy new shoes

Naturally, the stages closest to your current (and future) solution require a more detailed understanding, so you might want to investigate and document deeper what JTBDs happen there.

3. Needs and pains

Users have needs and pains every step along the journey. Use this section to collect the most important needs and potential pains, even if not all apply in all cases. Ask:

What are the repeating themes, even the ones you are (currently) not able to solve with your product?

Phrase pains and needs as I- or me-statements from the user perspective, e.g., ‘I forgot my login details, ‘I am afraid to embarrass myself’ or ‘My day is too busy to wait for a delivery.’ 

Which are the pains and needs that are so severe that, if not solved, they can become real deal-breakers for your product or service?

On the last point, such deal-breaker and dealmaker situations, or ‘ moments of truth ’, require particular attention in your product decisions and could be visually highlighted in your journey. In a meal delivery, the taste and temperature of the food are such a moment of truth that can spoil the whole experience with your otherwise fantastic service.

4. Emotional curve

An emotional curve visualizes how happy or frustrated users are at certain stages of their journey. Emojis are commonly used to make it easy to understand and empathize with the emotional state of the user across the whole journey. It can be a surprising realization that users are not delighted with your witty microcopy, but you already did a great job by not annoying them. It is also a good reminder that what might personally excite you is perceived as stressful or overwhelming by most other users. Strong user quotes can be used for illustration.

5. Brand and product touchpoints

Here, you can list current and planned touchpoints with your brand and product, as well as. Whilst the touchpoints when using your product might be obvious, others early and late in the journey are probably less obvious to you but critical for the user experience and decision to use or return to your product. This is why it is worthwhile to include them in your map. Make sure your journey does not get outdated too soon, and don’t list one-off marketing campaigns or very detailed aspects of current workflows — just what you got in general so there is no major revision needed for a couple of years.

6. Opportunities for improvement

As you map out your user journey, it is important to not only identify the current touchpoints and experiences but also opportunities for improvement. This could include potential areas where users may become frustrated or confused, as well as areas where they may be delighted or pleasantly surprised.

By identifying these opportunities, you can prioritize making meaningful improvements to the user experience and ultimately creating a more positive, long-lasting relationship with your users.

7. Other tools and touchpoints

This may seem the least interesting aspect of your journey or a user interview, but it can tell you a lot about blind spots in your service or potential partnerships or APIs to extend your service. E.g., Google Maps or WhatsApp are common workaround tools for missing or poor in-app solutions.

User journey map example 1: health industry

The following example is for a fictional platform listing therapists for people in need of mental health support, helping them find, contact, schedule, and pay for therapy sessions. As you can see, the very long journey with recurring steps (repeated therapy sessions) is cut short to avoid repetition. 

At the same time, it generalizes very individual mental health experiences into a tangible summary. While it is fair to assume that the key phases happen in this chronological order, JTBD, timing, and the number of sessions are kept open so that it works for different types of patients.

You can also see how the journey covers several phases when the platform is not in active use. Yet, these phases are milestones in the patient’s road to recovery. Looking at a journey like this, you could, for example, realize that a ‘graduation’ feature could be beneficial for your users, even if it means they will stop using your platform because they are feeling better.

This user journey map is fictional but oriented on Johanne Miller’s UX case study  Designing a mental healthcare platform . 

User journey map example 2: delivery services

What the example above does not cover is the role of the therapist on the platform — most likely they are a second user type that has very different needs for the way they use the platform. This is why the second example shows the two parallel journeys of two different user roles and how they interact with each other. 

Nowadays, internal staff such as delivery drivers have dedicated apps and ideally have a designated UX team looking out for their needs, too. Creating a frictionless and respectful user experience for ‘internal users’ is just as critical for the success of a business as it is to please customers.

User journey map example: meal delivery. Please note that this fictional journey map is just an example for illustrative purposes and has not been backed up with user research.

For more inspiration, you can find collections with more real-life user journey examples and customer journey maps on  UXeria ,  eleken.co  &  userinterviews.com , or check out free templates provided by the design tools listed below.

Free UX journey mapping tools with templates

No matter whether you’re a design buff or feel more comfortable in spreadsheets, there are many templates available for free(mium) tools you might be already using. 

For example, there are good templates and tutorials available for  Canva ,  Miro  and even  Google Sheets . If you are more comfortable with regular design software, you can use the templates available for  Sketch  or one of these two from the  Figma (template 1 ,  template 2 ) community. There are also several dedicated journey map tools with free licenses or free trials, e.g.,  FlowMapp ,  Lucidchart  and  UXPressia , just to name a few.

Be aware that the first draft will require a lot of rearrangement and fiddling until you get to the final version. So it might help to pick where this feels easy for you. 

How do I collect data for my app user journey?

User journey maps need to be rooted in reality and based on what users really need and do (not what we wish they did) to add value to the product and business strategy. Hence, user insights are an inevitable step in the creation process.

However, it’s a huge pile of information that needs to be puzzled together and usually, one source of information is not enough to cover the whole experience — every research method has its own blind spots. But if you combine at least two or three of the approaches below, you can create a solid app user journey .

1. In-house expertise

The people working for and with your users are an incredible source of knowledge to start and finalize the journey. Whilst there might be a few overly optimistic or biased assumptions you need to set straight with your additional research, a user journey mapping workshop and/or  expert interviews  involving colleagues from very different (user-facing) teams such as:

customer service

business intelligence

customer insights

will help you collect a lot of insights and feedback. You can use these methods to build a preliminary skeleton for your journey but also to finalize the journey with their input and feedback.

2. Desk research

Next to this, it is fair to assume there is already a ton of preexisting documented knowledge about the users simply floating around in your company. Your  UX research repository  and even  industry reports  you can buy or find with a bit of googling will help. Go through them and pick the cherries that are relevant for your user journey. Almost anything can be interesting:

Old research reports and not-yet-analyzed context interviews from earlier user interviews

NPS scores & user satisfaction surveys

App store feedback

Customer support tickets

Product reviews written by journalists

Competitor user journeys in publicly available UX case studies

Ask your in-house experts if they know of additional resources you could check. And find out if there’s already a  long-forgotten old journey map  from a few years ago that you can use as a starting point (most organizations have those somewhere).

3. Qualitative user research

Qualitative research methods are your best shot to learn about all the things users experience, think, and desire before and after they touch your product.  In-depth interviews  and  focus groups  explore who they are and what drives them. You could show them a skeleton user journey for feedback or  co-creation . 

This could also be embedded into your user journey mapping workshop with the team. Alternatively, you can follow their actual journey in  diary studies ,  in-home visits  or  shadowing . However, in all these cases it is important that you talk to real users of your product or competitors to learn more about the real scenarios. This is why usability testing with non-users or fictional scenarios won’t help much for the user journey map.

4. Quantitative research

Once you know the rough cornerstones of your user journey map,  surveys  could be used to let users rate what needs and pains really matter to them. And what their mood is at certain phases of the journey. You can learn how they became aware of your product and ask them which of the motives you identified are common or exotic edge cases. Implementing micro-surveys such as  NPS surveys , CES , and  CSAT  embedded into your product experience can give additional insights.

5. Customer satisfaction (CSAT) survey

Customer satisfaction surveys (or CSATs for short) are important tools that measure your customers' satisfaction with your product or service. It is usually measured through surveys or feedback forms, asking customers to rate their experience on a scale from 1 to 5. This metric can give valuable insights into the overall satisfaction of your customers and can help identify areas of improvement for your product.

CSAT surveys can be conducted at different customer journey stages, such as after purchase or using a specific feature. This allows you to gather feedback on different aspects of your product and make necessary changes to improve overall satisfaction.

The benefit of CSAT lies in understanding how satisfied customers are with your product and why. By including open-ended questions in the surveys, you can gather qualitative insights into what aspects of your product work well and what needs improvement.

5. User analytics

User analytics is a beautiful source of information, even if it has its limits. Depending on what tools you are using (e.g., Google Analytics, Firebase, Hubspot, UXCam), you can follow the digital footprints of your users before and when they were using the product. This may include  acquisition channels  (input for brand touchpoints and early journey phases),  search terms  that brought them to your product (input for needs and pains), and how they navigate your product. 

Unlike a usability test, you can use  screen flows  and  heatmaps  to understand how your users behave naturally when they follow their own agenda at their own pace — and how often they are so frustrated that they just quit. Knowing this gives you pointers to negative user emotions at certain journey steps and even helps identify your product’s moments of truth. Whilst you cannot ask the users if your interpretations are correct, checking analytics already helps you prepare good questions and talking points for user interviews or surveys.

Curious to know how heatmaps will look in your app?  Try UXCam for free — with 100,000 monthly sessions and unlimited features.

How can I utilize UXCam to collect App User Journey data?

If you have UXCam set up in your mobile app, you can use it to support your user journey research. You can find many of the previously mentioned  user analytics  features ( screen flows  and  heatmaps , including  rage taps ) here as well. 

UXCam can also be an  invaluable asset for your qualitative research . Especially for niche products and B2B apps that normally have a lot of trouble  recruiting real users  via the usual user testing platforms. 

UXCam’s detailed segmentation options allow you to  identify exactly the users you want to interview  about their journey — and  reach out to them via either email or UXCam push notifications , which can include invitation links for your study, a survey or an additional screener.

Additionally, UXCam's session replay feature allows you to watch recordings of user sessions, providing valuable insights into how users interact with your app and where they may face challenges.

Where can I learn more about user journey map?

Don’t feel ready to get started? Here are a few additional resources that can help you dive deeper into user journey mapping and create the version that is best for your project.

Creating user journey maps & service blueprints:

Mapping Experiences by Jim Kalbach

Journey Mapping 101

How to create customer journey maps

Customer Journey Stages for Product Managers

The Perfect Customer Journey Map

Planning and running user journey mapping workshops:

Journey mapping workshop

Jobs to be done:

The Theory of Jobs To Be Done

Moments of truth in customer journeys:

Journey mapping MoTs

What is a user journey map?

A user journey map is a visual representation of the process that a user goes through to accomplish a goal with your product, service, or app.

What is a user journey?

A user journey refers to the series of steps a user takes to accomplish a specific goal within a product, service, or website. It represents the user's experience from their point of view as they interact with the product or service, starting from the initial contact or discovery, moving through various touchpoints, and leading to a final outcome or goal.

How do I use a user journey map in UX?

User journey maps are an essential tool in the UX design process, used to understand and address the user's needs and pain points.

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Digital customer journeys: from awareness to advocacy.

13 min read Just understanding a customer’s needs and wants is no longer enough. You need to know not only what they think and feel about every online interaction with your product, but also what they might do in the future. This is where digital customer journey mapping comes into play.

Customers expect not only a high-quality digital experience ; they also expect to be treated as individuals. Their online experience must be personalized, relevant, and tailored to their wants, needs and interests. And where customers have high expectations , it follows that they have low tolerance for a below-par experience.

Now, more than ever, customers will abandon a purchase or a brand with a single click if they’re not happy, and move onto another brand that seamlessly delivers what they want. A recent study from the XM Institute asked large organizations to evaluate the quality of the experiences they deliver across different channels. Less than 30% rated any of their digital experiences as “good” or “very good”.

Modern customers are digital kangaroos, able to hop from brand to brand and product to product, on any device. Therefore, it’s essential to ensure that your brand’s path to purchase is as easy as possible, to stop them from hopping off to a competitor.

How do you do this? With digital customer journey mapping.

Free course: Customer journey management & improvement

What is a digital customer journey?

This is the path to purchase and retention – from first noticing the product to buying and using it. The journey combines all the touchpoints (i.e. points of interaction with your business) a customer has, and collects consumer data, transaction information, cross-device browsing history, and customer service interactions. There are five stages in the digital customer journey:

• Awareness: this is the point at which a customer notices your product . Awareness can come from a multitude of channels: social media and word of mouth from friends, influencers and brand advocates, search engine suggestions, adverts, marketing emails, blogs, SMS, apps, loyalty programs, and affiliate marketing.
• Consideration: A customer likes what they’ve seen, so they start to think about and research the product. They’ll visit your website, engage with a chatbot, sign up for free trials, demos, webinars, look at discounts, and check online reviews and testimonials.
• Purchase: To buy online, customers will create an account (or log into their existing one), fill their shopping cart, may be upsold or cross-sold, apply discounts, choose an electronic payment option, check out, and leave a review about the purchase.
• Experience: This is how well the order is fulfilled, and includes: shipping and delivery, tracking, online help center, support content (FAQs, instructions and assembly guides), chatbots and assisted chat, guarantees, follow-up emails and social media interactions.
• Loyalty: Loyalty programs , personalized rewards, newsletters, and social media interaction are all well and good. But creating an emotional connection with the customer, and ensuring they receive the value they expect from the brand is the new approach to loyalty: is the product good quality? Did the customer receive good support ?

What exactly is a digital customer journey map?

When you map out the digital journey graphically, including all the devices, and touchpoints your customer interacts with, you’ll understand how they make decisions, connect and interact with your brand. You can also identify and rectify any pain points that make the customer experience less than seamless.

What are the benefits of customer journey mapping?

• You’ll walk in your customers’ (virtual) shoes : Employees sometimes find it difficult to empathize or understand the customer’s perspective. They may try to second guess what customers are feeling, rather than experiencing the journey themselves. By collecting feedback at touchpoints along the journey, the customer can express how they are feeling (frustrated? Happy? Disappointed? Cared for?) and employees can jump in to solve issues and make the customer experience smoother and more enjoyable.
• The whole company will work together: All too often, organizations work in silos: not only communication silos (when different teams don’t speak to each other) but also system and data silos that hold customer information that’s specific only to that part of the journey.  It’s the lack of a 360 view of the customer and seamless sharing of insight that creates this fragmented experience. With a customer journey map and centralized customer information, everyone, across all departments, knows where they fit in and what their role is in delivering a seamless experience.
•   You’ll inform your content marketing and content creation: Customers buy more if your content is relevant and targeted to them. Your customer journey map will help you build a full 360° picture of your customers: demographics , behavior , and psychographics , so you can target new and returning buyers.
• You’ll be able to predict customer behavior: Not only will journey mapping give you valuable insight into customers’ wants, needs, feelings, actions and aspirations, you’ll also be able to use the data to predict and influence how customers will behave.
• You’ll be able to identify gaps: when you map out each stage of the journey, and then map out your existing processes, you can not only uncover gaps, but also identify what your highest value journey touchpoints are. Without mapping, you could be focusing on optimizing touchpoints that are not really that influential, while missing a more important point.

Creating your digital customer journey map

The first thing to understand is that you have no control over a customer’s journey. A customer will go where they like, on whichever device or platform they choose, negotiating the touchpoints to achieve their goal of a satisfactory purchase. Your role is to build an omnichannel framework that anticipates where they are going to go and supports their goal.

• Base it on your sales funnel:  You will probably have the basis for your digital customer journey already – your online sales funnel (awareness, interest, decision, action). Use this as a guideline to define how many touchpoints your customers have, and how each interaction funnels into the next.
• Put your customer hat on: Walk through all the stages of your sales funnel as a customer would, noting the touchpoints. What social media would they interact with? Does your website have the right information? How easy is your booking process? How helpful are the after sales people? Is the loyalty scheme attractive? Would you be happy to recommend your own product ?
• Customize your touchpoints: You know which social media platform attracts most customers, how to respond to reviews so your business demonstrates it cares about customers, how your purchase process works, how good your aftersales team is, and how you reward loyal customers. These are the touchpoints that are specific to your company. When you bolt them onto your customer journey map and collect feedback about each of them, you’ll be able to see if they are performing as well as you think they are.
• Create personas: As companies scale, it becomes harder and harder to keep track of individual customers. This is where personas come in: these are fictitious customer types based on real customers, using demographic and psychographic profiles that include age, gender, socioeconomic background, lifestyle, interests, opinions, likes, dislikes, and attitudes. Each persona travels along their customer journey in a slightly different way, enabling a company to recognize the differences and cater to every type of customer.
• Use customer journey mapping software: Customer journey solutions are now so sophisticated that they can give real-time visualizations of your customers moving towards purchase and beyond, capturing their online interactions with your brand. AI-enabled software will flag any touchpoint where customers are struggling and highlight any places where they drop out. Not only can you jump in and fix the problems, you can also measure the impact that improving the customer experience at those points has on the company’s bottom line.

Data you can collect with digital customer journey mapping

These are just some of the types of data you can collect along your digital customer journey. When you feed all these into a single platform for analysis, you’ll be able to see how they relate to each other, and where they have knock-on effects.

• Web-browsing data: Every time someone clicks onto your website, you can track their activity on the site and see how they are interacting with your brand. You can also see what devices they are using to access your site.
• Mobile app data: If a customer is using your mobile app, they already have a degree of loyalty. Mobile apps yield more customer information from profiles, sign-ins, and location.
• Sales data: You can track a customer’s purchase history and shopping habits over time. Do they buy immediately, leave items in their shopping cart, or abandon their cart periodically? Don’t forget sales that didn’t happen – finding out why not is valuable for understanding what needs to improve.
• Advertising data: Who has clicked through to your site from an advertisement? This data will give you information about customers who are just starting out on their journey with you. You can marry advertising data with sales data to test the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.
• Loyalty data: Your best customers are usually those in your loyalty program. By analyzing who they are and how they use your brand, you’ll be able to target people just like them.
• Survey data: Want to know what customers think of your brand? Ask them. Sending surveys at touchpoints along the customer journey can give you quality information about what’s working and what’s not.
• Social media listening: Increasingly, customers interact with brands through social media. Understanding the nature of this interaction can help develop your social, as well as general marketing strategies .
• Aftersales data: Information from your customer services department can reveal a wide range of issues: product quality, delivery reliability, areas that need product support. How customers are treated after they’ve made a purchase is pivotal to whether they become loyal, or not.

What about B2B digital customer journey mapping?

Whether you’re selling B2C or B2B, the main principles of journey mapping are the same. After all, although you are trading with companies, you are still selling to people within those companies – there are just more of them, and your feedback processes will need to be a little different.

When you map B2B journeys , you need to bear the following in mind:

• More types of people are involved in a B2B journey than a B2C one: Therefore, you’ll need to create more customer personas. For example, if you’re supplying an online finance platform, you will have to deal with the CIO, executives, managers, tech personnel and the call center assistants. All these people are your customers, segmented by persona.
• B2B customers are more valuable: Building business relationships can take years of investment, and if you lose a business customer, you might lose a lot of revenue as a result. You’ll need to prioritize and segment your customer personas by business value: the CIO has more purchasing power than a single call center assistant, for example.
• B2B customer feedback is different: Because much B2B is built on personal interaction and recommendation, business people often know each other. It’s more acceptable to pick up the phone and talk through a problem than send out a generic survey. Your feedback techniques will have to be much more personalized to each of your B2B customers, so that they feel heard, and still special.

An example of a customer journey map template

The brands that thrive in this new reality are those that understand what customers want in digital and take action to deliver the experiences they expect. Here’s a customer journey template for you to start mapping out your digital journey.

To learn more about customer journey management take a look at our free online course below:

Related resources

Customer Journey

B2B Customer Journey 13 min read

Customer interactions 11 min read, consumer decision journey 14 min read, customer journey orchestration 12 min read, customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer's journey 16 min read, request demo.

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You’re on a business trip in Oakland, CA. You've been working late in downtown and now you're looking for a place nearby to grab a late dinner. You decided to check Zomato to try and find somewhere to eat. (Don't begin searching yet).

• Look around on the home page. Does anything seem interesting to you?
• How would you go about finding a place to eat near you in Downtown Oakland? You want something kind of quick, open late, not too expensive, and with a good rating.
• What do the reviews say about the restaurant you've chosen?
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• Now go to any restaurant's page and try to leave a review (don't actually submit it).

What was the worst thing about your experience?

It was hard to find the bart station. The collections not being able to be sorted was a bit of a bummer

What other aspects of the experience could be improved?

Feedback from the owners would be nice

What did you like about the website?

The flow was good, lots of bright photos

What other comments do you have for the owner of the website?

I like that you can sort by what you are looking for and i like the idea of collections

You're going on a vacation to Italy next month, and you want to learn some basic Italian for getting around while there. You decided to try Duolingo.

• Please begin by downloading the app to your device.
• Choose Italian and get started with the first lesson (stop once you reach the first question).
• Now go all the way through the rest of the first lesson, describing your thoughts as you go.
• Get your profile set up, then view your account page. What information and options are there? Do you feel that these are useful? Why or why not?
• After a week in Italy, you're going to spend a few days in Austria. How would you take German lessons on Duolingo?
• What other languages does the app offer? Do any of them interest you?

I felt like there could have been a little more of an instructional component to the lesson.

It would be cool if there were some feature that could allow two learners studying the same language to take lessons together. I imagine that their screens would be synced and they could go through lessons together and chat along the way.

Overall, the app was very intuitive to use and visually appealing. I also liked the option to connect with others.

Overall, the app seemed very helpful and easy to use. I feel like it makes learning a new language fun and almost like a game. It would be nice, however, if it contained more of an instructional portion.

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What is a User Journey? Definition, Examples, Monitoring and Best Practices

What is a User Journey? 

A user journey is defined as a holistic representation of a user’s interactions with a product, service, or system throughout their entire experience with the company or brand. It encompasses the various touchpoints from initial awareness to post-interaction, providing insights into user behavior, needs, and emotions at each stage.

The journey typically starts with the user becoming aware of the product or service, followed by a consideration phase where they evaluate options. The decision phase marks the point at which the user decides to engage or make a purchase. Once the user starts using the product or service, the focus shifts to the actual experience. Finally, the post-interaction phase involves feedback, support, and reflections on the overall user experience (UX) .

Mapping a user journey is a valuable tool for businesses and designers to understand user perspectives, identify pain points, and optimize the user experience. By visualizing the entire process, teams can make informed decisions to enhance usability, satisfaction, and overall product or service performance. This user-centric approach fosters a deeper understanding of user needs and helps build products that resonate with their expectations.

Related: What is a User Story?

Key Components of a User Journey

A user journey consists of several key components that collectively define the user’s experience throughout their interaction with a product, service, or system.

These components help in understanding and improving the overall user experience. Here are the key components:

1. Touchpoints: These are the specific interactions or points of contact between the user and the product or service. Touchpoints can include website visits, app usage, customer support interactions, and any other instance where the user engages with the brand.

2. Stages: The journey is often divided into stages that represent different phases of the user’s experience. Common stages include awareness, consideration, decision, usage, and post-interaction. Each stage has unique characteristics and user expectations.

3. User Actions: This involves the actions users take at each stage of the journey. Understanding these actions helps in predicting user behavior and tailoring the experience to meet their needs. User actions can range from researching product features to making a purchase or seeking support.

4. Emotions: Emotions play a key role in shaping the user experience. Users may feel excited, frustrated, satisfied, or confused at different stages. Identifying emotional highs and lows helps in creating a more empathetic and enjoyable journey.

5. User Goals: Users have specific goals or objectives they want to achieve at each stage. Recognizing these goals helps in designing a user journey that aligns with user expectations and facilitates goal completion.

For example, a user’s goal in the awareness stage might be to gather information about available options.

6. Barriers and Pain Points: These are obstacles or challenges that users may encounter during their journey. Identifying barriers and pain points allows for targeted improvements to enhance the user experience and increase satisfaction.

7. Channels: Users interact with products and services through various channels such as websites, mobile apps, social media, and in-person interactions. Understanding the channels through which users engage helps in creating a seamless and consistent experience across all touchpoints.

8. Feedback and Evaluation: User feedback at different stages of the journey is a prime pillar to accurate map user journey. Collecting and analyzing the quantitative and qualitative data derived from feedback methods like user interviews and surveys helps in refining the user journey and addressing any issues that may arise.

By considering these components, businesses and designers can gain a comprehensive understanding of the user’s experience and make informed decisions to optimize and enhance the overall user journey.

User Journey Mapping: Key Process Steps

User journey mapping is a valuable process for understanding and improving the user experience. Here are the key process steps for creating a user journey map:

• Define Objectives and Scope:

Clearly articulate the goals and objectives of the user journey mapping process. Understand what aspects of the user experience you want to explore and improve.

• Identify User Personas:

Focus on detailed user personas that most closely represent your target audience. Consider factors such as demographics, behaviors, and motivations to create a realistic portrayal of your users.

• Research and Data Collection:

Gather relevant data through methods like user interviews , surveys, analytics, and support logs. This information provides insights into user behaviors, pain points, and preferences.

• Define Touchpoints and Channels:

Identify and define user touchpoints across online and offline channels, such as phone support, in-store/ branch experience, websites, apps, social media, and customer support.

• Outline User Stages:

Divide the user journey into key stages, such as awareness, consideration, decision-making, usage, and post-interaction. Understand the specific expectations and needs at each stage.

• Map User Actions:

Document the specific actions users take at each touchpoint and stage. This helps in understanding the sequence of interactions and the goals users are trying to achieve.

• Capture User Emotions:

Note the emotional highs and lows that users may experience throughout their journey. Emotions significantly impact the overall user experience.

• Identify Pain Points and Opportunities:

Highlight areas where users may encounter difficulties or frustrations (pain points). Simultaneously, identify opportunities for improvement and enhancement.

• Create the Journey Map:

Develop a visual representation of the user journey through mapping . This can take the form of a flowchart, diagram, or storyboard, with each touchpoint, stage, and user action clearly illustrated.

• Validate and Iterate:

Share the user journey map with relevant stakeholders and gather feedback. Use this feedback to refine and iterate on the map, ensuring its accuracy and effectiveness.

• Implement Changes:

Based on the insights gained from the user journey map, implement changes and improvements to enhance the overall user experience.

• Monitor and Evaluate:

Continuously monitor user interactions and collect feedback to assess the impact of the implemented changes. Iterate further based on ongoing observations and evolving user needs.

By following these steps, organizations can gain a comprehensive understanding of the user experience and make informed decisions to enhance satisfaction and engagement.

Related: User Journey Vs User Flow

User Journey Monitoring: Key Process Steps

User journey monitoring is a continuous process that involves tracking and analyzing user interactions with a product, service, or system over time. This ongoing evaluation helps businesses stay attuned to user needs and behaviors, allowing for timely adjustments and improvements. Here are the key process steps for user journey monitoring:

Step1. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs):

Define measurable KPIs that align with the objectives of your user journey. KPIs may include conversion rates, user satisfaction scores, retention rates, and other relevant metrics.

Step 2. Select Monitoring Tools:

Choose appropriate tools for collecting and analyzing data. This may involve using analytics platforms, customer feedback tools, heatmaps, and other monitoring solutions that provide insights into user behavior.

Step 3. Set Up Tracking Mechanisms:

Implement tracking mechanisms to collect data at various touchpoints and stages of the user journey. This could involve setting up event tracking, user surveys, or integrating analytics SDKs within digital platforms.

Step 4. Collect User Feedback:

Actively seek user feedback through surveys, interviews, and other channels. Understanding user perspectives and sentiments is crucial for identifying pain points and areas of improvement.

Step 5. Analyze User Behavior:

Regularly analyze user behavior data to identify patterns, trends, and anomalies. Look for areas of the user journey where users may be dropping off or experiencing challenges.

Step 6. Review Customer Support Interactions:

Monitor customer support interactions for insights into user issues and concerns. Analyzing support tickets and inquiries can reveal common problems users encounter.

Step 7. Compare Data Over Time:

Compare data and metrics over time to identify any changes in user behavior or performance indicators. This longitudinal analysis helps in understanding the effectiveness of implemented changes.

Step 8. Segment User Data:

Segment user data based on demographics, geography, or other relevant factors. This allows for a more granular understanding of different user groups and their unique journey experiences.

Step 9. Identify and Prioritize Issues:

Based on data analysis, identify and prioritize issues in the user journey. Distinguish between critical pain points that require immediate attention and areas for long-term improvement.

Step 10. Implement Iterative Changes:

Develop and implement iterative changes to address identified issues. These changes may include updates to user interfaces, enhancements to features, or adjustments to communication strategies.

Step 11. Communicate Changes to Users:

Clearly communicate changes to users through various channels. Providing transparency about updates and improvements can help manage user expectations and build trust.

Step 12. Monitor Impact of Changes:

Continuously monitor the impact of implemented changes on user behavior and key metrics. Evaluate whether the adjustments have positively affected the user journey and adjust strategies accordingly.

Step 13. Iterate and Refine:

Use insights gained from ongoing monitoring to iterate and refine the user journey. The iterative process ensures that the user experience remains aligned with evolving user needs and business goals.

By following these user journey monitoring steps, organizations can maintain a proactive approach to user experience management, leading to increased user satisfaction and engagement over time.

Best Practices for Planning and Managing User Journeys in 2024

Planning and managing user journeys effectively is essential for delivering a positive user experience. 

Here are the key best practices for 2024:

• Understand Your Users:

Develop detailed user personas to understand your target audience’s demographics, behaviors, and motivations. This forms the foundation for creating user journeys that resonate with actual users.

• Define Clear Objectives:

Clearly articulate the goals and objectives of the user journey. Understand what aspects of the user experience you want to explore or improve, and align these objectives with broader business goals.

• Collaborate Across Teams:

Foster collaboration between different departments, such as marketing, design, development, and customer support. This ensures a holistic approach to user journey planning and implementation.

• Map Multiple Journeys:

Recognize that different user segments may have distinct journeys. Create separate maps for various user personas to address the unique needs and behaviors of each group.

• Gather Comprehensive Data:

Utilize a mix of qualitative and quantitative data sources, including user interviews, surveys, analytics, and customer support logs. This comprehensive approach provides a more nuanced understanding of the user experience.

• Focus on Emotions:

Consider the emotional aspects of the user journey. Recognize emotional highs and lows, and design experiences that positively influence user sentiment throughout the entire journey.

• Include Pre- and Post-Interaction Phases:

Extend the user journey beyond the initial interaction to include pre- and post-interaction phases. This ensures a more complete understanding of the user’s end-to-end experience.

Highlight pain points and areas for improvement within the user journey. Simultaneously, identify opportunities for enhancing the user experience and exceeding user expectations.

• Prioritize User Safety and Privacy:

Ensure that the user journey respects and protects user safety and privacy. Clearly communicate how user data will be handled and address any concerns users may have regarding security.

• Utilize Visualization Techniques:

Create visual representations of the user journey, such as flowcharts, diagrams, or storyboards. Visualization aids in communicating the user experience to stakeholders and team members.

• Iterate and Update Regularly:

Recognize that user journeys evolve over time. Regularly revisit and update user journey maps to reflect changes in user behavior, technology, or business strategies.

• Monitor and Measure Key Metrics:

Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) aligned with user journey objectives. Continuously monitor and measure these metrics to gauge the success of your user experience initiatives.

• Seek User Feedback Actively:

Actively collect user feedback at various touchpoints. Use surveys, interviews, and usability testing to gather insights directly from users, helping to identify areas for improvement.

• Encourage a User-Centric Culture:

Foster a culture within your organization that prioritizes the user experience. Ensure that all team members understand the importance of user-centric design and actively contribute to improving user journeys.

• Stay Agile and Responsive:

Embrace an agile mindset and remain responsive to user feedback and changing market dynamics. This flexibility allows for quick adjustments to the user journey as needed.

By incorporating these best practices into your planning and management processes, you can create user journeys that not only meet user expectations but also contribute to the overall success of your product or service.

Interested in learning more about the fields of product, research, and design? Search our articles here for helpful information spanning a wide range of topics!

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How to Create a User Journey Map: A Step-By-Step Guide

Wondering how to create a user journey map for your SaaS product?

If yes, you’re in the right place because that’s exactly what we explore in the article.

Read on to learn about:

• Importance of user journey maps for product teams .
• Different user journey map types.
• User journey stages.
• User journey mapping process.

Ready to dive in?

• A user journey map represents all the actions users complete inside the product to achieve their goals, from the moment they first log in until they become loyal users.
• A user journey map helps you communicate with stakeholders from across the organization to better align efforts. Thanks to that, they can better satisfy user needs , strengthen customer loyalty, and improve conversion rates .
• Current-state maps focus on the present user experience and help identify immediate pain points and make incremental improvements.
• Future-state maps visualize an improved user journey and guide strategic planning and innovation.
• The day-in-the-life map looks at the broader context of the user’s daily life, helping to design user-centric products and identify new opportunities.
• Service-blueprint maps cover both user interactions and internal processes. They are useful for improving service delivery and aligning cross-functional teams .
• User journey stages are activation , adoption, renewal, expansion , loyalty, and referral.
• A typical user or customer journey map example includes information about the user persona, journey stages, touchpoints , user actions, emotions, pains, and opportunities.
• Start mapping user and customer journeys by defining user personas and setting your goals .
• Next, use your product knowledge and analytics tools to identify the main touchpoints.
• Conduct further customer research to find user pain points at each touchpoint. Use quantitative and qualitative data from analytics, surveys, interviews, and usability testing .
• With all the data in place, visualize the journey using a template, for example, from Canva.
• Ensure that your user journey map is a true reflection of user engagement with the product by tracking user behavior and collecting feedback .
• Constantly monitor product performance and user behavior and amend your user journey maps to accommodate emerging user needs .
• Userpilot is a product growth platform with advanced analytics and feedback features. Book the demo to see how to use it for user journey mapping.

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What is a user journey map?

A user journey map is a visual representation of steps and interactions that a user goes through when engaging with a SaaS product.

How is it different from a customer journey map?

In a nutshell, the user journey is a part of the customer journey limited to interactions within the product. From the moment they use it for the first time until they become competent product users and advocates. It doesn’t cover interactions outside the product, like engagement with marketing materials.

Why is user journey mapping important?

There are a few key benefits of user journey maps.

First, they are an important communication tool improving cross-functional collaboration and ensuring a shared understanding of the target audience and their goals.

Talking of understanding…

The mapping process is an opportunity to learn about your customers: their objectives, challenges, and emotions as they interact with the product.

Such in-depth understanding allows teams to prioritize their efforts to address the key user needs and create personalized experiences that meet their expectations. Which translates into better customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty . And gives you a competitive advantage.

Finally, a customer journey map can help you improve conversion rates at key touchpoints, ultimately leading to better financial performance.

Different types of user journey maps

We distinguish 4 user journey maps, differing in focus and use cases. Here’s a quick overview.

Current-state map

A current-state map captures the user’s journey through the product as it exists today. It focuses on the present interactions, experiences, emotions, and pain points users come across while engaging with the product.

Such a map helps teams identify areas where users are facing difficulties and make quick, incremental user experience improvements . It also serves as a baseline for evaluating innovations.

Future-state map

A future-state map envisions the ideal user journey , showing how the experience will be improved in the future. It focuses on desired interactions, emotions, and experiences after implementing planned changes.

This kind of journey map helps you set long-term goals and align them with user needs. And guides product development and marketing strategies.

Day-in-the-life map

A day-in-the-life map provides a holistic view of customer interactions with the product in the context of their daily activities.

Teams can use such journey maps to gain deeper insights into how the product fits into the users’ daily lives. This helps them design products that better integrate into their lives and identify new opportunities to address unmet needs.

Service-blueprint map

A service-blueprint map goes beyond the user’s perspective: it details not only user interactions but also internal processes, systems, and support activities happening behind the scenes.

This kind of user journey map provides a comprehensive view of how different departments and systems contribute to the user experience . To improve cross-functional alignment and reduce inefficiencies in internal processes.

Different stages of user journey maps

The customer journey map consists of 8-9 stages, starting from initial awareness and ending with loyalty or referral.

As mentioned, in the user journey map, we focus on interaction with the product, so the stages are:

• Activation : when the user experiences the product value firsthand.
• Adoption : when they start using it regularly to solve their problems.
• Renewal : when the user renews their subs to continue using the product.
• Expansion : when they upgrade their plan or buy additional products.
• Loyalty : when they continue to use the product and are unlikely to switch to a competitor.
• Referral : when they recommend the product to others, for example, through WOM .

What are the elements of a user journey map?

Most user and customer journey map templates include information about:

• User personas representing typical users.
• Journey stages.
• Touchpoints where users interact with the product,e.g. feedback survey.
• User actions, e.g. complete the survey.
• User emotions as they engage with the product, like ‘excited’, ‘flabbergasted’, or ‘ delighted ‘.
• Pains/challenges , e.g. can’t skip a question.
• Opportunities to improve user experience.

How to create a user journey map?

With the basics out of the way, let’s look at how to create user journey maps. The process is very similar to customer journey mapping, so I will be making references to both user and customer journey maps.

1. Define your goals and user personas

The process of user journey mapping starts with defining user personas . I use the plural form intentionally because your product is likely to target more than one user type. And each of them needs a separate user journey map because they want to achieve different goals .

Apart from the individual user persona goals, set your product goals , focusing on the aspects of product performance you want to improve. For example, your goal could be to improve customer lifetime value .

When setting your goals , make them SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. For example: “Improve customer lifetime value by 22% by the end of the year”.

2. Identify the main touchpoints in the user journey

Having defined personas and set goals, it’s time to identify the key touchpoints in the user journey.

For example, this could be your primary and secondary onboarding experiences, feedback forms, in-app upsell messages, resource center modules, or cancellation flows.

How do you do it?

Start by listing all the touchpoints that come to your mind. Involve other team members to capture as many of these as possible.

Back this brainstorming exercise with product analytics . Use path analysis to map out all user actions inside the product before or after an event, like sign-up or drop-off .

3. Conduct research to discover customer pain points

Product analytics can help you identify customer pain points. For example, if lots of users drop off at a particular user journey step, it’s most likely because of friction .

Don’t stop there and enhance the insights with qualitative data from surveys, interviews, focus groups, usability testing sessions, and customer interactions with the service and support teams.

For example, you could run surveys like the one below to measure user satisfaction with a feature and identify opportunities to improve it. When triggered contextually, just when the user engages with the feature, such surveys can help you capture user insights when the experience is still fresh in their minds.

The main advantage of qualitative data is that it helps you understand not only what the problem is but also why it’s an issue and how to address it.

4. Visualize the journey using a user/customer journey map template

Once you have all the information about users and their interactions, map them out.

Work your way from the top:

1) List the journey stages for each persona.

2) At each stage, list the touchpoints.

3) For each touchpoint, record user actions and the associated feelings, pain points, and opportunities.

Repeat for all the stages.

Graphic design and collaboration tools, like Canva, Miro, or Figma, offer numerous customer and user journey templates, so creating the actual visualization isn’t a big deal.

5. Collect customer feedback to validate the user journey map

Although you’ve done thorough user persona research and studied how your customers interact with the product, there may still be discrepancies between the map and the reality.

So go back to product analytics and analyze user behavior to see if it reflects what you’ve recorded in your map.

To validate new ideas, run experiments . For example, if you’re thinking of adding a new feature, start with fake door tests and low-fidelity prototype tests. Before you release the feature for everyone, roll it out to your staff first and run beta tests to collect feedback and iron out the details.

6. Update and refine your customer journey maps continuously

As user needs and the competitive landscape evolve, so should your product. And consequently, your user journey maps.

To stay ahead of the curve, monitor the product performance, track user behavior in-app , and engage in continuous product discovery . And amend your map accordingly.

User journey maps are an essential tool that allows product teams to better empathize with their users and communicate insights to other stakeholders. Thanks to that, they can design products that are competitive, offer a positive customer experience, and enable users to achieve their goals.

If you’d like to learn how Userpilot analytics and feedback features can help you create a user journey map, book the demo!

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The customer journey — definition, stages, and benefits

Businesses need to understand their customers to increase engagement, sales, and retention. But building an understanding with your customers isn’t easy.

The customer journey is the road a person takes to convert, but this journey isn’t always obvious to business owners. Understanding every step of that journey is key to business success. After reading this article, you’ll understand the customer journey better and how to use it to improve the customer experience while achieving your business goals.

This post will discuss:

• What a customer journey is

Customer journey stages

Benefits of knowing the customer journey.

• What a customer journey map is

How to create a customer journey map

Use the customer journey map to optimize the customer experience, what is a customer journey.

The customer journey is a series of steps — starting with brand awareness before a person is even a customer — that leads to a purchase and eventual customer loyalty. Businesses use the customer journey to better understand their customers’ experience, with the goal of optimizing that experience at every touchpoint.

Giving customers a positive customer experience is important for getting customers to trust a business, so optimizing the customer journey has never mattered more. By mastering the customer journey, you can design customer experiences that will lead to better customer relationships, loyalty, and long-term retention .

Customer journey vs. the buyer journey

The stages of the customer’s journey are different from the stages of the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey follows the customer experience from initial awareness of a brand to buying a product. The customer journey extends beyond the purchase and follows how customers interact with your product and how they share it with others.

Every lead goes through several stages to become a loyal customer. The better this experience is for customers at each stage, the more likely your leads are to stick around.

Ensure that your marketing, sales, and customer service teams optimize for these five stages of the customer journey:

1. Awareness

In the awareness phase, your target audience is just becoming aware of your brand and products. They need information or a solution to a problem, so they search for that information via social media and search engines.

For example, if someone searches on Google for pens for left-handed people, their customer journey begins when they’re first aware of your brand’s left-handed pen.

At this stage, potential customers learn about your business via web content, social media, influencers, and even their friends and family. However, this isn’t the time for hard sells. Customers are simply gathering information at this stage, so you should focus first on answering their questions and building trust.

2. Consideration

In the consideration phase, customers begin to consider your brand as a solution to their problem. They’re comparing your products to other businesses and alternative solutions, so you need to give these shoppers a reason to stick around.

Consideration-stage customers want to see product features that lean heavily toward solving problems and content that doesn’t necessarily push a sale. At this stage, businesses need to position their solution as a better alternative. For example, a nutrition coaching app might create content explaining the differences between using the app and working with an in-person nutritionist — while subtly promoting the benefits of choosing the app.

3. Purchase

The purchase stage is also called the decision stage because at this stage customers are ready to make a buying decision. Keep in mind that their decision might be to go with a competing solution, so purchase-stage buyers won’t always convert to your brand.

As a business, it’s your job to persuade shoppers at this stage to buy from you. Provide information on pricing, share comparison guides to showcase why you’re the superior option, and set up abandoned cart email sequences.

4. Retention

The customer journey doesn’t end once a shopper makes their first purchase. Once you’ve converted a customer, you need to focus on keeping them around and driving repeat business. Sourcing new customers is often more expensive than retaining existing clients, so this strategy can help you cut down on marketing costs and increase profits.

The key to the retention stage is to maintain positive, engaging relationships between your brand and its customers. Try strategies like regular email outreach, coupons and sales, or exclusive communities to encourage customer loyalty.

5. Advocacy

In the advocacy stage, customers are so delighted with your products and services that they spread the word to their friends and family. This goes a step beyond retention because the customer is actively encouraging other people to make purchases.

Customer journeys don’t have a distinct end because brands should always aim to please even their most loyal customers. In the advocacy stage of the customer journey, you can offer referral bonuses, loyalty programs, and special deals for your most active customers to encourage further advocacy.

Being aware of the customer journey helps shed more light on your target audience’s expectations and needs. In fact, 80% of companies compete primarily on customer experience. This means optimizing the customer journey will not only encourage your current customers to remain loyal but will also make you more competitive in acquiring new business.

More specifically, acknowledging the customer journey can help you:

• Understand customer behavior. Classifying every action your customers take will help you figure out why they do what they do. When you understand a shopper’s “why,” you’re better positioned to support their needs.
• Identify touchpoints to reach the customer. Many businesses invest in multichannel marketing, but not all of these touchpoints are valuable. By focusing on the customer journey, you’ll learn which of these channels are the most effective for generating sales. This helps businesses save time and money by focusing on only the most effective channels.
• Analyze the stumbling blocks in products or services. If leads frequently bail before buying, that could be a sign that something is wrong with your product or buying experience. Being conscious of the customer journey can help you fix issues with your products or services before they become a more expensive problem.
• Support your marketing efforts. Marketing requires a deep familiarity with your target audience. Documenting the customer journey makes it easier for your marketing team to meet shoppers’ expectations and solve their pain points.
• Increase customer engagement. Seeing the customer journey helps your business target the most relevant audience for your product or service. Plus, it improves the customer experience and increases engagement. In fact, 29.6% of customers will refuse to embrace branded digital channels if they have a poor experience, so increasing positive customer touchpoints has never been more important.
• Achieve more conversions. Mapping your customers’ journey can help you increase conversions by tailoring and personalizing your approach and messages to give your audience exactly what they want.
• Generate more ROI. You need to see a tangible return on your marketing efforts. Fortunately, investing in the customer journey improves ROI across the board. For example, brands with a good customer experience can increase revenue by 2–7% .
• Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. Today, 94% of customers say a positive experience motivates them to make future purchases. Optimizing the customer journey helps you meet shopper expectations, which increases satisfaction and loyalty.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of every step your customer takes from being a lead to eventually becoming an advocate for your brand. The goal of customer journey mapping is to simplify the complex process of how customers interact with your brand at every stage of their journey.

Businesses shouldn’t use a rigid, one-size-fits-all customer journey map. Instead, they should plan flexible, individual types of customer journeys — whether they’re based on a certain demographic or on individual customer personas. To design the most effective customer journey map, your brand needs to understand a customer’s:

• Actions. Learn which actions your customer takes at every stage. Look for common patterns. For example, you might see that consideration-stage shoppers commonly look for reviews.
• Motivations. Customer intent matters. A person’s motivations change at every stage of the customer journey, and your map needs to account for that. Include visual representation of the shopper’s motivations at each stage. At the awareness stage, their motivation might be to gather information to solve their problem. At the purchase stage, it might be to get the lowest price possible.
• Questions. Brands can take customers’ common questions at every stage of the customer journey and reverse-engineer them into useful content. For example, shoppers at the consideration stage might ask, “What’s the difference between a DIY car wash and hiring a professional detailer?” You can offer content that answers their question while subtly promoting your car detailing business.
• Pain points. Everybody has a problem that they’re trying to solve, whether by just gathering intel or by purchasing products. Recognizing your leads’ pain points will help you craft proactive, helpful marketing campaigns that solve their biggest problems.

Customer journey touchpoints

Every stage of the customer journey should also include touchpoints. Customer touchpoints are the series of interactions with your brand — such as an ad on Facebook, an email, or a website chatbot — that occur at the various stages of the customer journey across multiple channels. A customer’s actions, motivations, questions, and pain points will differ at each stage and at each touchpoint.

For example, a customer searching for a fishing rod and reading posts about how they’re made will have very different motivations and questions from when later comparing specs and trying to stay within budget. Likewise, that same customer will have different pain points when calling customer service after buying a particular rod.

It might sound like more work, but mapping the entire customer journey helps businesses create a better customer experience throughout the entire lifecycle of a customer’s interaction with your brand.

Before jumping into the steps of how to create the customer journey map, first be clear that your customer journey map needs to illustrate the following:

• Customer journey stages. Ensure that your customer journey map includes every stage of the customer journey. Don’t just focus on the stages approaching the purchase — focus on the retention and advocacy stages as well.
• Touchpoints. Log the most common touchpoints customers have at every stage. For example, awareness-stage touchpoints might include your blog, social media, or search engines. Consideration-stage touchpoints could include reviews or demo videos on YouTube. You don’t need to list all potential touchpoints. Only list the most common or relevant touchpoints at each stage.
• The full customer experience. Customers’ actions, motivations, questions, and pain points will change at every stage — and every touchpoint — during the customer journey. Ensure your customer journey map touches on the full experience for each touchpoint.
• Your brand’s solutions. Finally, the customer journey map needs to include a branded solution for each stage and touchpoint. This doesn’t necessarily mean paid products. For example, awareness-stage buyers aren’t ready to make a purchase, so your brand’s solution at this stage might be a piece of gated content. With these necessary elements in mind, creating an effective customer journey map is a simple three-step process.

1. Create buyer personas

A buyer persona is a fictitious representation of your target audience. It’s a helpful internal tool that businesses use to better understand their audience’s background, assumptions, pain points, and needs. Each persona differs in terms of actions, motivations, questions, and pain points, which is why businesses need to create buyer personas before they map the customer journey.

To create a buyer persona, you will need to:

• Gather and analyze customer data. Collect information on your customers through analytics, surveys, and market research.
• Segment customers into specific buying groups. Categorize customers into buying groups based on shared characteristics — such as demographics or location. This will give you multiple customer segments to choose from.
• Build the personas. Select the segment you want to target and build a persona for that segment. At a minimum, the buyer persona needs to define the customers’ basic traits, such as their personal background, as well as their motivations and pain points.

For example, ClearVoice created a buyer persona called “John The Marketing Manager.” The in-depth persona details the target customer’s pain points, pet peeves, and potential reactions to help ClearVoice marketers create more customer-focused experiences.

2. List the touchpoints at each customer journey stage

Now that you’ve created your buyer personas, you need to sketch out each of the five stages of the customer journey and then list all of the potential touchpoints each buyer persona has with your brand at every one of these five stages. This includes listing the most common marketing channels where customers can interact with you. Remember, touchpoints differ by stage, so it’s critical to list which touchpoints happen at every stage so you can optimize your approach for every buyer persona.

Every customer’s experience is different, but these touchpoints most commonly line up with each stage of the customer journey:

• Awareness. Advertising, social media, company blog, referrals from friends and family, how-to videos, streaming ads, and brand activation events.
• Consideration. Email, sales calls, SMS, landing pages, and reviews.
• Purchase. Live chat, chatbots, cart abandonment emails, retargeting ads, and product print inserts.
• Retention. Thank you emails, product walkthroughs, sales follow-ups, and online communities.
• Advocacy. Surveys, loyalty programs, and in-person events.

Leave no stone unturned. Logging the most relevant touchpoints at each stage eliminates blind spots and ensures your brand is there for its customers, wherever they choose to connect with you.

3. Map the customer experience at each touchpoint

Now that you’ve defined each touchpoint at every stage of the customer journey, it’s time to detail the exact experience you need to create for each touchpoint. Every touchpoint needs to consider the customer’s:

• Actions. Describe how the customer got to this touchpoint and what they’re going to do now that they’re here.
• Motivations. Specify how the customer feels at this moment. Are they frustrated, confused, curious, or excited? Explain why they feel this way.
• Questions. Every customer has questions. Anticipate the questions someone at this stage and touchpoint would have — and how your brand can answer those questions.
• Pain points. Define the problem the customer has — and how you can solve that problem at this stage. For example, imagine you sell women’s dress shoes. You’re focusing on the buyer persona of a 36-year-old Canadian woman who works in human resources. Her touchpoints might include clicking on your Facebook ad, exploring your online shop, but then abandoning her cart. After receiving a coupon from you, she finally buys. Later, she decides to exchange the shoes for a different color. After the exchange, she leaves a review. Note how she acts at each of these touchpoints and detail her likely pain points, motivations, and questions, for each scenario. Note on the map where you intend to respond to the customer’s motivations and pain points with your brand’s solutions. If you can create custom-tailored solutions for every stage of the funnel, that’s even better.

A positive customer experience is the direct result of offering customers personalized, relevant, or meaningful content and other brand interactions. By mapping your customers’ motivations and pain points with your brand’s solutions, you’ll find opportunities to improve the customer experience. When you truly address their deepest needs, you’ll increase engagement and generate more positive reviews.

Follow these strategies to improve the customer experience with your customer journey map:

• Prioritize objectives. Identify the stages of the customer journey where your brand has the strongest presence and take advantage of those points. For example, if leads at the consideration stage frequently subscribe to your YouTube channel, that gives you more opportunities to connect with loyal followers.
• Use an omnichannel approach to engage customers. Omnichannel marketing allows businesses to gather information and create a more holistic view of the customer journey. This allows you to personalize the customer experience on another level entirely. Use an omnichannel analytics solution that allows you to capture and analyze the true cross-channel experience.
• Personalize interactions at every stage. The goal of mapping the customer journey is to create more personalized, helpful experiences for your audience at every stage and touchpoint. For example, with the right data you can personalize the retail shopping experience and customer’s website experience.
• Cultivate a mutually trusting relationship. When consumer trust is low, brands have to work even harder to earn their customers’ trust. Back up your marketing promises with good customer service, personalized incentives, and loyalty programs.

Getting started with customer journeys

Customer journeys are complicated in an omnichannel environment, but mapping these journeys can help businesses better understand their customers. Customer journey maps help you deliver the exact experience your customers expect from your business while increasing engagement and sales.

When you’re ready to get started, trace the interactions your customers have at each stage of their journey with your brand. Adobe Customer Journey Analytics — a service built on Adobe Experience Platform — can break down, filter, and query years’ worth of data and combine it from every channel into a single interface. Real-time, omnichannel analysis and visualization let companies make better decisions with a holistic view of their business and the context behind every customer action.

Learn more about Customer Journey Analytics by watching the overview video .

https://business.adobe.com/blog/perspectives/introducing-adobes-customer-journey-maturity-model

https://business.adobe.com/blog/how-to/create-customer-journey-maps

https://business.adobe.com/blog/basics/what-is-customer-journey-map

Guide to the Customer Journey Stages

The 6 stages of the customer journey are awareness, evaluation, consideration, decision, retention, and advocacy. Read on to see what each stage covers.

There are around 6 stages that are most common in the full customer journey . These stages are Awareness , Evaluation , Consideration , Decision , Retention , and Advocacy . This is the complete journey, including everything from the very start of awareness of their need all the way through to loyalty to you, your product or company. It is important to know the customer journey in order to improve and streamline it as much as you can. We need to know each stage, how it affects the customer and how to improve the entire customer journey. How else do you know what your customers really want at key stages? I will run through an example at the end with the marathon customer journey, also used in A Guide to Mental Models , then expand on each stage.

1. Awareness

• Awareness is the potential customer’s level of awareness and how they hear about your company or product. You want your future customers to be aware of you. This means that when they are looking for the product you supply, you want them to come to you. One way to help is to realize your competitors and advertise where and how they do. Another way is to offer them inspiration on how to fulfill their goals.
• If you think of a fast-food hamburger, what restaurant do you think of? McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s? All three of these have multiple ways that we are aware of them, logos, mascot and taglines. When you see those golden arches, you know it is McDonald’s.

2. Evaluation

• Evaluation is after the customer has realized what a few companies offer, what they are looking for and are deciding who to go with. You want to show that your product or service is the best choice for them. Why they should choose you over your competitors even if they are cheaper or more well known.
• A great example is Avis, they know they weren’t the top so they emphasized that fact and their tagline for about 50 years was “we try harder”.
• When you are on a road trip and getting hungry, you decide what you want to eat. Do you want fast food, sit down dinner, french fries, cheeseburger, sandwich? Which restaurant has what you want?

3. Consideration

• Consideration is very close to evaluation which is why some people combine them in the list of customer journey stages. Evaluation is a little more research where consideration is the review of that research. The consideration is after the customer has learned about what all the companies have to offer and then make an educated decision.
• Product comparison guides are a great way to help your customers decide. If you give them the information they are looking for in one spot and you can emphasize how great your product is.
• When you are deciding to try a new restaurant, you look at the menu, prices, location and reviews. Having all of this information from the places you are looking at helps you decide which one to actually go to.
• I personally love McDonald’s french fries, so if french fries is what I feel like, McDonald’s will have a higher ranking. These decisions can be both logical and emotional.

4. Decision (or Purchase)

• For many companies the Purchase/Decision stage is their main goal. The actual money part. Once the customer has finished their evaluations and considerations they have decided you are who they want to go with. This is an important step as well and shouldn’t be taken for granted. If the purchase itself is difficult they can still choose to go with someone else.
• I recently went to register for a conference and the link was broken. If there happened to be another place that was offering the conference I was looking for, I would have been tempted. Instead, I let them know the link was broken, I heard back that it was fixed and was able to register. Even though they got my registration money, their reputation in my view dropped a little.

5. Retention

• I really like that some people call retention the experience stage! A lot of retention and loyalty comes down to your customer’s experience. Way too many companies are not focused on retention, they are all about new sales. Current customers are actually cheaper to keep than trying to find new ones. This should even include returns… if you state that you allow them, with specific rules then you should follow through.
• Our bank is a great example of retention. We changed banks because of the horrible customer service. The one we chose had great customer service, many different offerings, so when we were looking for a mortgage company, we talked to our bank as well as other options. Having multiple accounts at the same place has been really beneficial and if and when we are looking for a loan, we will certainly talk to our current bank first.

6. Advocacy

• Advocacy is the “cheapest” way to advertise! It is also the best “metric” for determining customer success. Get your customers to advertise for you. If they have had a great experience all the way through their journey, most people are happy to share with their friends and family, or really anyone who will listen. This is where having reviews is a good idea. That way happy customers can share and unhappy ones as well. If you show proper responses to the negative reviews, even they can be beneficial.
• Think about how many restaurants you have heard of through Facebook ads. It is great how they have“your friend likes this place” on the top of the sponsored posts. Not to mention the fantastic pictures of delicious looking food!

Related Articles

• Journey Mapping: What Components To Include?
• The Nitty Gritty of User Journey Maps
• Why Are Journey Maps Important?

Example of the Customer Journey Stages, A Marathon

The stages of the customer journey using my example are:

• Awareness: Going back to the marathon example, I am aware that there are marathons out there, I am sure there must be some that are not on a paved road. It is kind of hard to miss hearing about marathons anymore. Runners tend to brag a lot, as well as certain marathons, are very well known, like the Boston marathon.
• Evaluation: When deciding what marathon to run, I did quite a bit of research. I looked at where the marathon was, what the elevation change was as well as the surface I would be running on.
• Consideration: My sister in law actually had heard of the marathon we ended up going with. I also had a coworker who liked trail running who had run the same road as a half marathon.
• Purchase/Decision: Once I decided that a high elevation, gravel road was the way to go for my first marathon, I purchased an entry.
• Advocacy: Not only did I want to return the next year, I have suggested this race to many friends. They also have multiple other races to offer, running and a newer biking one over similar terrain. In case you are curious it is the Madison Marathon.

We discussed the different stages of the customer journey , some examples and a few ways to improve each step. These stages can apply to a variety of journeys. We’ve used them in healthcare, learning management systems, enterprise dashboards, and e-commerce.

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Customer journey stages

Key Takeaways:

• There are five stages to the customer journey: awareness, consideration, purchase/decision, loyalty, and advocacy.
• While the high-level stages are the same, there are nuances among the B2C and B2B customer journey stages.
• Not every customer journey is linear; the stages for each customer may not fall in the same order.

Table of Contents

No matter the type of business, each customer takes a journey with a brand. During this journey, customers progress from hearing about a business or service to engaging the business and then (ideally) sharing their positive experiences with friends and colleagues. In short, the customer journey is how customers go from being a target audience to loyal fans. 

Before improving or optimizing the customer journey , it’s critical to first understand the customer journey stages.

What are the stages of the customer journey?

There are five main stages of the customer journey. Each stage represents customer touchpoints between clients and a company. In many cases, organizations outline these stages on a customer journey map. 

It’s important to note that not every customer journey is linear and follows these stages in this order. But in general, companies look at the five customer journey stages as:

1. Awareness - This is when a potential customer becomes aware of your company and services. They could become passively aware, such as by seeing an advertisement, or they may become aware proactively, such as by searching for companies in your area that offer the services you do.

2. Consideration - At the consideration stage, the potential customer is now aware of your company and that you offer services that could fit their needs. During this stage, prospective customers weigh their options and evaluate your services against your competition. They may be completing activities such as checking online reviews or inquiring with trusted friends or colleagues to learn what others say about your brand. In doing so, they seek a clear answer on whether to purchase from your brand.

3. First purchase/decision - A potential customer reaches this stage when they have all the information they need to decide whether your company can meet their needs within their determined budget and scope. The individual or purchasing team goes from being a potential customer to a customer. Depending on the perceived importance of the purchase — as well as the personality of the buyer — it may take a long time to reach this phase.

4. Retention/loyalty: - The retention phase focuses on keeping your customers happy and engaged. As your customers use your product or service, they make repeat purchases and continue to buy again from your company. During this stage, you are also focused on providing excellent customer service.

5. Advocacy - In this stage, customers to whom you have delivered value that exceeded their expectations are doing their own marketing work for your company. They voluntarily talk about your business and encourage their colleagues and friends to try your services for themselves. Customers who share positive reviews about your company show that you deliver on brand promises you’ve made. Not all customers will reach this stage, but your goal should be to plan programs that ensure many of your customers will become loyal advocates for your brand.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map visually represents the entire customer journey or lifecycle. It covers all five customer journey stages and the different interactions or touchpoints across channels, including social media, in-store, website, or email. Journey maps may also include information about customer or buyer personas .

For example, a customer’s first touchpoint with your organization may be a paid search ad, which is the starting point on their customer journey map. The map then charts all of that user’s interactions and may have branching points for choices they could make.

Customer journey mapping is valuable for any organization looking to improve customer experience, customer retention, and loyalty.

Stage 1: Awareness stage

The awareness stage is a potential customer’s first impression of your brand, so it is worth a significant investment. They may encounter your brand passively by viewing an online or in-person advertisement. Or, they may have actively discovered your brand while researching a problem using a search engine. 

You should aim to educate prospective customers about your brand and offerings through ads, social media accounts, your website, and other high-level touchpoints (also known as “top of the funnel” touchpoints).

This customer journey stage aims to meet the right customers at the right time. It’s all about getting your brand name in front of your ideal customers, even if they don’t know they need your service.

Using analytics platforms has greatly improved marketers’ efforts to reach their target audience effectively. Examples of these platforms include Brandwatch Consumer Intelligence , Dstillery , Audiense , and Adverity . These platforms can provide rich data about potential customers, such as location, age, choice of device, and conversion rates. Choose an analytics platform that fits your marketing practices and goals.

Best practices for the awareness stage

• Target the channels your prospects use most - Using data from a consumer analytics platform, develop strategies that keep your brand front and center on the channels your customers use most. For example, if your potential audience is more senior and primarily on Facebook and Instagram, skip advertising on TikTok. 
• Focus on education - Create content — such as infographics and blog posts — that help educate consumers about why they need a product or service like yours. 
• Skip the hard sell - Avoid coming on too strong with sales tactics. Give your customer the content and space to learn about your product and brand.

Awareness stage content examples

The type of awareness phase content you develop will depend on your audience and whether you’re in the B2B or B2C space. In some cases, social media ads may be the right fit. Other companies may have more success with downloadable content like eBooks.

Once potential customers see your brand, keep them engaged with easy-to-digest information about your services and offerings. Awareness stage content can include:

• Infographics
• Free courses
• Social media posts/ads
• General eBooks related to your product category or industry
• General videos related to your product category or industry
• Paid search ads
• General whitepapers related to your product category or industry
• How-to articles and guides

Stage 2: Consideration stage

In this stage, a potential customer is now aware of your brand and is researching whether your company or product is what they need. This customer journey stage aims to move the customer to further engage with your brand and closer to a purchase or decision.

During the consideration phase, you must ensure your offering stands out among the competition. A customer in the consideration phase may spend time on your website, review your social media pages, engaging with your sales team, and seek out what others say about your brand. This can include Google, G2, Capterra, Yelp, or Facebook reviews. They may also ask experienced friends, colleagues, or family members for recommendations.

Many items are outside your control during this phase: your potential customer’s needs and budget, your competitors, online review websites, and individuals who have prior experience with your brand or your competitor.

Best practices for the consideration stage

While there are some factors you cannot control during the consideration phase, you have many opportunities to portray your brand as the best choice for prospective customers. 

• Take ownership of reviews - Responding to past negative reviews or past customer service complaints can show that your company is moving in a positive direction. Addressing significant issues from past reviews shows potential customers that your team takes customer service seriously.
• Highlight your differentiators and value - Consumers in this phase are likely comparing your brand to others. Make sure your brand’s key differentiators are featured throughout your consideration phase content. Review your website’s product and service pages to ensure they are easy to understand and highlight your product’s value.
• Build trust - A consumer is more likely to select a credible, trustworthy brand. Remember this as you’re developing content. Use customer quotes to boost credibility and avoid making unsubstantiated claims about your product or brand.
• Consider using third-party research - C onsider bringing in an expert third party to review your brand’s web presence — including properties you own and control and those you don’t. During this exercise, your marketing team can partner with other key business units to identify positive changes you can make to ensure your brand stacks up well against your competition during the consideration phase. 

Consideration stage content examples

Consideration phase content should highlight how your offering is the right choice. In some cases, content can overlap in other stages of the customer journey, such as the awareness phase.

Some types of marketing content that can be helpful during the consideration phase include:

• Case studies and customer testimonials
• Product comparison guides and charts
• Product-focused videos
• Product-focused white papers
• Retargeting ads on social media that target prospects who have been on your website

Stage 3: First purchase/decision stage

By now, the customer has gathered all the information they need about your brand — such as case studies or online reviews — and is ready to purchase. At this stage, they decide between your brand or product and your competition. This phase is significant because it demonstrates that the customer has confidence in your brand and may lead to a purchase or sale.

The main players during this stage are the customer and your sales team. Your customer service or implementation teams may also be involved if the purchase includes an integration or installation process.

Best practices for the purchase/decision stage

• Eliminate purchase barriers - Take the necessary steps to make the buying process as smooth as possible. If your company uses an online storefront, ensure your checkout process is straightforward. Consider providing resources to help them with financing, if needed. And if there is an integration or installation involved, get your customer success or implementation team involved as soon as possible.
• Provide incentives - Look for ways to move a deal or a purchase across the finish line. Discounts, coupons, or add-ons are some ways you can motivate customers to purchase. 
• Offer references - If appropriate, offer to connect prospects to existing customers. Having conversations with individuals who are happy with your product or service may help convince the consumer to move forward with your brand. 
• Collaborate with sales - Touch base with your sales contacts regularly to find ways to improve the purchasing process. 

Purchase/decision phase content examples

Once a customer is ready to make a purchase, they likely understand the value of your product. They may, however, require additional resources to convince internal stakeholders or blockers. Content types you may want to create for this stage of the customer journey include:

• Free consultations
• Product sign-up pages
• Pricing pages
• Limited time product promotions or coupons – “Sign up within 48 hours and save 25%!”
• Influencer videos

Stage 4: Retention/Loyalty stage

The overarching goal of this phase is to keep your customers happy, so they become loyal, lifelong customers.

59% of U.S. customers say that once they’ve found a brand they love, they are loyal for life. However, just because a customer has made an initial purchase with your company doesn’t mean your work is finished. Your team still has opportunities to educate the customer on the value of your brand, paving the way for additional purchases, upsells, or contract renewals. 

Retaining customers is crucial, as selling to or retaining an existing customer is much more cost-effective than acquiring a new one. Optimove estimates that it costs businesses five times as much to market to a new customer than a current customer. 

What’s more, keeping repeat customers happy makes your job easier. Semrush found that your chances of selling to an existing happy customer are between 60 and 70%. Your chances of selling to a new customer are between 5 and 20%. 

There are many players in the retention phase including:

• Your customer
• Your marketing teams who can help to keep your brand top-of-mind for your customer
• Your customer service team, who is responsible for quickly and effectively remediating any issues that arise
• Your analytics teams, who can provide insight on customer data
• Your product team, who is responsible for providing suggestions on which new products or additional offerings may be relevant to specific customers or developing new features for users
• Your sales teams, who can individually reach out to target customers with personalized offers and upsells

Best practices for the retention stage

• Leverate your customer data - Now that your customer has purchased from you, you have valuable data about them. Use this data to send them regular, personalized communications with opportunities for upselling them with premium offers or cross-selling for related product purchases.
• Make it easy to contact your team - Ensure your company is easy to contact — especially if a customer has encountered an issue. Provide your phone number or support email in a prominent location on your website and in all of your email communications. And consider adding a chatbot to your website if you have a team to support it.
• Maintain regular communication with your customers - Keep customers in the loop with regular newsletters and updates about your products and company.
• Collaborate with customer success - While you may have collaborated closely with the sales team up to this point, now is the time to work closely with your customer success (CS) team. Collaborate to identify ways to improve the customer experience through content and communication. 
• Establish a seamless onboarding process - Work together with your CS colleagues to develop an onboarding journey that helps customers fully understand how to use your product or service.
• Create a knowledgebase or FAQ - This resource can help customers find answers to questions and troubleshoot issues without needing employee resources.

Retention stage content examples

One key aspect of the retention phase is to provide best-in-breed customer service. If a customer runs into an issue with your service, your customer service team should work diligently and quickly to solve the issue so that the customer maintains a positive image of your brand.

Another aspect of this customer journey stage is proactively following up with customers. This involves sales teams reaching out to customers individually to ensure all is well with their services and to provide support when needed. Proactive communication also involves marketing teams sending out meaningful, relevant emails that may include:

• Information on the latest product offerings
• Suggestions for cross-sell/upsell
• Personalized offers based on prior purchases
• Rewards for loyalty

Other retention phase content examples may include:

• SMS texts or push notifications
• Customer newsletters 
• FAQ/knowledgebase documents or webpages

Stage 5: Advocacy stage

The advocacy stage aims to enable your most loyal customers to recommend and advocate for your brand.

Customers can become vocal supporters of your brand when they have positive and meaningful experiences with your products or services. This support can drive significant results for your organization, with 81% of U.S. and U.K. customers stating that they trust product recommendations from family and friends over brand messaging. 

You should aim for all customers to reach the advocacy stage. When you understand the needs of your customers and meet or exceed customer expectations through high-quality products and services, as well as exceptional customer service, they become loyal and are more likely to tell others about their experiences with your brand.

The advocacy phase involves your customers, your brand, their contacts, and how they share information about your brand with the people they know. For example, a loyal customer may share your Instagram profile with a friend looking for a service you provide. Another loyal customer may forward a relevant product marketing email to a colleague who has never heard of your brand. When the customer journey comes full circle in this manner, the new contact (potential customer) enters the first stage of the customer journey — the awareness phase.

Best practices for the advocacy stage

• Simplify referrals - Make it easy for your loyal customers to refer their friends, colleagues, and family to you. Encourage social media shares and provide intuitive ways for customers to tell friends about a product or service.
• Provide referral incentives - Encourage advocacy by incentivizing referrals with discounts, coupons, or loyalty points.
• Look to competitor referral programs - Consider researching what your competitors offer for loyalty programs and referral rewards.
• Give opportunities for feedback - Periodically survey your customers and conduct NPS, or customer satisfaction, surveys to identify potential advocates for case studies or testimonials. These ratings will also highlight key areas for improvement.
• Acknowledge customer feedback - If a survey reveals a consistent complaint or issue with your product or service, address it with your customers by highlighting fixes in newsletters or social media posts.

Advocacy stage content examples

• Highly personalized offers and incentives sent via SMS text or email
• Social media giveaways 
• Customer profiles or features on social media or email newsletters

Do customer journey stages differ from B2B vs. B2C?

The five high-level journey stages are the same for B2B and B2C businesses. However, the specific actions and best practices may vary from stage to stage. For example, in a B2C industry, there is typically only a single decision-maker, and the dollar amount strongly influences the length of the consideration phase. With B2B, there are often multiple decision-makers or account contacts. Depending on the client and business, these may include legal, security, and other teams.

B2B vs. B2C customer journey stages

While the high-level stages are the same, there are nuances among the B2C and B2B customer journey stages. Some differences may include:

• Email marketing is targeted to different decision-maker types for B2B - Email marketing for B2B vs. B2C audiences will speak to the differing values and goals of the different decision-makers at each business type. For example, B2B decision-makers may value security, cost savings, marketing segmentation, and solving concrete business problems. Consider creating specific email marketing campaigns to speak to these considerations.
• Social media marketing is more relevant for B2C - In general, social media marketing is more relevant to B2C industries than to B2B, though it can play a role in both. Specifically, marketing for a B2C audience during the awareness and consideration phases should focus more on social media.
• Referrals are very important for all industry types - Referrals are necessary across virtually all B2B and B2C industries. However, loyalty and referral programs will look different across B2B vs. B2C and between different industry verticals.
• Adjust marketing materials for industry type - Be nimble and poised to adjust your marketing content for B2B vs. B2C. For instance, more formal marketing materials such as eBooks and white papers are more impactful for B2B industries. On the other hand, free courses or coupons may be more critical for B2C.
• Initial touchpoints will differ - Conferences or industry conventions are important customer touchpoints for B2B, especially for the awareness and consideration phases. In the B2C world, the early touchpoints may be social media ads or paid search campaigns or out-of-home ads like billboards.

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How to Deliver Value at Every Stage of the Customer Journey

Companies who understand what the customer journey is and focus on perfecting the stages of the sales funnel , are the ones who rise above their competitors. At the end of the day, your business is nothing without your customers. So one of the most important factors of your business should be on dissecting and perfecting the customer experience from first interaction and onward .

67% of the buyer’s journey is now completed digitally.

Surprisingly, many companies ignore the customer journey altogether, which is a major blunder – especially when it comes to digital marketing agency efforts. Unless your company sells products or services that fall into the impulsive buying category, the customer journey should not be ignored, in fact it needs to be catered to and nurtured vigilantly. The customer journey helps you better understand customer behavior for your target audience, which can provide your team with valuable insight when developing a marketing strategy. The customer journey should be a part of every digital marketing solution . 

Leads nurtured with targeted content produce an increase in sales opportunities of more than 20%.

So, what is the customer journey and why is it important when developing a marketing strategy ? In its simplest form, the customer journey is a snapshot of the entire customer experience — starting from the customer’s first interaction with your company and brand and every interaction thereafter.  It helps you understand customer behavior throughout the buying process as well as customer needs and expectations.

The main customer journey stages are:

• Consideration

Delivering highly valuable and relevant content during each stage of the customer journey has a direct impact on sales and revenue. Plus, once you fully develop and understand your customer persona, you’ll be able to use that information to improve overall customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

Before we get into what kind of content you should be serving to your target audience at every step of the customer’s journey, let’s first define what happens in each stage. Your job is to understand each stage in the entire customer journey and deliver the right kind of content at the right time to a potential customer .

76% of B2B buyers prefer to receive content unique to their buying stage.

Customer Journey Stage #1: Awareness

The first stage of the customer journey is the Awareness stage where your potential customer is aware that they have a need or a problem and they are now researching information and actively seeking out answers to try and solve their problem or need. Think of the awareness stage of the customer journey as your first impression. This is why awareness is an important step in the buyer’s journey .

Related: What is a Marketing Funnel?

It’s vitally important to provide value to your prospects during this stage to build trust and rapport with them. None of the other stages of the customer journey matter if you are not delivering well in the Awareness stage. After all, how can customers buy from you if they don’t even know that you exist?

Almost 90% of study participants indicated it is important to influence buyers earlier in their journey.

81% of shoppers conduct online research before buying.

Your job as a marketer during the Awareness Stage: Convey that you UNDERSTAND the prospect’s problem and provide information and resources that will help them to better navigate their problem or need.

Content to Deliver in the Awareness Stage:

• Industry Reports
• How-To Video

Since you know that your customer is looking for information during this stage, that’s exactly what you’ll want to provide for them in a digestible format that’s simple and very easy for them to find.

Customer Journey Stage #2: Evaluation & Consideration

The next stage in the customer journey is the Consideration stage. By now, your prospects have done their initial research and are aware of some of the options they can choose from. However, the research phase isn’t over yet. They have narrowed down their options but they are still going to search for more information.

This is the stage where they are comparing your product or service to other solutions on the market. This is where they are doing price comparisons, reading customer reviews, checking out competitors, and learning more about the details of your product or service to see if it could be, in fact, what they have been looking for. Knowing that your customer will be comparing you to your competitors during this stage, it’s important for you to take a step back and ask yourself if you are positioned the way that you should be knowing that your customers will be comparing you to other options.

65% of consumers spend 16+ minutes comparison shopping before making a purchase.

Some great questions to ask:

• Is my product or service offering clear and understandable?
• Is my brand or company easy to find on the internet?
• Are the benefits of my product or service clear?
• Is the price point of my product or service competitive to similar offerings in the marketplace?
• What makes my product or service better than my competitors?
• Is my competitive advantage clearly stated where a customer can easily find it and understand it?

Oftentimes it’s during the Consideration stage that prospective buyers will reach out for more information by entering their information through one of your forms, calling the number on your website, or engaging on your social media channels. If this is happening, do NOT leave them hanging.

Related: The Importance of Content Marketing – How to Create an Integrated Campaign

This is your opportunity to step in and be the relief they are searching for to cure their current pain point. It is also during this stage that potential buyers are going to be very interested in pricing and what the monetary investment would be if they were to choose you as their solution. Many times your prospective buyers will need to run this information by other people before they make a decision.

Your job during the Consideration Stage: Prove to your customer that you care and that you are the best option for them and ensure that they have all of the information they need to move to the next stage in the customer journey.

Content to Deliver in the Consideration Stage:

• Product Webinar

Customer Journey Stage #3: Decision

The third stage in the customer journey is the Decision stage where your prospective customer is ready to select from their options and make a purchase. By now the potential buyer has done all the research they need to be well informed on which services will best fit their needs and which companies they believe will be the best fit. It’s at this stage of the customer journey map when customer reviews are crucial.

97% say customer reviews influence their purchase decision.

Since buyers are beginning to rely on peer-to-peer reviews more now than ever before, not having any reviews for your product or service could potentially have a negative effect .

Showcasing case studies to your prospects at this stage is very beneficial and will answer the question on your prospective buyer’s mind which is “why should I choose you?” Social proof that your product or service does what you say it will do is imperative during the Decision stage. Solicit testimonials from previous customers and showcase them on your website and other places where prospects will be visiting to find out more information about you, your company, and brand.

Content to Deliver in the Decision Stage:

• Customer reviews
• Case Studies
• Consultation

Customer Journey Stage #4: Retention

The fourth stage of the customer journey is the Customer Retention stage. Congratulations! If your customers have made it this far, then you’re definitely doing a lot of things right. But, it’s not over yet. In fact, this stage is arguably the most important stage in the overall customer journey. Why?

Related: 4 Key Email Sequences Your E-Commerce Company Needs

It’s far easier and roughly five times cheaper to retain an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one. It’s hard to build enough trust with a prospect to turn them into a first time buyer, so once you’ve gained their trust and their business, you should be working hard to maintain it. During this stage you should be following up with your client to get their feedback on the product or service that they purchased from you. You should be acknowledging their customer loyalty.

Content to Deliver in the Retention Stage:

• Testimonial Requests
• Follow Up Satisfaction Phone Calls
• How To’s On Using Your Product or Service

Customer Journey Stage #5: Advocacy

This is the last stage of the customer journey and the hardest to achieve. This is the stage of the customer journey  when the customer becomes an active advocate for your brand. They say great things about you and your company, they refer their friends and family to you, they generate the most powerful kind of marketing your company can ever have which is word-of-mouth. So, how does your marketing team get your customer to this stage?

The answer is by nurturing them every step of the way through the previous stages with value, attentiveness, and respect. Also, you must have a great product or service that does exactly what you promise that it will. One of the most powerful ways that you can encourage brand advocacy is by simply asking your customers to spread the word. I think you’ll be surprised.

When a person has a positive experience with a product, service and company, they will want to spread the word and tell others about it. It’s human nature. Encourage this by asking them to tell their friends and let them know how much it will be appreciated by you and your business. Some of the most successful companies today are built on powerful referral and word of mouth marketing .

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Defining the Stages of the Customer Journey Map: Awareness

May 24, 2023.

Category: Customer Experience , Customer Retention , Customer Success as a Service , Customer Success Maturity , Customer Success Strategy , Digital Customer Success , Monetizing Customer Success

A customer journey map is one of the first things you think of when you’re trying to improve the customer experience. It’s a roadmap of every interaction you have with your customer from the first moment they learn about your business to the moment they decide to renew (or not renew). It’s an important tool for operationalizing your Customer Success practice  and helps to demonstrate where there are gaps in engagement or opportunities to deepen your relationship with your customers. In short, journey maps are pretty darn great.

While we’re all in agreement that customer journey maps are the cat’s pajamas, the industry doesn’t all agree on one single way to build them. Customer Success organizations use many different models and templates to develop these frameworks and then customize them to their specific lifecycles – long or short, with many stages or a quick, straightforward jump into usability. While the variety of models out there makes sense, it can be useful to take a step back and consider the universal foundations that exist beneath them all. If we examine the underlying structure of the customer journey, common patterns for each stage emerge. And by exploring these ubiquitous phases of the customer journey, we can better understand exactly what each phase needs to accomplish and what Customer Success’s role at each stage could (maybe even should ) be.

To this end, we’re kicking off a blog series defining and fully examining each stage of the customer journey. We’re going to do a deep dive into every step a customer takes as they move through the lifecycle from start to renewal and beyond. Because we’ve assisted many of our clients in developing journey maps over the years, we have a generic model that covers each stage of the customer journey at a high level. So, any CS organization can leverage it to build or improve upon their own customer journey maps.

An all-purpose model for the customer journey

Not to be confused with a customer touchpoint map , the customer journey map charts front-facing customer engagement. As I said, there might be a million different ways you could do this. Luckily, some very smart people have already distilled down the layout of an all-purpose template. There are a variety of industry terms for each stage of the customer journey, but this universal framework offers a comprehensive view of the customer journey that you can customize to fit any business, product, service, and customer type out there.

When Customer Success first came onto the scene, we mainly lived in the Service stage of the customer journey. Implementation, onboarding, and adoption were where we shone the brightest. In more recent years, CS has been taking a more active role in revenue retention (as we should!) and, therefore, actively engaging in the Loyalty phase too. But we’re missing out on opportunities to provide support in the earlier phases. Customer Success leaders should think about how they can be more involved in Acquisition, but we have a part to play in Awareness and Consideration too.

Awareness – The beginning of a beautiful (value-based) friendship

If we’re looking at the entire customer journey, we have to start before you’ve ever even spoken to them. Before they are a customer. Before they are even a prospective customer. Yes, we begin in the first moments of realization, when they become aware of your existence. Strangely, Awareness can be both the longest and shortest stage of the customer journey. It’s that first glance, the curiosity, the, “Oh, who is this?” part of the courtship. A prospective customer might be eyeing your solution for years before they ever speak to you directly, let alone sign a contract.

Awareness is the point where your future customer realizes they have a problem. There is a pain point that needs fixing. Maybe they don’t like their current process or they’ve been told they need to find a solution for a digital transformation project. Maybe they heard another business talk about how much easier their life is with your product. No matter how it happens, they’ve seen what you do and want to learn more. This stage is pretty straightforward, and it ends when the customer gets in contact with you for more information or assistance.

Customer Success’s role in the Awareness stage of the customer journey

You might look at this first step on the road to becoming a customer and think that Customer Success has very little – if anything – to do here. You’d be wrong! In an ideal scenario, CS is involved in Awareness, but peripherally. Marketing is leading the charge here, but there are still a few things Customer Success can do to assist them in this stage.

First off, CS and Marketing should work together to develop deeper insights into your customers in general. If you’re not talking to Marketing already, you should be! In the Awareness stage specifically, the most proactive thing you can do is to learn everything you can about the problem your future customer needs to solve. Why do they need your solution? How big is their issue and what impact would your solution have on their business? To get a better sense of the scope of their need, CS can share other successful customer stories with Marketing. The two organizations should discuss what’s happening further into the customer journey to get ahead of any common roadblocks and improve the messaging prospects receive so it’s more personalized to their needs.

There is so much Customer Success can do to help customers beyond where we traditionally engage during the customer journey. We’ll continue exploring as we move through the stages of the customer journey in this series. Stay tuned.

Stay up to date on all things Customer Success.

Related posts:

• Why Partner Customer Success is a Win-Win
• Hopes and Dreams of a CSM
• Is the SaaS business equivalent to “girl math”?
• Defining the Stages of the Customer Journey Map: Tying It All Together
• Defining the Stages of the Customer Journey Map: Loyalty

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