Mapping Out Your User's Journey
What is a customer journey map?
Journey mapping is a technique that helps us to visualise users' current experiences and desired user journeys, helping us to identify areas of friction in the customer experience.
By drawing our customers' journey from start to finish, we can identify problem areas and iterate solutions – for example, by changing the layout or flow of an app's interface to make it more intuitive or easier to use. This can ultimately improve the customer experience by minimising friction and streamlining their journey from start to finish.
Often, customer journey maps will also include emotions and customer needs, helping us to understand not just what users do but how they feel throughout their experience. From this, we can identify pain points and come to a better understanding of our clients' customers' needs and motivations.
Mapping out your user's experience (UX) is a great way to see where you need to focus your design and development efforts. Some of the main components of journey mapping include customer pathways, and building a reliable sample so that you can get started right away in understanding how your customers experience your products.
The journey mapping process
There are many methods for creating journey maps, but generally speaking, this process involves gathering data about your users, mapping out their journey from start to finish, and then analysing and iterating on your map to improve the customer experience.
To get started, you'll need to gather data about your users' current experiences. This can be done through interviews, surveys, focus groups, or other research methods. Once you have this data, you can begin mapping out the user's journey from beginning to end.
Your map should include all touchpoints along the customer journey, including both digital and non-digital interactions. For each touchpoint, you'll want to note what the user is trying to accomplish, how they are feeling, and any pain points or areas of friction they encounter.
Once you have a complete map of the current customer journey, you can begin to brainstorm solutions for each problem area. For example, if a user is struggling with the navigation in your app or website, you might consider redesigning the interface to make it more intuitive.
With a few potential solutions you can then test them out with your users to see what works best. Through this process of data gathering, mapping, and iteration, you can continue to improve the customer experience until it meets the needs and expectations of your audience.
Understanding your user pathways
User pathways refer to the series of steps that a user must take in order to complete a desired task or goal. These pathways can vary greatly depending on the context, with some users needing only one step and others needing many more.
Tracking each individual pathway for your users can be an important part of journey mapping, as this will help you to identify areas of friction and potential roadblocks.
By understanding how your users move through your product or service, you can make design changes to improve their experience. For example, you might redesign a given interface element or add new features to accommodate users who need more steps to complete their task.
There are many tools you can use to track and visualise user pathways, including heat maps, click tracking software, and A/B testing tools. Each of these can help you to identify areas of friction and iterate on your product design in order to better support your users.
We helped ANZ with mapping user journeys
How to build a reliable sample
One way to overcome this challenge is by building a sample of your users that is representative of the population as a whole. You can do this by using market research tools like surveys, focus groups, and interviews with your users.
As you conduct these interviews, it's important to be sure that you are accurately representing the population as a whole by including people from various demographics and user groups. This will help you to get a more complete picture of your users' experiences, which can then be used to create a better product or service design.
Designing ideal customer pathway vs. user testing
User testing is a powerful tool that can be used to improve the customer experience. However, it's important to keep in mind that user testing should not be used as a substitute for journey mapping.
Journey mapping is an essential first step in understanding your users and their needs. This process provides you with a detailed picture of the current customer journey, which you can then use as a framework for user testing.
Through user testing, you can get feedback about your design and iterate on it until it meets the needs of your users. This process can help you to build better products that more effectively support your users' goals and expectations.
However, by designing the ideal customer pathway, you can create a product or service that is more likely to meet the needs of your users from the start. This will save you time and effort in the long run, as you won't need to make as many changes to your design after launch.
Using your journey map - making changes to your digital experience
Once you've created your journey map, you can use it to make changes to your digital experience. You may find that certain areas of your site or app aren't accommodating all of your users' needs and goals, or that some features are causing friction.
Ideally, you'll want to make changes to your design in a way that supports users throughout their entire journey, not just in isolated places. For example, you might rework an interface element or add change features to accommodate your users' needs.
In order to make these changes effectively, it's important to use data and feedback from user testing in conjunction with your journey map. This will help you to identify areas of friction and iterate on your product design until it better meets the needs of your users.
Making these changes can be a challenge, but it's important to keep in mind that even small improvements can have a big impact on the user experience. By taking the time to understand your users and their needs, you can make design changes that will lead to a more enjoyable and effective experience for all.