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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 customer 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?

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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Creating User Journey Maps: A Guide

User journey maps help you harness empathy to gain valuable insights about your customers and your product.

One of the biggest skills you’ll leverage as a UI/UX designer is your ability to empathize with the people using the products you design. Creating user journey maps can help you harness that empathy and transform it into valuable insights about your customers and product. Let’s take a closer look at what a user journey map is and why it’s an important tool in the UX designer’s toolbox.

What is a user journey map?

A user journey map gives a visual representation of a customer’s experience. This visualization might cover a customer’s entire relationship with a brand or focus on a select experience they might have while interacting with an app or website. No matter the type, user journey maps serve as a useful tool for understanding user needs and pain points and ultimately optimizing user experience (UX). 

Get started in UX: Google UX Design Professional Certificate

Why create user journey maps?

The main job of a UX designer is to make products intuitive, functional, and enjoyable to use. By creating a user journey map, you’re thinking about a product from a potential customer’s point of view. This can help in several ways.

User journey maps foster a user-centric mentality . You’ll focus on how a user might think and feel while using your product, as well as what goals they’re trying to achieve and what obstacles they might face along the way.

User journey maps create a shared vision for your company . This visualization can serve as a point of reference for different team members and stakeholders throughout the product development process. 

User journey maps can uncover blind spots . Taking the time to map out how a user interacts with your product (and how they feel doing so) may reveal design flaws or new opportunities you hadn’t considered. 

Still not convinced? Listen to Michael, an interaction designer at Google, explain the importance of user-centric design.

Types of journey maps

Journey maps can be as unique and creative as the products you’re designing. While there’s not one boilerplate template for a user journey, you will find a few main types of these maps. 

A UX journey map focuses on the user experience of a specific product, typically an app or website. With these types of maps, you can gain insight into how a customer interacts with your software and what they might find helpful or frustrating. This in turn helps you design software that’s simpler and easier to use.

A sales journey map follows the buyer’s journey through its typical stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Marketing teams can use these maps to evaluate how customers interact with a brand across multiple communication channels to maximize sales.

A customer experience journey map offers a high-level view of a customer-brand relationship across time. A current-state customer journey map focuses on current customer interactions (and how they can be improved). Future-state customer journey maps can drive innovation by imagining new customer experiences. 

Elements of a user journey map

As you begin to map out user journeys, you’ll likely find ways to customize your maps to your particular company, product, and customer base. Search for user maps on the web, and you’ll find a range of creative examples. But take a closer look and you’ll find that many of these maps have a few elements in common.

Persona: What segment of users are you trying to understand (current or target)?

Scenario: What interaction are you trying to map out (real or anticipated)? 

Stages of the journey: What are the high-level phases of the scenario? 

User actions: What actions can the user take in each stage of the journey?

User emotions and thoughts: What is the user’s emotional state as they move through the stages? What are they thinking in each stage?

Opportunities: Where can you improve the UX of your product or connect with your customer in a more effective way?

Internal ownership: Which team or team member will be responsible for enacting these changes?

Read more: 9 Essential Skills for UX Designers

How to create a user journey map

We’ve outlined what a user journey map is, why you might want to create one, and what elements you should include. Now let’s go through the basic steps to create your own user journey map.

1. Define the scope.

Creating a helpful user journey map starts with defining your goals. Are you mapping the journey of a new target user across the entire buyer’s journey? Or are you seeking to make a transaction on an app—transferring money for example—more intuitive? Being clear on your goals now can help give you more relevant insights once your map is complete.  

Read more: What Is Scope Creep? Keeping Your Project Focused

2. Build user personas.

Typically, you’ll want a different map for each unique user type. Not all your customers will have the same needs (or the same ways of going about meeting those needs). Think about who your users are, and create a customer persona for each segment. This often starts with user research. Customer interviews, focus group discussions, surveys, and even prior customer feedback can help you develop these personas and better understand the customer perspective. User personas are sometimes referred to as buyer personas.

3. Define user goals, expectations, and pain points.

Once you have a better idea of who your target user is, spend some time thinking about what they want. What problem do prospective customers have that your product or service can solve? What expectations might they have as they begin their journey? What problems might they face, or what about your product might cause them frustration? How can your product or service meet customer expectations?

4. List out touchpoints and channels.

The term “customer touchpoint” refers to a point of interaction between a user and a product or business. Typical customer touchpoints occur across many different business channels, including websites, social media platforms, apps, ads, or face-to-face communications. Create an inventory of all the customer touchpoints and channels involved in the scenario you’ve previously defined.

5. Map the journey stages.

You’ve gathered the data you need to populate your map, so now it’s time to visualize this information with a customer journey map template. This is where you can get creative. Your map could be as simple as a timeline or as complex as a storyboard that shows visually what happens in each of the journey phases. You could take a low-tech approach with sticky notes on a whiteboard, or go digital with Google Sheets or customer journey mapping tools.

Many common UX tools, including Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD, offer journey mapping capabilities. You’ll also find a range of dedicated journey mapping tools, such as UXPressia, Smaply, Custellence, or Visual Paradigm. UX research and consulting firm Nielsen Norman Group offers a free template that could also help you get started. 

6. Validate and refine the map.

User journey mapping is only as strong as it is truthful. Validate the map by moving through the user journey yourself. Usability testing, analytics, and reviews from real customers can also help validate that your map reflects the average customer reality. Continue to refine the map as you discover discrepancies.

Other types of UX mapping

The user journey map is among many types of mapping tools UX designers might use throughout the design process. Let’s take a brief look at some of the others that can be used on their own or alongside your journey map.

Service blueprint

A journey map illustrates the customer experience. A service blueprint maps out what goes on behind the scenes to deliver that experience. The former is customer focused, the latter organization focused.

A user flow maps out the path taken by a generic user through a website or app to a successful outcome. These often take the form of a flow chart and are not focused on specific personas. 

Empathy map

This tool helps you gain a deeper understanding of customer actions by mapping out what these users say, think, feel, and do. You may find it helpful to create an empathy map as part of Steps Two and Three above. 

Experience map

This visualization tracks the entire experience of a generic user as they seek to achieve a goal or satisfy a need. These maps typically look at a larger context to evaluate how potential customers solve their problems with or without your product.

Create your user journey map

User journey mapping is an essential part of the UX design process. Enhance your skills with these popular courses on Coursera:

Create a user journey map with a two-hour guided project. Create a User Journey Map in Miro is a hands-on course where you'll build a user journey map for a UX design project that documents the user's actions, emotions, and thoughts while using a product so you can identify opportunities for improvement.

Learn where and how user journey mapping is used in the design process with Google's course Start the UX Design Process: Empathize, Define, and Ideate . You'll craft user stories, develop user journey maps, and more, in 21 hours or less.

Build your UX design knowledge with Google's UX Design Professional Certificate. The popular series includes the class mentioned above, and is aimed at developing the skills you'll need for an entry-level UX design role. Learn how to empathize with users and design a delightful experience. Once completed, you'll earn a shareable certificate and gain access to exclusive career resources such as resume review and interview prep.

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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.

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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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A comprehensive guide to effective customer journey mapping

A brand's user experience shapes its target audience's entire perception of your organization. Maximize audience engagement with customer journey mapping.

Discover key challenges today's marketing teams are facing, as well as opportunities for businesses in 2024.

Incorporating customer journey mapping into your web design process helps elevate consumer engagement to drive loyalty and sales.

Many in-house teams and web designers strive to better serve users by optimizing their customer experience (CX). Considering how your customers use your platform or service helps you see your website from a user perspective, letting you shape your design to better meet their needs. To achieve this, web designers can look to customer journey mapping.

A particularly handy tool for user experience (UX) design , this process helps teams understand who their users are and how to fulfill their expectations, guiding development decisions for improved audience engagement. Learn more about customer journey mapping and how you can implement it to enhance your CX.

User journey mapping: an overview

User journey mapping, also known as customer journey mapping (CJM), maps a website visitor's experience from their perspective. Presented through a visual diagram, the customer journey map charts the user’s path as they seek information or solutions, starting at the homepage and tracking their routes across other menus and links.

To create a customer journey map, you begin by researching who users are, what they want from your site, and how positive or negative their experiences have been. 

There are two main purposes for mapping your customers’ journey.

1. Improve customer experience

This is the ultimate goal of CJM. Site navigation can be especially tricky to assess because you’re already familiar with the layout. A fresh perspective on your site often uncovers overlooked details such as navigation issues or broken links.

By conducting research on UX trends and visually mapping your results, you’ll identify any parts of your design that confuse or frustrate visitors. This process also reveals areas that work well, which you can repurpose elsewhere in the design.

2. Maintains ease-of-use as your site grows

A customer journey map can make even a simple site more straightforward to navigate. When your website or business grows, you may need to add content and features to accommodate the expansion. Implementing customer journey mapping ensures your website's fundamental flow remains intuitive and that new material and features are easily discoverable and usable.

Primary user journey map types

There are various ways to approach customer journey mapping based on the specific insights you’re seeking. The end result of each map will look similar, but the focus of each is different — which changes the information it offers. Here are three standard types of maps to get you started.

Current state

The current state map is the most common type. It evaluates your website’s present state to better understand visitors’ current experiences, helping identify improvement opportunities for its existing design.

Future state

A future state map explores a hypothetical "ideal" website, considering the visitor’s experience if every site component were optimized. This map is helpful when planning a total redesign or a specific change. When you collect user research and translate the results into your map, you can present a visual outline to your client or company for a straightforward explanation.

Persona-based

A persona-based map lays out the journey of a single designated type of user, or persona (which we will define below). This type of diagram is useful when optimizing your website for a specific sector of your audience with particular needs.

Learn best practices for integrating the workflows between design and development in this free webinar.

The 5-step customer journey mapping process

Once you’ve set clear goals for your map’s achievements, you can select the appropriate diagram type. To begin visualizing your user journey, follow this five-step process.

1. Define the map’s scope

Your map may focus on just one customer interaction or outcome, such as finding the newsletter sign-up sheet or making a payment, or it could cover the entire website’s navigation. A focused scope helps you troubleshoot a problem area or ensure an especially critical element functions properly. Alternatively, a larger-scope map provides a big-picture perspective of how the site works as a whole. Creating a comprehensive map is more complex, but high-level mapping helps comprehend the entire user experience from beginning to end.

2. Determine your user personas

A persona describes a particular type of visitor using your site. When imagining and defining these users, you can assign a name to each and include details about who they are, what they’re looking for, and why.

Focus on users who contribute most to your business goals, consulting your marketing or sales teams for insights. To define your customer personas, explore current user behavior through surveys, online reviews, and email list responsiveness.

For example, if you’re creating a website for a store that sells artisanal coffee-making tools, your personas could be:

• The gift giver. This user only knows a little about coffee but wants to select an impressive gift for someone else. They’ll need help with purchase decisions, so they might interact with an FAQ or chat feature before visiting the products page. They may also leave your site if overwhelmed by options, so it’s important to offer helpful information proactively. This will keep them engaged and more likely convert them to paying customers.
• The coffee nerd. This person is knowledgeable and always seeks the highest-quality tools, so easily accessible product details and customer reviews are important to them. To support their user experience and encourage them to purchase, ensure these elements are easily discoverable.
• The tourist. This user is on vacation and looking for a cute brick-and-mortar shop to visit. They aren't interested in your online store, but an appealing photo of your physical store with easily accessible hours and location information may convince them to come by in person.

These three types of users have very different needs and goals when visiting your website. To capture all of their business, create a map for each of them to ensure you accommodate their specific wants and circumstances.

3. Give the personas context

User context is the “when” and “how” of each persona visiting your site. A user will have a different experience loading your site on a mobile device than on a laptop. Additionally, someone in no rush may use your website differently than someone looking more urgently with a specific purpose.

Figure out when, how, and in what mindset your personas most commonly visit your site to map their experience accurately. This context has very concrete impacts on your finished design. If visitors tend to look for one specific page whenever in a hurry (like contact or location information), placing those details on the front page or prominently linking to it will smooth the user experience for those users.

Here’s an example of how to place a persona in context.

Persona: Jo is an apartment hunter in her early 20s and is still in college. She's looking for off-campus housing for herself and some roommates. The collective group values location and cost more than apartment features.

Context : Jo is in a hurry and trying to visit as many apartments as possible. She’s looking at property rental websites that clearly state apartment addresses in each listing.

Method : Jo is browsing the sites on her iPhone.

4. List persona touchpoints

Touchpoints mark when the user makes a purchase decision or interacts with your user interface (UI) . They include visitors' actions to move toward their goals and consider each associated emotion. The first touchpoint is how they reach your website — such as tapping a social media ad, clicking on a search result, or entering your URL directly.

First, list each action the visitor took and their corresponding emotional reactions. Subsequent touchpoints include instances when they navigate a menu, click a button, scroll through a gallery, or fill out a form. When you diagram the route through your site in an A-to-Z path, you can place yourself in the persona's mind to understand their reactions and choices.

A met expectation — for example, when clicking a "shop" button takes them to a product gallery — will result in a positive emotional reaction. An unmet expectation — when the “shop" link leads to an error page — will provoke an adverse reaction.

5. Map the customer journey

Illustrate the user journey by mapping these touchpoints on a visual timeline. This creates a narrative of users’ reactions across your entire service blueprint. To represent your users’ emotional states at each touchpoint, graph their correspondences like this:

The map helps you understand the customer experience as a whole. 

For example, based on the diagram above, touchpoint 3 is the largest navigation challenge on the website. The graph also shows that the user's mood eventually rebounds after the initial setback. Improving the problem element in touchpoint 3 will have the biggest impact on elevating the overall user experience.

Customer journey mapping best practices

Now that you understand the mapping process, here are some best practices to implement when charting your customer journey. 

• Set a clear objective for your map: Define your CX map’s primary goal, such as improving the purchase experience or increasing conversions for a specific product.
• Solicit customer feedback: Engage directly with customers through surveys or interviews so you can implement data-driven changes. Ask users about their journey pain points and invite both positive and negative feedback on the overall navigation.
• Specify customer journey maps for each persona: To specifically serve each customer persona, consider charting separate paths for each based on their behaviors and interests. This approach is more customer-centric, as not all user types interact with your website the same way.
• Reevaluate your map after company or website changes: As your business scales, your website must evolve — and so will your customer’s path. Review your map when making both large and small website adjustments to ensure you don’t introduce new user challenges. Navigational disruptions can frustrate visitors, causing would-be customers to leave your site and seek competitors .

Optimize your user journey map with Webflow

A user journey map is only as effective as the improvements it promotes. When redesigning your website based on insights your map provides, explore Webflow’s vast resource bank to streamline your design processes. 

Webflow offers web design support with diverse guides , tutorials , and tools for straightforward web design. Visit Webflow today to learn how its site hosting , e-commerce , and collaboration resources support enhanced user experience for better engagement.

Webflow Enterprise gives your teams the power to build, ship, and manage sites collaboratively at scale.

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A Beginner’s Guide To User Journey Mapping

To design a great product, you need to understand what the user does with it. A user journey map will help you to answer that question for the product’s entire lifecycle.

“How do people actually use this product?” is a fundamental question that every product creator must answer. In order to do so, product designers need to understand the essence of the whole product experience from the user’s perspective. Fortunately, user journey mapping is an excellent exercise that can shed light on the ways in which the users interact with the product.

What Is a User Journey Map?

More From Nick Babich What Is Microcopy?

What Design Problems Does a User Journey Map Solve?

A user journey map is an excellent tool for UX designers because i t visualizes how a user interacts with a product and allows designers to see a product from a user’s point of view. This fosters a more user-centric approach to product design, which ultimately leads to a better user experience.

User journey maps help a product team to find the answer to the “What if?” questions. Also, a user journey map can be helpful when a company tracks quantitative key performance indicators . In this case, a user journey map can become a cornerstone for strategic recommendations.

The 8-Step Process of User Journey Mapping

Before creating a user journey map, review the goals of your business or service. This knowledge will help you align the business and user goals.

• Choose a scope.
• Create a user persona.
• Define the scenario and user expectations.
• Create a list of touchpoints.
• Take user intention into account.
• Sketch the journey.
• Consider a user’s emotional state during each step of the interaction.
• Validate and refine the user journey.

1. Choose a Scope

The scope of the user journey map can vary from a high-level map that shows end-to-end experience (e.g., creating a smart home in your house) to a more detailed map that focuses on one particular interaction (for instance, adding a new device to your smart home ecosystem).

2. Create a User Persona

Who is your user?

A user journey map is always focused on the experience of one main actor — a user persona who experiences the journey.

A user persona should always be based on information that you have about your target audience. That’s why you should always start with user research . Having solid information about your users will prevent you from making false assumptions.

Gather and analyze all available information about your target audience:

• Interview your real or potential users.
• Conduct contextual inquiry. This is an  ethnographic field study that involves in-depth observation of people interacting with your product.
• Conduct and analyze the results of user surveys.

3. Define the Scenario and User Expectations

The scenario describes the situation that the journey map addresses. It can be real or anticipated. It’s also important to define what expectations a user persona has about the interaction. For example, a scenario could be ordering a taxi using a mobile app with the expectation of getting the car in five minutes or less.

4. Create a List of Touchpoints

Touchpoints are user actions and interactions with the product or business. You need to identify all the main touchpoints and all channels associated with each touchpoint. For example, for the touchpoint “Buy a gift,” the associated channels could be purchasing online or buying in the store.

5. Take User Intention Into Account

What motivates your user to interact with your product? Similarly, w hat problem are users looking to solve when they decide to use your product? Different user segments will have different reasons for adopting it.

Let’s take an e-commerce website. There is a big difference between a user who is just looking around and one who wants to accomplish a specific task like purchasing a particular product.

For each user journey, you need to understand:

• Motivation. Why are the users trying to do this action?
• Channels. Where the interaction takes place.
• Actions . The actual behaviors and steps the users take.
• Pain points . What are the challenges users are facing?

Also, ensure that the user is getting a consistent experience across all channels.

6. Sketch the Journey

Put together all the information you have and sketch a journey in the format of a step-by-step interaction. Each step demonstrates an experience that the persona has with a service/product or another person.

You can use  a tool called a storyboard,  which is a graphic representation of how a user does something, step by step. It  can help you show how users can interact with a product. Using storyboards, you can visually depict what happens during each step.

7. Consider a User’s Emotional State During Each Step of the Interaction

What does a user feel when interacting with your product?

The products we design need to mirror the states of mind of our users. When we consider a user’s emotional state, this knowledge will help us to connect with them on a human level. That’s why it’s important to add an emotional lane to the user journey map. By visualizing the emotional ups and downs of the experience, you’ll find the areas that require refinement.

You can create an empathy map to better understand how the user feels. Try to mitigate the emotional downs and reinforce emotional ups with good design. 

8. Validate and Refine the User Journey

Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Even when a user journey is based on research, you must validate it. Use the information from usability testing sessions and app analytics to be sure that your journey resembles a real use case.

Gather and analyze information about your users on a regular basis. For example, user feedback can be used to improve your understanding of the user journey.

More in Design + UX Hey Designers, Stop Using Users

Map the User Journey

Remember that the goal of making a user journey map is to create a shared vision within your product team and stakeholders. That’s why, once you create a user journey map, you should share it with your peers. Make it possible for everyone in your team to look at the entire experience from the user’s standpoint and draw on this information while crafting a product.

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App User Journey

Have you ever wondered what makes your favorite app so delightfully captivating, so enrapturing, and so fun to use that it keeps you coming back for more every day? Is it the slick and elegant design, the innovative concept, its ingenious features, or its impressive functionalities? While these are most certainly important and will go a long way in making your app great, the unsung hero behind the triumph of any mobile app is often its user journey.

Every step a user takes within your app can either make or break their experience. A meticulously planned app user journey will keep your users hooked and coming back for more, transforming a one-time download into a cherished daily ritual. For app developers, mobile marketers, and product managers alike, fully comprehending and optimizing this journey is the key to crafting an app that people simply can’t resist.

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So today, let’s talk about the app user journey. In this guide, we’ll explore all the facets of the mobile app user journey. We will talk about what it is, discuss its benefits and challenges, and learn how to map the app user journey as well as how to analyze and optimize it; we will also be delving into a plethora of examples, case studies, and templates to ensure you’ve got everything you need to ace the mobile app user journey. Prepare to embark on an illuminating journey through this watershed moment of the app experience. From the initial download to becoming a staple of your user’s daily routines, we’ve got your app user journey covered! Let’s dive in.

Top App Engagement Platforms

But first, the basics. What is an app user journey?

What is an app user journey?

In a nutshell, the app user journey refers to the series of steps that users take within an app as well as the ways they interact with it—from the moment of discovery and app install to the point when they achieve the goals they set out to achieve when they first downloaded your app.

In the context of app user journeys, the goal can take many different forms—for a dating app, it would be finding potential dates/partners; in the case of a gaming app, it would be beating the final game level; the goal for an eCommerce app is most certainly going to be making a purchase; whereas for a health and fitness app, the goal will likely be regular sessions within the app and daily engagement, and so on.

App user journey

Click on image for full size

Source: Medium

Simple enough, right? As with so many other things in life, it’s easier said than done—developing a killer user journey takes countless hours of app development and meticulous analysis. It involves dissecting user behavior to identify and mend any weak points that hinder users on their path to success, i.e. achieving their goals.

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Download our 7 Trends in App Engagement Guide , covering the seven most important app engagement trends and strategies to keep an eye out for in 2024.

When we speak of weak points, we refer to any stumbling blocks, UX and UI inconsistencies as well as any other sources of hesitation and confusion for users that might prevent them from exploring further and diving deeper into your app. To avoid losing any users and tanking your engagement and retention rates along the way, it’s paramount that you identify and eliminate any and all pain points.

Mapping your app’s user journey empowers you to effectively address these pain points. It will also enable you to efficiently streamline and optimize your app’s UX and UI, which, in turn, will have a positive effect on your app’s engagement and retention and ultimately your users’ lifetime value (LTV) .

App user journey FAQs

Before we dive any deeper, let’s address a few elephants in the room to ensure we are all on the same page.

User journey vs. customer journey vs. user flow vs. user funnel

User journeys focus only on user interactions within your app, i.e. download, use of features and functionalities, etc. As such, user journeys only pertain to digital touchpoints within an app. In contrast, the customer journey extends to all touchpoints—both digital and physical—with your brand. In other words, user journeys are a subset of customer journeys.

User journey vs. customer journey

Source: CleverTap

User flows, crafted by UX designers, detail the micro-steps needed to achieve specific actions within your app’s interface. User journeys may reference these steps but primarily aim to extract insights about user experiences. A user journey evaluates user sentiments, desires, and broader perspectives, while a user flow focuses on optimizing a single, specific step within the app, e.g. sign-up or log-in flow. User journeys generally encompass multiple user flows.

User journey vs. user flow (I)

Source: AppsFlyer

Another way of thinking about it is to consider user flows as purpose-driven, i.e. the goal is to get users to complete an action—register, log in, complete a purchase, etc. The goal of a user journey is optimization to ensure smooth navigation and overall experience and increase an app’s engagement and retention rates.

User journey vs. user flow (II)

User funnels, on the other hand, track users through a series of steps and serve lead generation and customer conversion purposes. Funnel steps can be part of a user journey, but funnels are generally way broader and more abstract. While user journeys provide granular insights into user interactions and experiences within the app, tailored to specific user segments, funnels focus on the overall steps completed by all users.

User journey vs. user funnel (Top, middle, and bottom of funnel)

Why does the app user journey matter?

For mobile marketers, it’s crucial to showcase an app’s functionality and benefits, i.e. its value, to users. Understanding why users install your app allows you to optimize their experiences, shorten the time from install to purchase / subscription , and fix UX and UI issues that cause users to churn . As your app’s user base grows and new in-app features and functionalities are introduced, mapping the user journey becomes increasingly important for marketers and product managers.

What is the purpose of an app user journey?

Instead of considering your users as an abstract mass, a user journey map helps you visualize your app from the user’s perspective, enabling you to focus on their unique experiences and interactions within the app. A user journey map can highlight areas in need of improvement but also areas where user expectations align with your business objectives and the direction your app is already going in, allowing you to conciliate your users’ varying expectations of your app.

Why is it important to understand your app’s user journey?

App user journeys unlock your app’s potential by helping you understand user behaviour and revealing pain points and user desires. Using insights gained from mapping your user journey, you can uncover critical issues before they turn into major problems and optimize your app’s design and functionality to cultivate long-lasting engagement with your users.

How can mapping the user journey help improve app performance?

Visualizing and mapping the user journey provides crucial insights for streamlining and optimizing the user experience, reducing friction points, and driving conversions and retention. It’s possibly the best strategy to increase engagement and enhance your app’s performance.

When to build a user journey map?

Start mapping your user journey once your app starts gathering steam and you have collected enough users, but before your user base grows into the thousands or your app experiences viral success. It’s best to start mapping the user journey in the early days of growth; this allows you to understand your crucial touchpoints, ensure high levels of user satisfaction before your app gets too big, and discover untapped opportunities before scaling up.

Benefits of an app user journey

Understanding the journey users take within your app can yield a plethora of benefits for your brand and business. When you dissect a user’s journey step-by-step, it not only helps you understand user behavior and enhances your app’s design but also boosts user retention and engagement.

Here’s how a user journey map proves invaluable:

Improved user experience

Delving into how users interact with your app provides vital insights for enhancing their experience. By tracking the user journey, you gain a profound understanding of how your app addresses users’ problems and facilitates them in achieving their goals. It allows you to pinpoint the features that users find most valuable and useful as well as to identify friction points that need to be addressed in order to make the user experience as seamless as possible. These insights empower you to craft an easy-to-use app that users genuinely love and value.

Increased user retention, boosted user engagement

Mapping your app’s user journey reveals areas where improvements are needed. For instance, if users tend to churn shortly after downloading your app, it may indicate issues with your onboarding process . Armed with these insights, you can optimize specific areas of your app to make them as user-centric as possible, which, in turn, enhances the overall user experience and boosts your app’s stickiness . When users find your app instrumental in achieving their goals, they’re more likely to stick around , aka not churn.

User journey maps can also be shared across various teams within your organization, including marketing, product development, and sales. This sharing of insights allows each team to align with a user-centric approach. It equips teams with a clear vision of the users they’re targeting, empowering them to craft an app that resonates with the intended audience.

Targeting the right users

Understanding your target audience is paramount for app success. Trying to appeal to a broad range of users without a clear understanding of what they want or need can be and, to be fair, often is counterproductive.

Researching the goals users want to achieve when using your app as well as the challenges they face along the user journey they take within your app helps you gain deep insights into your users.

This clarity enables you to identify who your users really are and how your app can solve their problems effectively, which, in turn, allows you to target potential new users more efficiently and augments your user acquisition (UA) efforts.

App user journey stages

App user journeys are often dynamic and can vary depending on factors like your app’s category and monetization model. A gaming app, for instance, will inevitably have a very different user journey compared to a health and fitness app, which, for its part, will differ vastly from an eCommerce app, and so on.

While each user journey is unique, there are common stages shared by most apps.

Here’s an overview of the core stages that outline an effective user journey, from initial discovery to ongoing loyalty:

App discovery and awareness stage

When users download an app, they usually do so with a purpose—they have a “problem” that needs solving. The problem can take many different forms—they need to relax and unwind, they want to buy items online, they want to have fun, they want to exercise and/or lose weight, you get the gist.

The thing is, however, the app stores are crowded places and are saturated with millions of apps across a single category. In the app discovery stage, users search the Internet and the app stores to find the app that will best fulfil their needs and solve their problem .

So, to stand out in a crowded app market, make sure to prioritize App Store Optimization (ASO) and referral marketing campaigns. These strategies will help you boost the visibility of your app and encourage users to choose it over all the other options available.

App download (user acquisition) stage

The download stage is the most pivotal for your app’s growth and overall success. It’s a watershed moment, the making or breaking of your app—the download stage represents the first conversion point where users take action and install your app.

Optimizing your app store listing is essential here—from app name, icon, and description to subtitle, screenshots, and preview video , don’t leave anything to chance.

Also, don’t forget to consider factors like positive reviews on the app stores that build trust and convince potential new users to download.

App onboarding and exploration stage

App onboarding is yet another watershed moment in the app user journey. Your users might have downloaded your app, but now you have limited time to show them how it works and why they should stick around and keep using it (i.e. show them your app’s value), otherwise, they are churning faster than you can say ‘retention’ and likely never coming back.

A well-designed onboarding experience is, thus, a must and a cornerstone of user engagement . Users need to understand your app’s value proposition, learn its key features and functionalities, and grant necessary permissions. This guided introduction reduces confusion and user friction, familiarizes users with the app’s interface, and encourages effective further exploration, setting users on a path to subscription or in-app purchases (depending on your app’s monetization model).

In-app engagement (app reuse) stage

To combat early churn and foster user loyalty, maintaining user engagement is crucial. Many users tend to leave after the initial onboarding stage, making ongoing engagement vital for long-term growth, success, and profitability.

Focus on getting users to explore on their own after initial onboarding and promoting the adoption of key features to increase active users on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis (DAU, WAU, or MAU).

Use in-app messaging to offer helpful tips, pointers, and rewards, ensuring users keep coming back for more. The overall goal here is to get users hooked and nurture app loyalty.

In-app purchases/subscription (monetization) stage

In-app purchases , or IAPs for short, and subscriptions , depending on an app’s main monetization model, represent a significant milestone and primary objective for most apps.

The user journey from awareness to purchase

Source: Sendbird

The key to success here is not just targeting all your users at once but nurturing the most lucrative users (the ones most likely to upgrade to a paid plan or make a purchase). So, knowing your target user segment is essential for planning the user journey and messaging around it in order to get the highest number of users possible to convert, i.e. make a purchase and/or subscribe.

Re-purchase stage

After an initial in-app purchase, it’s time to start encouraging repeat conversions and re-purchases from existing users. It’s an incredibly cost-effective strategy compared to acquiring new users . Use messaging channels such as email, push notifications , and in-app messaging  for follow-up communication and recommendations. This is also a great way of personalizing the app experience .

Remember though that not all apps rely on IAPs (see above). Some rely on subscriptions or in-app advertising . In such cases, user loyalty and retention become essentially indispensable if you want to succeed in the app world.

User loyalty and retention stage

As users progress through the app’s user journey, their needs and expectations evolve. Personalization becomes crucial—it’s vital to tailor purchase recommendations, app experiences, and promotions based on individual user preferences. Also, refine your messaging strategy with targeted approaches and leverage advanced segmentation . The end goal is to create a supportive community where users can showcase their achievements, which, in turn, fosters loyalty and keeps users hooked and engaged.

Each stage of the user journey presents an opportunity to enhance the user experience, increase retention, and drive user satisfaction. Understanding these stages and employing effective messaging strategies can help your app thrive in a competitive market.

How to map your user journey

Mapping the user journey: steps, best practices, and pro tips.

Mapping the user journey for your app is a strategic process that involves understanding user goals, motivations, expectations, and concerns in order to deliver an experience that best addresses their problems, needs, and wants.

8 Steps to map the app user journey

Follow these eight easy steps to create an effective user journey map that enhances your app experience:

Define your goals and objectives

Begin by clearly defining your objectives for mapping the user journey. Decide whether you want to focus on the entire user journey or a specific aspect of your app’s experience. This sets the direction for your research, which will help you identify what metrics to track and what strategies to employ to improve your app.

Also, consider involving different teams, such as product development and marketing, in this process. Leveraging their expertise can prove invaluable in defining your goals and objectives.

Build user personas

After you’ve defined your user journey objectives, it’s time to create detailed user personas. User personas are fictional representations of your target users and they will go a long way in helping you understand your real users as well as what they want and need.

Gather insights from current users about their app experience, including discovery, touchpoints, goals, challenges, and decision-making factors. This data can then be used to create your user personas, each getting its own name, detailed description, and a visual representation for clarity.

After your personas are ready, share them with all relevant teams to ensure a unified understanding of your user base.

Identify key interaction touchpoints and channels

Next, map all the touchpoints where users interact with your app. Make sure to include as many touchpoints as possible to gain a comprehensive understanding—this can include push notifications, websites, search engines, other mobile apps, email marketing, social media, ad impressions, post-purchase events, etc. The more interaction touchpoints you include, the clearer the picture you’ll get.

Utilize mind-mapping techniques, brainstorming sessions with your team, direct communication with your audience to collect feedback, online surveys, and competitor analysis to identify all your touchpoints and channels effectively.

Pro tip : When conducting surveys and gathering feedback, consider where users are in the customer lifecycle. The timing of user feedback can significantly impact the results. Analyzing feedback based on the user’s stage in the lifecycle helps identify trends and insights that can inform optimizations.

Visualize the user’s journey

Visualize, aka map out , how users engage with your app, starting from their initial encounter to conversion. Then, capture their thoughts, emotions, and actions throughout this journey.

The goal is to gain a deep understanding of how your app fits into your users’ daily lives and how it helps them address challenges and solve problems.

It’s important to keep in mind that each user persona may have and, truth be told, likely has a unique journey, so tailor the user journey map accordingly to address their specific needs and challenges.

For instance, let’s consider onboarding. Not all users will need an in-depth onboarding, some, usually the tech-savvy ones with lots of experience using similar apps, might prefer to explore on their own without any guidance. So, remember not to generalize and use one-size-fits-all approaches when crafting your user journey.

Identify and overcome obstacles

The next step is to pinpoint obstacles and critical points that may hinder users as they progress through the journey, causing them to churn/drop out.

For example, identify situations where users may abandon the app due to user friction or unclear calls to action. To take the onboarding example further, unclear, overly complicated, and confusing onboarding processes tend to annoy users—a surefire way to make them churn.

Learn more about creating killer onboarding journeys here .

List all the obstacles you can identify and brainstorm solutions to eliminate them, streamlining the UX of your app along the way. If implementing changes alters the user journey, create a new map to assess the impact of said changes.

Design and test the final user journey firsthand

Next, compile all collected data into a comprehensive user journey map. Don’t forget to include user steps, success criteria, retention rates, conversion rates, interaction points, obstacles, and solutions (basically, everything we’ve just talked about).

What a user journey map looks like

After that, test the user journey yourself to gain a deep understanding of the user experience firsthand and make necessary improvements based on your findings. This hands-on approach allows you to identify both positive and negative aspects of your app’s user experience. You can also test the app from the perspective of different user personas to determine what works best for each group.

Create several user journeys

Recognize that users engage with your app in various ways, and their goals may differ. To avoid generalizing your audience and misinterpreting data, create multiple user journeys tailored to your different user personas. This approach enables you to better understand how different user groups interact with your app and deliver a more personalized and customized experience.

Develop and monitor essential KPIs

Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate your user journey map’s (preferably maps’) performance. Monitor mobile app metrics like active users, cost per acquisition, conversion rate, retention rate, lifetime value, etc.

By analyzing these metrics, you can then gauge the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and user personas. This will also help you identify specific areas that require further improvements in your user journey map.

Pro tip : Here’s a list of all KPIs to consider when deciding what you need to monitor and track. Remember that not all KPIs listed here may apply to your app: Revenue, a ctive users (DAU, WAU, MAU), cost per acquisition (CPA), cost per install (CPI), click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, retention rate, churn rate, uninstall tracking, lifetime value (LTV), return on investment (ROI), return on ad spend (ROAS), average revenue per user (ARPU), average revenue per daily active user (ARPDAU), average revenue per paying user (ARPPU), re-engagement rate.

Continuously optimization

Finally, remember that mapping and optimizing your app’s user journey is an ongoing effort. Continuously seek ways to improve the user experience and meet the needs of all your users.

This may involve eliminating unnecessary steps in the user journey as a way of streamlining it or developing new strategies to keep users engaged. A/B testing should be a regular practice to refine and enhance your app’s performance based on fresh data.

Remember that optimization is an iterative process, so keep regularly gathering insights, analysing data, and refining your app to create an even better user experience.

By following these steps and best practices, you can create a user journey map that not only enhances your app but also contributes to long-term user satisfaction and engagement.

User journey template: Core elements of the app user journey

Creating an effective user journey map for your app involves considering several core elements to provide a comprehensive view of the user experience.

Here’s a breakdown of these elements:

Personas : Start by defining user personas, which represent different groups of users with unique characteristics and needs. Understanding your target audience helps tailor the user journey to their preferences. See above for more information on creating user personas.

Timeline : The user journey map should have a clear timeline with a beginning, middle, and end. The end goal is typically a conversion, purchase, or app installation. Map out the interactions a user has with your app throughout this timeline.

User journey timeline

Actions : Identify the actions users take at each interaction point with your app. This can include activities like watching an onboarding video, clicking a push notification, making a purchase, or completing a specific task within the app.

Feelings, expectations, and questions : Chart the emotional states of users at different points in the user journey. Analyze user feedback and behavioral data to understand your users better and the emotions they experience at each stage. Additionally, consider the expectations and questions that users may have during each interaction.

Channels and touchpoints : Determine the channels through which users interact with your app and brand. This can include desktop, mobile devices, in-app notifications, email, social media, and more. Understanding the channel preferences of your users will help you tailor your app’s communications and messaging.

User journey template

User experience (UX) : Evaluate the overall user experience of your app, including factors like usability, design, reliability, and overall functionality. A positive UX is essential for a good user journey as well as user satisfaction and retention.

Transactions and payments : If your app involves in-app transactions (IAPs or subscriptions), ensure that the payment process is seamless, trustworthy, and accommodating to various payment methods. Also, clear communication regarding pricing and order confirmations is crucial.

Personalization : Personalization is the best way to deliver in-app experiences that charm users and gain their loyalty long-term. Consider implementing personalization strategies based on user data. Remember to take into account factors like user personas, engagement style, messaging, location, etc. to deliver a personalized user experience that meets individual needs.

By incorporating these core elements into your user journey map, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the user experience and identify areas for improvement. This information allows you to optimize your app to better meet user expectations, increase engagement, and drive conversions.

How do you analyze the user journey and overcome major roadblocks and challenges?

Analyzing the user journey and making sure you don’t fall prey to common pitfalls and misconceptions regarding the user journey are critical steps in optimizing your app’s performance and user experience.

Here’s how you can effectively analyze the user journey to make it as smooth and pleasant for users as possible:

Identify unnecessary interactions : Review the user journey to identify any unnecessary touchpoints or steps that may cause friction. Simplify the journey by eliminating or streamlining these interactions to make the user experience smoother.

Address negative experiences : Pay close attention to the low points in the user journey where expectations are not met, or users have negative experiences. These pain points are opportunities for improvement. Prioritize these areas and work on reversing the negative experiences to enhance user satisfaction.

Recognize successes : Identify areas in the user journey where your app has successfully met or exceeded user expectations. Analyze what worked well in these instances and consider replicating these success factors in other parts of the user journey.

Omnichannel friction : Given that user journeys often span multiple devices and channels, look for instances where transitioning to a new channel disrupts the user’s flow. Ensure that users can seamlessly move from one channel to another without encountering friction or inconsistency.

Time spent at each stage : Analyze how much time users spend at each stage of the journey. Evaluate whether the timing aligns with your goals and whether any stage takes longer than necessary. Adjustments can be made to optimize the pacing of the user journey.

Avoid overgeneralization : There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, so a single app user journey map simply won’t make the cut. Each user is unique. Broad strokes are easy and convenient, but it’s the small details and nuances that set a great app apart from an average one.

Segmentation : Recognize that not all users follow the same journey. Segment users based on behavior, demographics, or other relevant criteria. (Learn how to segment your user base here .) Analyze the unique journeys of different user segments to tailor experiences to their specific needs and preferences.

Outliers and micro-moments : Don’t overlook outliers or the significance of micro-moments in the user journey. Sometimes, exceptional user experiences or minor tweaks in micro-interactions can have a substantial impact on overall satisfaction.

In short, to overcome challenges in mapping the app user journey, avoid overgeneralization, pay attention to the small details and nuances, focus on micro-moments and outliers, celebrate successes and remove negative and/or unnecessary experiences and interactions as quickly as possible. Additionally, leverage analytics and user feedback:

• Analytics : Utilize analytics tools to gather data on user behavior, preferences, and patterns. Look for tools that offer both quantitative and qualitative insights, such as heatmaps, to understand where users engage the most and where they drop off.
• User feedback : Collect direct user feedback through surveys, reviews, and direct interactions. Analyze indirect feedback by studying session replays to uncover the reasons behind user behavior. This qualitative feedback provides valuable insights into user emotions, motivations, and frustrations.

By combining quantitative data from analytics with qualitative insights from user feedback, you can gain a comprehensive understanding of the user journey and make informed decisions to enhance the user experience and drive app improvements.

App user journey useful resources: Case studies, examples, user journey map templates

• User journey map guide with examples and free templates ( UXCam )
• User journey map examples ( UXtweak )
• 6 User journey map examples to enhance your UX ( Appcues )
• An introduction to the user journey for mobile apps ( Medium )
• The user journey: Onboarding ( Medium )
• The user journey: Activation and commitment ( Medium )
• The user journey: Disengagement and reactivation ( Medium )

Well, we did it—we just covered almost everything there is to cover about app user journeys. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey and will forgive me for the cheekiness. Before we go, here’s your TL;DR.

Importance of user journey : The app user journey is a critical concept and an important step in app development. It involves mapping out the steps users take to interact with your app and achieve their goals. The idea behind mapping out the user journey is to create better user experiences and increase user satisfaction, which ultimately leads to greater app success.

Benefits of the app user journey : User journeys offer several advantages, including enhanced understanding of your user base, valuable analytics insights, improved user experiences, precise targeting of the right users, and increased user retention and engagement. The value of a well-thought-out user journey map cannot be overstated—it’s the difference between a successful app and a failed one.

Key stages in a user journey : While user journeys vary depending on the app itself and its target audience, they typically encompass seven key stages: app discovery and awareness, app download/UA, app onboarding and exploration, in-app engagement and reuse, monetization, re-purchase, and retention and user loyalty. Each stage comes with its own specificities and should be carefully optimized for maximum success.

Mapping out the user journey : To optimize your app experience, you should start by defining clear goals and then create detailed user personas based on thorough research and user feedback. After that, you should identify all touchpoints and channels where users interact with your app. Having done all of this, it’s time to finally create your user journey map, or should I say maps . There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to user journeys, and each user persona will need a dedicated user journey map. Mapping out the journey and testing it yourself helps highlight and eliminate potential roadblocks and obstacles.

Ongoing optimization : App user journeys are an ongoing effort, you can’t simply create your user journey maps and stop at that. Continuously seek ways to enhance the user experience and cater to different types of users. A/B testing, data collection, and analysis are essential components of this ongoing improvement effort.

By understanding and effectively utilizing the app user journey, you can create a more user-centric and successful app that resonates with your target audience.

About the author

Nayden Tafradzhiyski

Nayden is an Editor and Content Manager at Business of Apps.

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The UX Designer’s Guide To Critical User Journey Mapping

10 min read

What is a critical user journey? Why is it important in UX design ? And how do you create and use one?

If you Google “critical user journey” to find answers to these questions, you’ll come across dozens of user maps, but nothing concrete on how to map a critical user journey.

In this short guide, we’ll shed light on what a critical user journey is and how you can map one that improves your experience.

Let’s dive right in.

• A user journey is a path a user takes to reach their goal when using a particular product.
• A critical user journey is a UX tool that maps out the key interactions between users and a product.
• There are two types of critical user journeys: the high traffic critical journey and the high dollar critical journey.
• The high traffic critical journey is the most engaged path, while the high dollar critical journey is the revenue-generating journey path.
• The difference between the critical user journey maps and user experience journey maps is that the former prioritizes different aspects of a customer journey over others, while the latter monitors the overall customer experience across every touchpoint and channel.
• Define the journey stage you want to map and use the pirate metrics to track the customer lifecycle at every stage of the user journey .
• Consider splitting the customer journey map between different milestones to focus on smaller paths that need optimizing.
• Use UX analytics to find unhappy paths causing a drop-off in user engagement and optimize to put users on the right happy path .
• The happy path is an error-free path, describing each step the user must take and the ideal outcome.

Replace empty states with demo content or messages to prompt users to take action and start getting value from your product immediately.

• Add a progress bar to your onboarding checklist to help users stay motivated and enhance the experience.
• Leverage small guidance tooltips, or hotspots at the right moment, to highlight important features on your UI.
• Identify a successful user’s journey path and replicate it by creating engagement loops to motivate new users to walk through it uninterrupted.
• Use a simple onboarding checklist to keep users on the desired journey. Make it more fun by converting it into a game .
• Want to build product experiences code-free? Book a demo call with our team and get started!

What is a user journey?

A user journey is a path a user takes to reach their goal when using a particular website or app. It’s the series of interactions the user has across different touchpoints in order to achieve something.

UX designers depict this tool as a diagram called a user journey map , to illustrate how a user moves through the sales funnel and engages with your product, highlighting points of friction and suggesting improvements.

A typical user journey starts from the awareness stage to the “ Aha moment ”, down to the activation and then the adoption stage, after which they convert to premium users.

What is a critical user journey?

A critical user journey is a UX tool that maps out the key interactions between users and a product. In other words, it’s a process that helps you visualize and drive focus on the most important parts of the customer’s journey, which have a direct impact on revenue or retention.

Creating a critical user journey is helpful for product teams. It reveals bad UX designs , which could lead to the loss of paying customers .

Types of critical journeys you should be looking into

There are two types of critical journeys that you can identify with UX user journey analytics . Both types are important, but when you’re looking to optimize certain aspects of your product journey map , consider which is more critical for your business.

That is the one that should require your attention first.

High traffic critical journey

These are the paths that a lot of users take when using your product. For instance, when users engage with the core features like completing an order or interacting with support.

When a product feature has high engagement, it means users find it valuable.

Ultimately, this results in an increase in product adoption and helps you decide what features to include in your SaaS minimum viable or minimum lovable product (MVP or MLP).

High dollar critical journey

These are revenue-generating journey paths. As the name suggests, it is the journey that generates the highest revenue. It’s the path that takes a user from trial to paid, or from activation to retention .

Critical user journey map vs user experience journey map

Most people confuse the critical user journey map and the user experience journey map as the same. After all, they’re both journey maps, but they have their differences.

The difference between the critical user journey maps and user experience journey maps is that the former prioritizes different sections of a customer journey over others, while the latter monitors the overall customer experience across every touchpoint and channel.

The critical journey is connected to a business goal. It is more focused on traffic or money, so paying attention to these is crucial.

Meanwhile, the UX journey map is built to map the entire experience and look into reducing friction overall.

Why should you map your critical user journeys?

As discussed earlier, mapping a critical user journey reveals emerging patterns in the user experience of new users and existing customers. It also helps to:

• Improve user experience : By mapping user journeys, you can better understand the pain points of your target audience to design a personalized experience.
• Decrease churn: An optimized critical user journey reduces churn by identifying friction points that impede users from having a great experience.
• Increase customer loyalty: A good experience makes customers like your brand, leading to repeat business.
• Drive alignment across your team: A company that maps critical user journeys will have individual team members working towards achieving a common goal.

Steps to mapping the critical user journey

Many product teams map user journeys at the initial stage and call it “a night.”

Unfortunately, this approach is wrong.

This is because mapping a user journey is not a one-time thing; it should be optimized continuously in order to drive improved user experience and business growth.

Here are steps to map the critical user journey:

• Define the journey stage you want to map.
• Define the particular user journey to focus on.
• Determine the happy path flow.

Define the journey stage you want to map

To define the journey stage you want to map, we use pirate metrics . In summary, pirate metrics is a framework that helps product teams track how customers are advancing through the lifecycles by looking at each main stage in the user journey .

For example, you can choose to map your critical journey in:

• The acquisition stage: Here, you might be looking at the signup flow and how it can be designed to create a frictionless experience.
• The activation stage: Here, you might be looking at improving the flow to the activation point.
• The adoption stage: Here, you might be monitoring the flow of feature engagement to product adoption .
• The retention stage: You might be looking at the flow for subscription renewal and upgrade at the retention stage.
• The revenue stage: This is where users spend more money on your product, including upgrading and adding add-ons.
• The referral stage: When users get to this stage, they become advocates for your product so you might be interested in driving word of mouth.

Define the particular user journey to focus on

If the customer journey has multiple touchpoints, consider splitting them up and focusing on smaller paths.

A user journey is difficult to understand, but when you break it down into smaller bits, you have a zoomed-in view that’s easier to read.

Start with the goal of the journey you are mapping.

Ask questions like: what milestones does the user need to reach? What is the path the user takes to get there? For instance, you could choose to focus on the initial “AHA moment” or secondary feature activation.

Whichever it is, this is the flow you will be mapping in detail.

Determine the happy path flow

The happy path is an error-free path, describing each step the user must take and the ideal outcome. Mapping this path for the journey you decided to optimize will reveal friction points and gives insight into exactly what actions can be improved.

Use different UX analytics to understand how users are engaging with your product and identify areas where they are not staying on the path. When you find these unhappy paths , use them to optimize the UX by keeping users from getting on them, to begin with.

How to optimize critical user journeys using user research data

Now that you have your critical journey path mapped, it’s time to optimize it. Whether this is a traffic or revenue path, you need to focus on identifying friction points and removing them to optimize the journey.

Here’s how to do it.

Use UX analytics to identify friction points

UX analytics gathers data on user behavior, helps you spot friction points, and gives you insights into potential solutions. With these metrics, it’s easy for product teams to focus on creating the right experience that meets user expectations while also increasing customer satisfaction.

What metrics should you track?

Feature usage analytics

Use feature tagging to understand which features customers use most and which features are neglected.

If engagement with specific features is an important point on the critical path, you should look into implementing different in-app engagement experiences meant to drive feature discovery and engagement.

Heatmaps analytics

Use heatmaps to identify what’s dragging customer attention on the UI and what’s being ignored. Pair this with screen recordings to get deeper insights. Then, analyze the ignored places and make changes to improve conversion rate optimization.

Heatmaps also help uncover bugs that might be stopping users from engaging with the product.

Funnel analytics

Funnel analytics help you visualize how a user flows through a buying journey. With funnel analytics, you can set up custom events to monitor different types of user interactions and figure out what steps cause friction.

Then optimize these specific steps to prevent churn.

Improve user interface feedback at critical points

The critical point in UX is the most delicate path where users make decisions. For instance, a critical point for any SaaS would be when a user fills in their payment details, wanting to upgrade to a paid subscription.

At this stage, a bad UX can turn them away.

By improving the user interface (UI) at critical points, you encourage users to complete their actions flawlessly.

Here’s how to do that:

Use empty states to provide guidance

Notion does this by using empty states as a chance to showcase several functionalities and engage new users. This helps them use the product to its full potential instead of staring at a blank page and eventually churning.

Use a progress bar

Introduce a progress bar into your onboarding checklist or signup flow. A progress bar helps users stay motivated and keep going as they can clearly see how far they are from achieving their goal.

It’s in human nature to finish a task when you know how much is still left.

Contextual guidance through UI feedback

UI feedback refers to short messages, prompts, UI color changes, and all the other elements that interact with the user in real-time as they engage with your product’s UI.

An example is when you click on a button and something happens, such as a message is displayed, a progress bar shows up, a new page is loaded, a notification about an error, etc.

By using small guidance tooltips or hotspots at the right moment, you help users interact with the product without friction and set the right user expectations.

Leverage these UI patterns to highlight important features while users ”walk” through your UI at their own pace.

Here’s an example from Slack. They use introductory tooltips to explain the main parts of their UI and show users where they can start.

Replicate successful user’s journey path

Analyze the paths and behavior of your most engaged users to determine the golden path. To put it simply, the golden path is described as important steps users must take to get the most value from their experience.

You can use segmentation to create user segments and understand how they are getting value from the product.

When you know your golden path, encourage the rest of your users to take the same path with in-app guidance.

Do this by creating engagement loops around these actions to motivate new users to walk through the entire path uninterrupted.

Use checklists to keep users on the desired journey

Since we have identified the ideal critical user journey, we can use checklists to keep them on the desired path so that they don’t take “unhappy” paths and end up churning.

Keep your onboarding checklist simple by breaking it down into mini-tasks. Include a progress bar to keep users motivated, or make it fun and convert it into a game .

Critical user journey mapping is a valuable tool that will help you structure the user experience of your product into a cohesive story that flows naturally from beginning to end.

More often than not, a product that lacks this sense of direction will struggle to engage users and retain their loyalty over time.

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How to create effective user journeys

How to map user journeys to create better UX.

User journeys are vital for understanding a business' customers and the journey they take when interacting with the business/product. In the same way as we use GPS maps to guide us when we travel, customer journey maps or user journeys help businesses to understand the user pain points and identify important things. 

This includes understanding various customer touchpoints and business needs at all the different stages in the sales funnel and identifying the logical stages and the gaps between the ideal customer experience and the current experience being offered. It can also help massively improve your landing page and the general user experience of your site.

It could also include prioritising the development priorities and enabling the business to concentrate spending efforts on what features matter the most. Here, I will explain the essential parts of a user journey with the help of an example.

For more web design resources, see our posts on choosing the ideal website builder and web hosting provider. Got files to keep safe? Our guide to cloud storage is here for you.

01. Choose the right persona

No two journey maps are the same. They vary from business to business and the design varies depending on the product you are planning to map. The user journey can be designed for a single customer persona or it can be created for a segment of customers. Once a customer journey is designed for a persona, it can be applied to other customers by establishing a common understanding of customer stages, goals, touchpoints, opportunities, and so on.

The two key things that should be focused on are motivations and emotions. Motivations include the actions that help the user to move forward in the experience. Emotions are powerful in determining whether the users love your experience or whether they want to abandon it.

Let us consider the scenario of a potential video game buyer. For the purpose of the article, I will keep the stages simple. The persona we will consider for this journey map is John, who is a financial director. He is 42, living in NYC with a high income and is often super busy. You can go as detailed as possible for the persona. 

02. Create the stages of a journey map

Now that we have decided on the persona, let’s move on to the next important step of deciding what stages you want in the user journey. Each stage or phase is used to represent a vital goal your customer is trying to achieve as they progress through the journey. 

Stages can be high-level or they can be more detailed. The problem with being more detailed is that the user journey could turn into an internal process diagram, which is not our goal here. Most of the stages are linear but it all depends on the product or service.

For this journey map of a newly launched video game, let’s start creating various stages that John goes through. A simple layout can be as follows:

• Previous experience with the games
• Awareness of our new video game (1st touchpoint)
• Choosing the video game
• Purchasing the video game
• Playing the video game
• Sharing the experience

03. Identify actions, mindsets and emotions

Each stage in the journey contains various key elements. All these are represented in vertical lanes and the stages are represented in horizontal lanes. All elements can be categorised under three zones. The first is actions, mindsets and emotions.

Actions represent what the customer is doing at that particular stage of the journey. Mindsets include all the things going on in the customer’s head about the product or service. Emotions are to capture the predominant mood of the user as they move from one stage to another. This is important because a business can retain its customers and gain more if the user experience they deliver results in more positive emotions.

Let’s look at our example and what these different elements can potentially look like. For the purpose of this journey map, let’s look at one of the six stages: ‘Choosing the videogame’.

• Actions by John include things like checking the rating of the game, checking the artwork, checking the price of the game, looking for deals, reading the description and playing the trailer
• Few thoughts in his mind could be: ‘Mmm, the price seems fair’; ‘Wow! Cool artwork’; ‘Ahh, this reminds me of the XYZ game’; or: ‘The trailer is amazing. I hope the game is too’
• Emotions in this stage could be uncertainty, indecision, deception, surprise

04. Consider touchpoints and channels

Touchpoints are the times when the customer interacts with the business or interface and channels usually refer to the methods of communication or service delivery. This can be anything, including a website, mobile app or physical store. This zone helps uncover any disconnected user experiences or inconsistencies in the brand.

Coming back to the video game example, a few touchpoints and channels in these stages can include digital mediums such as a mobile app, gameplay store on Xbox , game review websites or they could be non-digital touchpoints, such as an advertisement in a gaming magazine or a friend talking to you about the new video game. 

05. Look at opportunities and barriers

This zone includes opportunities that will drive growth via investing in UX improvements. The business should always craft a journey map in a way that can be used for action planning, meaning it will uncover various opportunities, assess the potential impact and cost and further guide investing priorities for the business.

A barrier is an optional feature that you can have at each stage. These will include all the pain points for a customer when interacting with the business at a particular stage. This can be used along with opportunities to fix the issues with the interface, business or product. A few opportunities in the case of the video game example are:

• Choosing the video game stage  – improve the user experience of the app store, improve the navigation and findability of the game, provide promotional discounts and deals to the new users.
• Sharing the video game stage – offer points when sharing moments of the game, sharing options on level completion, inviting friends to unlock new stages/levels. 

These are the key zones and the relevant features you must take care of when designing a user journey. Based on the type of journey, the depth and breadth can be tweaked. For making informed decisions on these, there are few considerations:

• What is the level of detail that is required for telling the complete story to the stakeholders of the business? 
• What key elements will be necessary in order to provide the most truthful and meaningful narrative/journey?
• What is the purpose of the journey map? To diagnose the existing issues or create a whole new customer experience?
• What are the issues on the customer side (external) versus business organisation (internal)?
• Who are the primary users of this journey map?

This article was originally published in issue 322 of net , the world's leading web design magazine Buy issue 322 or subscribe to net here . 

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Vamsi is a senior UX designer at SunTrust Banks and is an expert in UX, mobile animation and JavaScript.

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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.

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

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

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.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

While the customer journey might seem straightforward — the company offers a product or service, and customers buy it — for most businesses, it typically isn’t.

In reality, it’s a complex journey that begins when the customer becomes problem-aware (which might be long before they become product-aware) and then moves through an intricate process of further awareness, consideration, and decision-making.

The customer is also exposed to multiple external factors (competitor ads, reviews, etc.) and touchpoints with the company (conversations with sales reps, interacting with content, viewing product demos, etc.).

Keep in mind that 80% of customers consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products.

By mapping this journey, your marketing, sales, and service teams can understand, visualize, and gain insight into each stage of the process.

You can then decrease friction along the way and make the journey as helpful and delightful as possible for your leads and customers. Customer journey mapping allows you to understand your customers’ motivations, pain points, and needs — resulting in an increased ability to provide solutions. Customers are 2.4x more likely to stick with a brand when their problems are solved quickly, so don’t miss out on the power of customers.

What data is necessary for customer journey mapping?

Your customer journey map isn’t just a guess based on how you think customers interact with your brand. It’s a data-driven, research-based operation that analyzes past customer behavior. So, what data should you be looking at?

Customer Surveys and Interviews

What better way to find out how customers think than to ask them? Customer surveys and interviews will provide first-hand information about the stage of the customer journey, their pain points, and how they use your products to solve their problems.

Surveys and interviews are referred to as Solicited Data because you have to specifically ask customers to fill out a questionnaire and provide data. Consider sending an NPS Survey to customers or asking for feedback on social media to gather the solicited data necessary for customer journey mapping. However, surveys and interviews won’t tell the whole story. That’s where unsolicited data comes in.

Unsolicited Data

Unsolicited data refers to all the data you collect from customers without specifically prompting them. Data points like purchase history, time spent on page, email clicks, page views, feedback from your support team, call/chat transcripts, and much more will fill in the gaps in your customer journey mapping strategy.

Unsolicited data is instrumental and much more plentiful than solicited data. While only a small number of customers will respond to surveys and questionnaires, you can collect valuable data on every customer who interacts with your brand to bolster the effectiveness and accuracy of your customer journey map.

Breaking down the customer journey, phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps for maximizing customer success.

Here are a few more benefits to gain from customer journey mapping.

1. You can refocus your company with an inbound perspective.

Rather than discovering customers through outbound marketing, you can have your customers find you with the help of inbound marketing.

Outbound marketing involves tactics targeted at generalized or uninterested audiences and seeks to interrupt prospects’ daily lives. Outbound marketing is costly and inefficient. It annoys and deters customers and prospects.

Inbound marketing involves creating helpful content that customers are already looking for. You grab their attention first and focus on the sales later.

By mapping out the customer journey, you can understand what’s interesting and helpful to your customers and what’s turning them away.

2. You can create a new target customer base.

You need to understand the customer journey properly to understand your customers’ demographics and psychographics.

It’s a waste of time and money to repeatedly target too broad of an audience rather than people who are actually interested in your offering.

Researching the needs and pain points of your typical customers will give you a good picture of the kinds of people who are trying to achieve a goal with your company. Thus, you can hone your marketing to that specific audience.

3. You can implement proactive customer service.

A customer journey map is like a roadmap to the customer experience.

It highlights moments where people experience delight and situations where they might face friction. Knowing this beforehand lets you plan your customer service strategy and intervene at ideal times.

Proactive customer service also makes your brand appear more reliable. For example, when I worked in customer support, we would anticipate a surge in tickets around the holidays. To be proactive, we’d send out a message to customers letting them know about our team’s adjusted holiday hours. We would also tell them about additional support options if we were unavailable and what to do if an urgent problem needed immediate attention.

With expectations set, customers won’t feel surprised if they’re waiting on hold a little longer than usual. They’ll even have alternative options to choose from — like a chatbot or knowledge base — if they need to find a faster solution.

4. You can improve your customer retention rate.

When you have a complete view of the customer journey, it’s easier to identify areas for improvement. When you do, customers experience fewer pain points, leading to fewer people leaving your brand for competitors.

After all, 33% of customers will consider switching brands after just one poor experience.

Customer journey mapping can point out individuals on the path to churn. If you log the common behaviors of these customers, you can start to spot them before they leave your business.

While you might not save them all, it’s worth the try. Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-95%.

5. You can create a customer-focused mentality throughout the company.

As your company grows, it can be tricky to coordinate all your departments to be as customer-focused as your customer service, support, and success teams. That’s because each department has varying goals, meaning they might not prioritize customer needs — they might focus on website traffic, leads, product signups, etc.

One way to overcome this data silo is to share a clear customer journey map with your entire organization. The great thing about these maps is that they map every step of the customer journey, from initial attraction to post-purchase support. And, yes, this concerns marketing, sales, and service.

Now that we’ve discussed the customer journey and the benefits of mapping it, let’s review the specific stages that comprise it.

Generally, there are five phases that customers go through when interacting with a brand or a product: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Loyalty.

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer’s journey, a day in your customer’s life, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company’s buyer persona. This will improve your product and customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you’re creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don’t have one, I recommend creating a buyer persona . This persona is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics of your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics ready.

Don’t have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started.

Questionnaires and user testing are great ways to obtain valuable customer feedback. The important thing is to only contact actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you’ve learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a customer journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company. If you group too many personas into one journey, your map won’t accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

What is a touchpoint in a customer journey map?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map is an instance where your customer can form an opinion of your business. You can find touchpoints in places where your business comes in direct contact with a potential or existing customer.

For example, if I were to view a display ad, interact with an employee, reach a 404 error, or leave a Google review, all of those interactions would be considered a customer touchpoint.

Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so you must consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map. These touchpoints can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there’s no overlap.

This is essential in creating a customer journey map because it provides insight into your customers’ actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they’re quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you must also look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels.
• Email marketing.
• Third-party review sites or mentions.

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding — you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

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Journey mapping 101.

December 9, 2018 2018-12-09

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Journey maps are a common UX tool. They come in all shapes, sizes, and formats. Depending on the context, they can be used in a variety of ways. This article covers the basics: what a journey map is (and is not), related terminology, common variations, and how we can use journey maps.

In This Article:

Definition of a journey map, key components of a journey map, journey-map variations, why use journey maps.

Definition: A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.

In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user actions into a timeline. Next, the timeline is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative. This narrative is condensed and polished, ultimately leading to a visualization.

The terms ‘user journey map’ and ‘customer journey map’ can be used interchangeably. Both reference a visualization of a person using your product or service.

While the argument can be made that the term ‘customer’ does a disservice to the method (because, especially for certain business-to-business products, not all of end users are technically customers, i.e., product buyers), alignment on what you call the map is far less important than alignment on the content within the map.

Journey maps come in all shapes and sizes. Regardless of how they look, journey maps have the following 5 key elements in common:

Scenario + Expectations

Journey phases, actions, mindsets, and emotions, opportunities.

The actor is the persona or user who experiences the journey. The actor is who the journey map is about — a point of view. Actors usually align with personas and their actions in the map are rooted in data.

Provide one point of view per map in order to build a strong, clear narrative. For example, a university might choose either a student or a faculty member as actor — each would result in different journeys. (To capture both viewpoints, the university will need to build two separate maps, one for each of the two user types.)

The scenario describes the situation that the journey map addresses and is associated with an actor’s goal or need and specific expectations. For example, one scenario could be switching mobile plans to save money, and expectations for it include to easily find all the information needed to make a decision.

Scenarios can be real (for existing products and services) or anticipated — for products that are yet in the design stage.

Journey maps are best for scenarios that involve a sequence of events (such as shopping or taking a trip), describe a process (thus involve a set of transitions over time), or might involve multiple channels .

Journey phases are the different high-level stages in the journey. They provide organization for the rest of the information in the journey map (actions, thoughts, and emotions). The stages will vary from scenario to scenario; each organization will usually have data to help it determine what these phases are for a given scenario.

Here are some examples:

• For an ecommerce scenario (like buying Bluetooth speakers), the stages can be discover, try, buy, use, seek support.
• For big (or luxury) purchases (like buying a car), the stages can be engagement, education, research, evaluation, justification.
• For a business-to-business scenario (like rolling out an internal tool), the stages could be purchase, adoption, retention, expansion, advocacy.

These are behaviors, thoughts, and feelings the actor has throughout the journey and that are mapped within each of the journey phases.

Actions are the actual behaviors and steps taken by users. This component is not meant to be a granular step-by-step log of every discrete interaction. Rather, it is a narrative of the steps the actor takes during that phase.

Mindsets correspond to users’ thoughts, questions, motivations, and information needs at different stages in the journey. Ideally, these are customer verbatims from research.

Emotions are plotted as single line across the journey phases, literally signaling the emotional “ups” and “downs” of the experience. Think of this line as a contextual layer of emotion that tells us where the user is delighted versus frustrated.

Opportunities (along with additional context such as ownership and metrics) are insights gained from mapping; they speak to how the user experience can be optimized. Insights and opportunities help the team draw knowledge from the map:

• What needs to be done with this knowledge?
• Who owns what change?
• Where are the biggest opportunities?
• How are we going to measure improvements we implement?

There are several concepts closely related and thus easily confused with journey maps.

It is important to note that this section is only meant to help your personal understanding and clarification of these terms. It is not advised to debate or attempt to shift a whole organization’s language to abide by the definitions stated here. Instead, use these definitions to guide you towards aspects of another method that your team has not previously considered.

Journey Map vs. Experience Map

Think of an experience map as a parent to a journey map. A journey map has a specific actor (a singular customer or user of a product) and specific scenario (of a product or service), while an experience map is broader on both accounts — a generic human undergoing a general human experience.

The experience map is agnostic of a specific business or product. It’s used for understanding a general human behavior; in contrast, a customer journey map is specific and focused on a particular business or product.

For example, imagine the world before the ridesharing market existed (Uber, Lyft, Bird, or Limebike, to name a few). If we were to create an experience map of how a person gets from one place to another, the map would likely include walking, biking, driving, riding with a friend, public transportation, or calling a taxi. Using that experience map we could then isolate pain points: unknown fares, bad weather, unpredictable timing, paying in cash, and so on. Using these pain points, we would then create a future journey map for specific product: how does a particular type of user call a car using the Lyft app?

Journey Map vs. Service Blueprint

If journey maps are the children to experience maps, then service blueprints are the grandchildren. They visualize the relationships between different service components (such as people or processes) at various touchpoints in a specific customer journey.

Think of service blueprints as a part two to customer journey maps. They are extensions of journey maps, but instead of being focused on the user (and taking the user’s viewpoint), they are focused on the business (and take its perspective).

For the Lyft scenario above, we would take the journey map and expand it with what Lyft does internally to support that customer journey. The blueprint could include matching the user to a driver, contacting the driver, calculating fares, and so on.

Journey Map vs. User Story Map

User stories are used in Agile to plan features or functionalities. Each feature is condensed down to a deliberately brief description from a user’s point of view; the description focuses on what the user wants to do, and how that feature will help. The typical format of a user story is a single sentence: “As a [type of user], I want to [goal], so that [benefit].” For example, “As a checking account holder, I want to deposit checks with my mobile device, so that I don’t have to go to the bank.”

A user story map is a visual version of a user story. For example, take the user story above (“As a checking account holder, I want to deposit checks with my mobile device, so that I don’t have to go to the bank.”) and imagine writing out the different steps that the team plans for the user to take when using that functionality. These steps could be: logging in, beginning deposit, taking picture of check, and entering transaction details. For each step, we can document required features: enabling camera access, scanning check and auto filling numbers, and authorizing signature. In a user story map, these features are written on sticky notes, then arranged based on the product release that each functionality will be added to.

While, at a glance, a user story map may look like a journey map, journey maps are meant for discovery and understanding (think big picture), while user story maps are for planning and implementation (think little picture).

Although a journey map and user story map may contain some of the same pieces, they are used at different points of the process. For example, imagine our journey map for Lyft indicated that a pain point appeared when the user was in a large group. To address it, the team may introduce a multicar-call option. We could create a user story map to break this feature (multicar call) into smaller pieces, so a product-development team could plan release cycles and corresponding tasks.

The benefits of journey maps (and most other UX mappings ) are two-fold. First, the process of creating a map forces conversation and an aligned mental model for the whole team. Fragmented understanding is a widespread problem in organizations because success metrics are siloed; it is no one’s responsibility to look at the entire experience from the user’s standpoint. This shared vision is a critical goal of journey mapping, because, without it, agreement on how to improve customer experience would never take place.

Second, the shared artifact resulting from the mapping can be used to communicate an understanding of your user or service to all involved. Journey maps are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise, and that creates a shared vision. The maps can also become the basis for decision making as the team moves forward.

Journey mapping is a process that provides a holistic view of the customer experience by uncovering moments of both frustration and delight throughout a series of interactions. Done successfully, it reveals opportunities to address customers’ pain points, alleviate fragmentation, and, ultimately, create a better experience for your users.

Additional articles are available, discussing: 

• When to create customer journey maps
• The 5-step process
• Journey mapping in real life

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A step-by-step guide to mapping the B2B customer journey (with real-life examples)

It’s tricky to effectively map out all the different user personas and purchasing processes in the B2B customer journey. But understanding your customer's experience is key to improving conversions and retaining users.

That’s why it’s essential for B2B companies to follow an effective customer journey mapping process.

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Use our step-by-step guide to create a map for your business-to-business (B2B) company that tracks your users’ unique journeys, giving you key insights into your customers and their needs. 

Get valuable insights into your B2B customer journey

Hotjar helps you understand how buyers interact with key web and product touchpoints to improve their experience.

How to map out the B2B customer journey in 5 steps

Mapping the customer journey is essential in understanding your buyers and turning them into loyal customers. 

Follow these steps to create an actionable B2B customer journey map that gives insights into who your customers are and helps you build an optimized user experience (UX) for them:

1. Set goals unique to your business

Before you start mapping out the customer journey, define your larger business and customer goals. 

To begin, ask yourself what you want your customers to achieve—what are their jobs to be done (JTBD)? Does your business depend on repeat customers, or are your products one-off larger ticket items? Your customer journey will look different if you sell business clients a one-time-purchase product, like a hardware device, versus a subscription service.

For example, different B2B firms—like GE Renewable Energy and Hubspot—will have very different objectives. A company like GE Renewable Energy that sells large equipment to B2B customers may prioritize goals like generating more website conversions and creating brand advocates who recommend GE products to other businesses in the industry. 

On the other hand, a software company like Hubspot will need to emphasize the customer journey's onboarding and renewal components to increase customer retention. 

Know what your goals are before creating your B2B customer journey map to prioritize the most important steps for your customers and your business.

2. Identify your customer segments

The purchasing process is an especially nuanced cycle for B2B businesses, because the end users of your product or service are often not the same people making the purchasing decision .

John Forberger , founder of Forberger Communications , highlights this complexity: 

Typically, multiple people have influence over a deal. Maybe one person researches how to replace a current tool, then a second person does a demo, and a third person actually cuts the check.

Don't just focus on the users who’ll try out your product or service, or on the C-level decision makers: understand every stakeholder involved in the purchasing process to map out an accurate B2B customer journey . 

Consider the different needs of end users versus purchasers and think about how your user personas may differ depending on company size and type. 

Take Canva, for example: the design tool is used by a variety of businesses, from freelancers to large corporations like PayPal and Danone. Understanding different user profiles and needs gave Canva the insight they needed to design their homepage for different B2B customer types who can choose their own adventure and head off on their most relevant user journey.

Pro tip: once you define your user profiles, learn more about different buyer types by asking the right survey questions . Use these questions to dig deeper into user goals and jobs to be done to better design the B2B customer journey. 

3. Define the B2B customer journey stages

Once you have clear goals and user personas, it’s time to define the stages of  the customer journey. Let’s take a look at a typical 7-stage B2B customer journey, using the popular SEO tool Ahrefs as an example.

Awareness: a buyer becomes aware of their problem and begins to search for solutions, which is when they discover your brand. In our example, a buyer knows they need to improve their website’s SEO performance, so they search for “best SEO tools” and come across Ahrefs. They visit the homepage, where the tool’s value proposition entices them to learn more.

Consideration: customers consider your product or service as a potential solution. Here, the buyer visits Ahref’s website and learns about the brand’s unique selling proposition , reads about features, watches a demo, explores resources like the Ahrefs blog and SEO guide, and weighs up whether Ahrefs is the product solution for them.

Decision: the buyer makes a decision and purchases the product or service that best fits their needs. In the case of Ahrefs, the buyer purchases the subscription (Lite, Standard, Advanced, or Enterprise) that’s right for them. The Ahrefs website guides users in the decision and purchasing process by displaying clear CTAs that encourage users to become paying customers.

Onboarding: the buyer starts to use the product, goes through the onboarding process, and gets familiar with the tool by reading guides and watching demos. They (ideally) start to adopt it into their everyday workflow. 

Support: users contact customer teams as they need support. In our example, customers have easy access to customer support agents and the Ahrefs help center to smoothly resolve issues and questions.

Retention: customer retention is a key part of the B2B buyer journey, and at this stage, buyers decide whether or not they’ll remain loyal customers and continue using your product. Ahrefs offers a range of subscription models and gives users who sign up for an annual subscription a two-month free plan. 

Advocacy: the final stage in an ideal customer journey is turning customers into brand advocates. Ahrefs has done a good job of this: the homepage shows reviews from real users who recommend the tool, including pro SEOs, content marketers, and agencies.

Pro tip: your product's user journey may look different depending on your company and customer types: a business customer purchasing a one-off product will have a very different journey from a company subscribing to a service. 

Oleg Donets , founder and chief marketing officer at Real Estate Bees , points out how the stages of non-SaaS B2B customer journeys can differ from SaaS journeys : 

"Since the vast majority of SaaS companies utilize subscription revenue models, this directly impacts the customer journey. B2B customer journeys often scale back a notch shortly after a sale has been made, but that’s when the customer journey of a SaaS company just starts kicking in."

4. List all possible B2B customer touchpoints 

Once you map out the steps in your customer’s B2B journey, identify each ‘touchpoint’ where they interact with your company, from social media posts to your homepage CTAs and your product itself. 

Let’s go back to the Ahrefs example. 

A key touchpoint in the early awareness, consideration, and purchase stages of the B2B customer journey is their homepage and a clear call-to-action (CTA) button. These onsite touchpoints show customers what their next steps in the product experience (PX) should be and give them the information they need to make a decision. 

In the next phases—onboarding and support—follow Ahrefs' example by making it easy for users to connect with your B2B business, resolve their issues, and upgrade. On the Ahrefs help center page, customers can reach out to representatives and receive support within minutes. 

Make sure you continue mapping out  how your users interact with your B2B after they become customers—in the retention and advocacy phases . How can you make it easier for them to renew their subscription? Do you offer any rewards for referrals?

As well as mapping out touchpoints by customer journey phase, consider the different touchpoints experienced by different user personas.  

For example, the product experience of high-level executives who make the purchasing decision may not be the same as their employees who are your end-users. 

By identifying key B2B customer journey touchpoints for different customers and purchasing stages, you can improve UX, making product advocates out of your buyers.

Pro tip: use Hotjar's Observe tools—like Heatmaps and Recordings —to explore how your users interact with key B2B customer touchpoints on your website and product—and get the insights you need to improve their journey. 

Hotjar Session Recordings show you how users experience your page to improve low-performing touchpoints 

5. Measure and analyze the success of the customer journey

One of the most important customer journey mapping best practices is measuring the success of your customer journey.  

Use the right customer journey mapping tools to help you evaluate the impact of your touchpoints. For best results, combine website analysis tools with software that offers more in-depth product experience insights and user feedback. 

Use Hotjar's Observe tools to track how customers are engaging with your touchpoints. Then use Hotjar’s Ask tools—like Surveys and Feedback widgets—to learn what your users really think and feel about their B2B experience.

Tools like Google Analytics also help in mapping and analyzing the customer journey, giving you more general information on the types of users that visit your website and whether they convert or bounce. 

Combine Hotjar with Google Analytics to dig deeper into B2B customer touchpoint insights to improve conversion rates and enhance the customer experience .  

After you’ve mapped the customer journey, regularly check in on your key goals and what matters most to your customers. Keep measuring the outcomes of your customer journey to understand which aspects of the B2B customer journey are successful and what needs improvement.

Create a brilliant B2B user journey for happier customers

Successfully mapping out the B2B customer journey requires a deep understanding of all your buyers and how they interact with your brand and product. 

Adapting these steps to your customers and company helps you create a customer journey map that identifies what your users need at each stage of the buying cycle to provide them with the best possible experience.

Use Hotjar to understand how buyers interact with key web and product touchpoints—and improve their experience with your B2B business.

FAQs about B2B customer journey mapping

Why do you need b2b customer journey mapping.

Visualizing the customer journey is the first step to understanding and improving it. B2B customer journey mapping helps you identify what type of experience customers have with your product at every stage . 

Without B2B customer journey mapping, you won’t understand the process of converting potential buyers into loyal customers, meaning you have no way to make adjustments that enhance the customer journey.

How is the B2B customer journey different from other customer journeys?

With the B2B customer journey, there are often more stakeholders involved in the decision-making process than with a B2C customer journey. For that reason, the B2B customer journey is often much longer and depends on various decision-makers . 

Plus, the B2B customer journey is often cyclical, as customer retention is such a key goal for many B2B companies.

What are some common mistakes of B2B customer journey mapping?

A big mistake in B2B customer journey mapping is failing to consider all user personas. B2B products often have a number of diverse customer profiles, whether that be different positions within one company (administrator vs. C-level executive) or different types of companies (like a small business vs. an enterprise). 

Another common mistake is not taking into account the length and complexity of the B2B customer journey , which often has a lengthy approval process, and requires several different stakeholders to sign off on purchasing decisions.

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The complete guide to customer journey stages.

12 min read If you want to turn a potential customer into a lifetime one, you’ll need to get to know every step of the entire customer journey. Here’s why the secret to customer retention lies in knowing how to fine-tune your sales funnel…

What is the customer journey?

What do we actually mean when we talk about the customer journey? Well, the simplest way to think about it is by comparing it to any other journey: a destination in mind, a starting point, and steps to take along the way.

In this case, the destination is not only to make a purchase but to have a great experience with your product or service – sometimes by interacting with aftersale customer support channels – and become a loyal customer who buys again.

And, just like how you can’t arrive at your vacation resort before you’ve done you’ve found out about it, the customer journey starts with steps to do with discovery, research, understanding, and comparison, before moving on to the buying process.

“Maximizing satisfaction with customer journeys has the potential not only to increase customer satisfaction by 20% but also lift revenue up by 15% while lowering the cost of serving customers by as much as 20%”

– McKinsey, The Three Cs of Customer Satisfaction

In short, the customer journey is the path taken by your target audience toward becoming loyal customers. So it’s really important to understand – both in terms of what each step entails and how you can improve each one to provide a maximally impressive and enjoyable experience.

Every customer journey will be different, after all, so getting to grips with the nuances of each customer journey stage is key to removing obstacles from in front of your potential and existing customers’ feet.

Free Course: Customer Journey Management & Improvement

What are the essential customer journey stages?

While many companies will put their own spin on the exact naming of the customer journey stages, the most widely-recognized naming convention is as follows:

• Consideration

These steps are often then sub-categorized into three parts:

• Sale/Purchase

It’s important to understand every part of the puzzle, so let’s look at each sub-category and stage in turn, from the awareness and consideration stage, right through to advocacy:

Customer journey: Pre-sale

In the pre-sale phase, potential customers learn about products, evaluate their needs, make comparisons, and soak up information.

Awareness stage

In the awareness stage, your potential customer becomes aware of a company, product, or service. This might be passive – in that they’re served an ad online, on TV, or when out and about – or active in that they have a need and are searching for a solution. For example, if a customer needs car insurance, they’ll begin searching for providers.

Consideration stage

In the consideration stage, the customer has been made aware of several possible solutions for their particular need and starts doing research to compare them. That might mean looking at reviews or what others are saying on social media, as well as absorbing info on product specs and features on companies’ own channels. They’re receptive to information that can help them make the best decision.

Customer journey: Sale

The sale phase is short but pivotal: it’s when the crucial decision on which option to go with has been made.

Decision stage

The customer has all the information they need on the various options available to them, and they make a purchase. This can be something that’s taken a long time to decide upon, like buying a new computer, or it can be as quick as quickly scouring the different kinds of bread available in the supermarket before picking the one they want.

Customer journey: Post-sale

Post-sale is a really important part of the puzzle because it’s where loyal customers , who come back time and again, are won or lost.

Retention stage

The retention stage of the customer journey is where you do whatever you can to help leave a lasting, positive impression on the customer, and entice them to purchase more. That means offering best-in-class customer support if they have any issues, but it also means being proactive with follow-up communications that offer personalized offers, information on new products, and rewards for loyalty.

Advocacy stage

If you nail the retention phase, you’ll have yourself a customer who not only wants to keep buying from you but will also advocate on your behalf. Here, the customer will become one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal, in that they’ll actively recommend you to their friends, family, followers, and colleagues.

What’s the difference between the customer journey and the buyer’s journey?

Great question; the two are similar, but not exactly the same. The buyer’s journey is a shorter, three-step process that describes the steps taken to make a purchase. So that’s awareness , consideration, and decision . That’s where things stop, however. The buyer’s journey doesn’t take into account the strategies you’ll use to keep the customer after a purchase has been made.

Why are the customer journey stages important?

The short answer? The customer journey is what shapes your entire business. It’s the method by which you attract and inform customers, how you convince them to purchase from you, and what you do to ensure they’re left feeling positive about every interaction.

Why this matters is that the journey is, in a way, cyclical. Customers who’ve had a smooth ride all the way through their individual journeys are more likely to stay with you, and that can have a massive effect on your operational metrics.

It’s up to five times more expensive to attract a new customer than it is to keep an existing customer, but even besides that: satisfied customers become loyal customers , and customer loyalty reduces churn at the same time as increasing profits .

So companies looking to really make an impact on the market need to think beyond simply attracting potential customers with impressive marketing, and more about the journey as a whole – where the retention and advocacy stages are equally important.

After all, 81% of US and UK consumers trust product advice from friends and family over brand messaging, and 59% of American consumers say that once they’re loyal to a brand, they’re loyal to it for life.

Importantly, to understand the customer journey as a whole is to understand its individual stages, recognize what works, and find things that could be improved to make it a more seamless experience. Because when you do that, you’ll be improving every part of your business proposition that matters.

How can you improve each customer journey stage?

Ok, so this whole customer journey thing is pretty important. Understanding the customer journey phases and how they relate to the overall customer experience is how you encourage customers to stick around and spread the news via word of mouth.

But how do you ensure every part of the journey is performing as it should? Here are some practical strategies to help each customer journey stage sing…

1. Perform customer journey mapping

A customer journey map takes all of the established customer journey stages and attempts to plot how actual target audience personas might travel along them. That means using a mix of data and intuition to map out a range of journeys that utilize a range of touch points along the way.

One customer journey map, for example, might start with a TV ad, then utilize social media and third-party review sites during the consideration stage, before purchasing online and then contacting customer support about you your delivery service. And then, finally, that customer may be served a discount code for a future purchase. That’s just one example.

Customer journey mapping is really about building a myriad of those journeys that are informed by everything you know about how customers interact with you – and then using those maps to discover weaker areas of the journey.

2. Listen like you mean it

The key to building better customer journeys is listening to what customers are saying. Getting feedbac k from every stage of the journey allows you to build a strong, all-encompassing view of what’s happening from those that are experiencing it.

Maybe there’s an issue with the customer sign-up experience, for example. Or maybe the number advertised to contact for a demo doesn’t work. Or maybe you have a customer service agent in need of coaching, who only makes the issue worse. By listening, you’ll understand your customers’ issues and be able to fix them at the source. That customer service agent, for example, may just feel disempowered and unsupported, and in need of the right tools to help them perform better. Fixing that will help to optimize a key stage in the customer journey.

The key is to listen at every stage, and we can do that by employing the right technology at the right customer journey stages.

Customer surveys, for instance, can help you understand what went wrong from the people who’re willing to provide that feedback, but conversational analytics and AI solutions can automatically build insights out of all the structured and unstructured conversational data your customers are creating every time they reach out, or tweet, or leave a review on a third party website.

3. Get personal

The other side of the ‘listening’ equation is that it’s worth remembering that each and every customer’s journey is different – so treating them with a blanket approach won’t necessarily make anything better for them.

The trick instead is to use the tools available to you to build out a personalized view of every customer journey, customer journey stage, and customer engagemen t, and find common solutions.

Qualtrics Experience iD , for example, is an intelligent system that builds customer profiles that are unique to them and can identify through AI, natural language processing , and past interactions what’s not working – and what needs fixing.

On an individual basis, that will help turn each customer into an advocate. But as a whole, you’ll learn about experience gaps that are common to many journeys.

Listening to and understanding the customer experience at each customer journey stage is key to ensuring customers are satisfied and remain loyal on a huge scale.

It’s how you create 1:1 experiences, because, while an issue for one person might be an issue for many others, by fixing it quickly you can minimize the impact it might have on future customers who’re right at the start of their journey.

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8 Ways to Improve Customer Experience

Natalie Gagliordi | Content Strategist | April 23, 2024

In This Article

What Is Customer Experience?

How important is customer experience, why should you improve customer experiences, impact of bad customer experiences, measuring cx, 8 steps to improve customer experience, deliver meaningful customer experiences with oracle cloud, improving customer experience faqs.

More than just a marketing buzzword, customer experience is the sum of every interaction a person has with a company, whether it’s using a product or hearing about a brand from friends at a party. For a company, great customer experience involves a commitment to building lasting customer relationships that foster growth. Today's consumers have no shortage of places to purchase the services or products they want, so it’s the business’s job to deliver memorable, positive, and personalized experiences that will keep customers coming back.

But what exactly is customer experience and how can businesses improve at providing a pleasant one? These days, delivering a consistently great customer experience requires a multipronged approach that extends beyond the marketing and customer care teams. That means incorporating the latest technologies to support a data-driven understanding of customers and shape reliable and relevant digital experiences.

Customer experience (CX) is an umbrella term that can include anything an organization does to support, engage with, and delight customers throughout their evaluation, purchasing, and post-purchase processes. A good or bad customer experience can be a key differentiator for businesses. Providing a positive customer experience means prioritizing customer needs in a way that keeps them engaged and happy with the business and ultimately inspires loyalty. Behind the scenes, customer experience efforts are supported by an array of software systems and technologies including customer relationship management software, cloud services, and chatbots powered by AI and machine learning.

Customer Experience vs. Customer Service

While very closely related, customer experience and customer service are separate functions within a business. Customer service generally refers to the ways a company assists the customer before or after they purchase a product or service, such as providing answers to general questions or resolving specific issues and complaints. Delivering helpful and responsive customer service is a key component in shaping a positive customer experience.

Customer service also plays an important part in developing brand loyalty, as the way a business responds to unhappy customers can affect consumer perceptions about the company overall. Customer experience, by contrast, is even larger in scope. It includes every interaction a customer has with a product or brand. In addition to the customer service aspect, it also covers other aspects of the customer relationship, such as when they use the product, see its advertising, or research it online.

Customer experience is extremely important for any business and can have a major impact on a company’s growth and success. Extraordinary customer experiences not only pave the way for growth through cross-selling and upselling opportunities, but also foster customer advocacy and word-of-mouth marketing, thereby boosting sales and bringing new customers to the business at a low cost. Customer experience efforts can also create new avenues for customer feedback, providing valuable insights into how and where the business could improve its products, services, and the overall customer journey based on a greater understanding of what people want, need, and value. Conversely, bad customer experiences can drive away potential and existing customers while tarnishing a business’s reputation overall.

The rationale for improving a customer experience strategy is very straightforward. When a business creates positive experiences for customers, it can improve customer retention and acquisition, increase sales, strengthen loyalty, and help differentiate itself from its competitors. Focusing only on closing a sale can mean missing the chance to establish the strong customer connections that are key to business longevity.

A key part of delivering this positive experience is the technology a business uses to power customer interactions. Outdated technology usually lacks the analytics, automation, and personalization capabilities needed to craft the unique and memorable customer experiences that can set a company apart. Older systems also may not integrate well with newer, cloud-based technologies or applications, resulting in disjointed and fragmented customer experiences, operational inefficiencies, and slow business responsiveness.

Say a company wants to add a chatbot capability to quickly answer simple customer questions online. This capability lets customer service reps focus on more complicated problems. It’s also often a preferred channel for customers to ask certain types of questions. Companies need a computing infrastructure that can either provide that chatbot capability or quickly integrate a third-party service. The kind of digital experiences customers expect today often require a combination of technological capabilities and data streams from multiple sources, which can exist in the cloud or in on on-premises data center. Businesses that can quickly leverage new technology and innovations within their customer experience strategy are better equipped to meet customer expectations and stay relevant in a competitive marketplace.

Consumer choice has never been more abundant, with ever-increasing options on where, when, and how to purchase products and services. Loyalty is hard to come by, as consumers will abandon companies that don’t treat them the way they expect. In a study of consumer behavior and how CX is tied to brand loyalty, the CX software and services company Emplifi found that 86% of consumers will ditch brands they once liked after only two to three bad experiences. Negative customer experiences—whether from product or service issues or a poorly performing website—are a primary contributor to diminishing business growth.

Moreover, when customers come away with unfavorable perceptions of a business, a segment of those customers will voice their negative feedback on social media or via online review platforms. Such grievances have the potential to reach millions of people, with lasting effects for the business. If bad customer experiences are the result of technology problems or software shortcomings, other operational areas may also be suffering from a similar lack of innovation. Optimizing digital touchpoints and giving employees the data analytics and automation they need to offer personalized experiences can all contribute to the quality of customer interactions.

Businesses employ various methods and metrics to measure CX, such as conducting customer feedback surveys, analyzing customer support interactions and tickets, and using website analytics to track user behavior. According to a study from PwC , nearly 80% of US consumers say that speed, convenience, knowledgeable help, and friendly service are the main contributors to a positive customer experience. Those findings can provide a starting point for companies to assess whether they have the means to measure their performance in those areas.

Whatever the approach or focus area, actively seeking and listening to customer feedback is crucial to understanding customer opinions, preferences, and concerns. It also helps businesses identify areas for improvement and adapt to changing customer needs. The exact method a company uses to measure its CX strengths and weaknesses depends on the nature of the business, its goals, and the specific aspects of the customer experience it aims to evaluate.

Whether internal or external, the expectations around customer experience are always changing. Successful businesses understand the need to continually assess and improve the customer experience, evaluating strategy, commitment, and technology to make sure that their CX program succeeds.

1. Understand customer pain points

Customer satisfaction surveys, Net Promoter Scores, and customer effort scores are common tools that businesses use to understand customer pain points. These assessments let customers provide targeted feedback, both good and bad, that a company can use to improve the overall customer experience. Usability testing on products or digital platforms, mystery shopping, and analysis of online reviews and ratings are also ways to recognize where the business is falling short and understand how and where to improve.

2. Personalize experiences

Personalization, which can involve targeted marketing, customized product recommendations, or tailored communication, leverages data to create a more relevant customer experience. Technologies such as data analytics and machine learning let companies customize product recommendations, content, and marketing messages to individual customer preferences, making interactions more relevant and effective. Providing this kind of custom fit can foster lasting emotional connections between customers and the brands they love.

3. Audit customer experience

A customer experience audit is a way for businesses to take stock of their entire CX strategy and pinpoint what products, services, or interactions need improvement. It involves doing a systematic evaluation of various touchpoints and processes to make sure they align with customer expectations. For example, a CX audit can look at how customers discovered a business, why they chose to buy from that business, the sales and delivery process, any customer service interactions, and all customer communications after the sale. If done correctly, a CX audit can boost customer insights and help reduce friction points in the customer journey.

4. Use customer journey mapping

A customer journey map is used to illustrate a customer’s interactions with a business from beginning to end. Customer journey mapping involves plotting out the entire customer lifecycle to understand touchpoints, interactions, and pain points, and to gain a realistic view of the customer experience. It helps businesses visualize how customers interact with the brand and identify areas for improvement, essentially charting out the best path for the ideal customer journey. Customer journey mapping also forces businesses to really consider the customer’s perspective and view the interactions customers are having with the business through that lens.

5. Improve customer service

The quality and effectiveness of the interactions that customers have with customer service representatives, online chat support, and self-service options can have a make or break the overall customer experience. Insufficient empathy or understanding of customer needs can leave customers feeling undervalued, while service representatives who aren’t adequately trained may struggle to address customer inquiries or concerns. Reducing the time it takes to resolve customer inquiries, harmonizing and delivering the data needed to solve problems, providing engaging self-service options, and ensuring close alignment across support channels are a few of the ways to improve customer service experiences.

6. Implement technology to elevate experiences

Mobile app glitches, slow website performance, or clunky user interfaces on digital platforms can frustrate customers and sink a company’s credibility, and these are only a few of the many ways underperforming technology can undermine a company’s CX efforts. Technologies such as scalable cloud infrastructure, multicloud computing environments, and cloud integration services help companies manage the mix of apps and data needed to effectively orchestrate a seamless digital experience for customers.

7. Innovate to stay ahead of customer expectations

Customers expect companies to keep pace with innovation, and they’re going to compare their online banking or B2B procurement experience to all their consumer app experiences, whether it’s a fast-food ordering app or a fitness app. That means companies need computing infrastructure that lets them add capabilities regularly so they don’t fall behind what’s expected. Personalization using data analytics, enhanced customer service with conversational AI chatbots and virtual assistants, optimized websites, and intuitive mobile applications all can contribute to better customer experiences.

8. Build an omnichannel strategy

Whether it’s through social media, emails, or online chats, consumer preferences are highly varied when it comes to how they interact with brands. Usually, they just pick whatever option they find most convenient in the moment. That means that businesses should be prepared to manage a range of omnichannel touchpoints at once and ensure that they’re getting customers the right information when they need it. Connecting these channels requires effective integration of data and applications to close communication gaps and help provide consistency and continuity throughout the customer journey.

Businesses use a combination of methods to understand and improve the customer experience. To make positive customer experiences more likely, businesses must first decide on the right strategy, and then find the right technology to help execute and continually enhance their customer interactions.

From a technology standpoint, customer experience relies on a diverse mix of applications, data sources, and platforms. Cloud technology can reduce the operational complexity and IT overhead that often stalls CX innovation . The high performance, security, and reliability of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) allows businesses to run a wide range of workloads, from traditional enterprise applications to cloud native applications, and scale resources as customer demand moves up or down. OCI integration services enable the level of automation and contextually aware conversations between customers, employees, and systems required to improve customer experience. With OCI, businesses can synchronize applications, data, and partner ecosystems for event-based, multimodal, end-to-end process automation and continuous CX innovation.

What are the 5 Cs of customer experience? The 5 Cs of customer experience are a framework that outlines the key aspects of creating a positive, memorable customer experience. These aspects include customer centricity, consistency, communication, customization, and culture.

How do you optimize customer experience? Optimizing the customer experience can involve the use of customer segmentation and persona mapping to better understand customers, personalized interactions to suggest relevant products or services, and analytics to understand customer behavior and tailor experiences accordingly.

What are three points in achieving good customer experience? Three fundamental pain points to overcome to achieve a good customer experience are understanding customer needs, communicating effectively, and providing consistent and reliable service.

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Mapping the B2B Customer Journey: Key Stages and Touchpoints

The B2B customer journey serves as a compass for businesses navigating the complex realm of buyer interactions and decision-making. Understanding the intricacies of this journey is crucial for organisations looking to build lasting partnerships and drive exceptional business outcomes. 

A customer journey map helps B2B operators re-imagine their customer journey and deliver more personalised experiences. It presents a great opportunity to reinforce brand awareness and drive customer satisfaction.

This article explores B2B customer journey mapping, unravelling its key stages and touchpoints that pave the way to fruitful business relationships. 

Table of Contents

How B2B and B2C customer journeys are different

What makes an effective b2b customer journey map, why you need a b2b customer journey map, #1. awareness, #2. consideration, #3. decision-making, #4. implementation, #5. support and relationship management, #6. renewal and expansion, awareness stage, consideration stage, decision-making stage, implementation stage, support and relationship management stage, renewal and expansion stage, define buyer personas, conduct customer interviews, analyse data and metrics, collaborate with sales and customer service teams, conduct journey mapping workshops, analyse competitor journeys, how gamified websites are engaging their audience, 19 awesome gamification ideas – ted talk edition, 12 ways to use gamification in banking for better engagement, what is the b2b customer journey.

The B2B customer journey refers to the process that business-to-business (B2B) customers go through, from problem identification to post-purchase. 

The process encompasses the entire lifecycle of a B2B buyer’s interactions with a company or brand. This includes their research, evaluation, purchase, ongoing relationship with the business and experiences along the way.

Consider a small business needing a scalable CRM (customer relationship management) solution, for example. There are many steps that it goes through before committing to a purchase. Even after the purchase, there are still post-purchase steps to cover, such as setting up the CRM system and providing after-sales services. That’s all part of the customer journey.

The B2B customer journey is characterised by multiple touchpoints across various channels. It is influenced by several factors, including industry-specific needs, organisational dynamics, and the involvement of decision-makers. Ultimately, the lasting impression of this journey is what defines the overall customer experience

Businesses and individual consumers approach the buying process quite differently. Understanding these differences is crucial for companies to tailor their strategies effectively to meet their customers’ unique expectations.

Some key aspects in which B2B and B2C (business to customer) journeys differ include: 

• Target audience — As a B2B operator, you rarely buy or sell to one person. More likely, you’ll transact with businesses, organisations, or a diverse group of individuals composed of stakeholders, senior management, and end-users
• Complexity —  B2B customer journeys tend to be more complex and involve longer sales cycles compared to B2C journeys. For example, B2B purchases typically involve higher stakes and larger investments, so there are often multiple decision-makers and longer negotiation processes.
• Decision-making factors — B2B customer journeys prioritise factors such as ROI, efficiency, scalability, and alignment with organisational goals. On the other hand, B2C journeys are frequently influenced by emotions, lifestyle preferences, and individual satisfaction.
• Relationship duration — B2B customer journeys typically involve longer-term relationships compared to B2C. This often necessitates continued engagement and support beyond the initial purchase. With B2B transactions, you look at ongoing partnerships, term contracts, or retainer arrangements.
• Personalisation approach — B2B journeys often emphasise customisation to meet the specific requirements of the purchasing organisation or target market segment. B2C customer journeys, on the other hand, may prioritise personalisation based on individualised experiences.
• Communication channels — B2B customer journeys typically involve multiple touchpoints across various channels, including direct sales interactions, professional networks, and industry-specific publications. B2C customer journeys rely heavily on digital channels such as websites, social media platforms, and online marketplaces.

What is the B2B customer journey map?

Simply put, the B2B customer journey map is a framework for capturing the customer experience. This visual representation illustrates customers’ pain points and their internal perception of the company throughout the business relationship. 

Source: apizee.com

These insights help the business identify areas to optimise to design and deliver more positive customer experiences.  

Mapping the B2B customer journey requires a business to step into the customer’s shoes to see how its processes impact its purchase decisions.

The customer journey map is a blueprint for the journey the customer takes. This means it should be comprehensive enough to cover all the important touchpoints — from initial awareness to post-sale.

Depending on the type of business relationship, customer journey maps should also cover the cessation of the relationship with the company. How a business handles this stage can be crucial to minimising churn and encouraging future relationships. 

Generally speaking, effective customer journey maps should include the following:

• A detailed flowchart of the customer journey showing the various interactions between the customer and the company
• Clearly outlined customer pain points or issues that may get in the way of a positive customer experience
• Identified areas where the company can take action to improve overall customer satisfaction 
• Details about what departments or people are responsible for moving the customer relationship forward at each touchpoint 
• Well-defined linkages between touchpoints
• The company’s performance at each touchpoint

Mapping the B2B customer journey gives businesses a powerful way to understand and cater to their customers effectively. 

Here are the key reasons to design a B2B customer journey map:

• Enhanced customer understanding —  A customer journey map provides valuable insights into the needs, motivations, pain points, and behaviours of your B2B customers. It helps you better understand their challenges, preferences, and decision-making processes.
• Strategic decision-making — A customer journey map helps businesses make data-driven decisions about their marketing, sales, and customer service strategies. It allows them to identify areas of improvement, optimise touchpoints, and align resources better to serve customers at each stage of their journey.
• Personalised experiences — A customer journey map enables a company to deliver tailored experiences to its B2B customers. This ultimately fosters stronger relationships and dramatically improves customer satisfaction.
• Alignment across teams — A customer journey map is a common reference point for different teams within an organisation. Marketing, sales, customer service, product development, and other departments can become more aligned and collaborative. This ensures consistent, cohesive customer experience across all touchpoints.
• Continuous improvement — Mapping the B2B customer journey is an iterative strategic process. It provides a framework for ongoing evaluation and optimisation of the customer experience to drive better business outcomes.

Key Stages of the B2B customer journey

The B2B customer journey typically consists of the following stages:

In this stage, the B2B vendor aims to raise awareness about what their business offers. The B2B customer, on the other hand,  becomes aware of a need or problem they want to address. For example, the company might be planning to attend an industry event in another state. So one of the first things they’ll need to sort out is the transportation for their staff. 

Now they’re aware of the need, so they start researching potential solutions and exploring available options.

As the name implies, this is where the customer “considers” their options. In the consideration stage, the B2B customer narrows their choices and evaluates different vendors or providers. 

Here, they delve deeper into the features and benefits of each option. They may compare the prices offered by the shortlisted vendors and consider payment options, flexibility, and customisation. At the end of the day, it’s about arriving at an informed decision about who they will purchase from.

Having narrowed down their options, it’s time for the B2B customer to decide what B2B vendor to contact to initiate the buying process. 

This is a pivotal moment in the B2B buyer journey. For one, it represents a successful conversion for the vendor, and is a sign that their lead nurturing methods are sound.

After the decision is made, the customer moves into the implementation stage. This involves the buying process, onboarding, and installation/configuration. 

Depending on the product or service being provided, this stage may also include special training for specific staff within the B2B customer’s organisation. Once everything is properly set up, the customer integrates the chosen solution into their existing business processes.

With the solution fully implemented, the customer enters the support and relationship management stage. For instance, they might require ongoing technical support or they might be assigned an account manager to handle post-purchase concerns and requests.

This is the B2C equivalent of customer loyalty. In this stage, the B2B customer evaluates their experience with the vendor and decides whether to continue the relationship. Additionally, there may be opportunities for upselling or expanding the scope of services provided to the customer.

It’s important to note that the B2B buyer journey is not strictly linear. This means it’s not uncommon for buyers to move back and forth between stages based on their specific needs and circumstances.

Touchpoints in B2B customer journey mapping

The customer journey mapping process includes several critical touchpoints that occur before, during, and after a sale. Touchpoints are the various customer interactions or moments of engagement with a company throughout the customer journey. 

Each one provides an opportunity for the company to leave an impression on the customer and ultimately impact their decision-making process. That’s why optimising touchpoints to deliver a consistent and personalised experience is essential in building strong relationships and fostering customer loyalty.

Source: salespanel.io

These touchpoints can occur through various channels, both online and offline, and are crucial in shaping customer experiences. 

Customer touchpoints can occur at different stages of the buying journey. Here are some examples:

• Industry events and conferences — These events are great for learning about new trends, technologies, and potential solutions.
• Online research — Conducting searches on search engines and exploring industry publications and social media communities are great ways to facilitate customer interactions.
• Word-of-mouth referrals — Seeking recommendations and feedback from colleagues, industry contacts, or trusted sources make for great customer touchpoints.
• Company website and landing pages — Visiting the company’s website and landing pages to explore detailed information about potential solutions.
• Product demonstrations or webinars — Participating in live or recorded demonstrations and webinars to gain insights into the functionality and benefits of the offerings.
• Case studies and success stories — Reviewing real-world examples and success stories that highlight how the product or service has helped other businesses.
• Consultations — Engaging in meetings or consultations with sales reps to discuss requirements and solutions.
• Proposal and pricing discussions —  Collaborating with the B2B vendor on contract terms and negotiating proposals that align with the B2B customer’s requirements.
• Reference checks — Seeking references from existing customers to validate the company’s reputation and track record.
• Vendor presentations or pitches — Attending presentations or pitches by vendors to assess their expertise and how well they understand the business’s challenges.
• Onboarding and training sessions — Participating in onboarding sessions and training programs to learn how to use the solution effectively.
• Technical support and guidance — Seeking technical support and advice during the implementation stage to resolve any issues that arise.
• Documentation and user manuals — Accessing comprehensive documentation, user manuals, and resources to support the implementation process and user adoption.
• Dedicated account managers or customer success representatives — A designated point of contact is great for nurturing current customers. 
• Helpdesk or support ticket systems — Utilising helpdesk or support ticket systems to log and track support requests, ensuring timely resolutions. This is a key part of modern B2B customer expectations and is a leading factor in increasing customer retention.
• Surveys and feedback mechanisms — Providing feedback through surveys or related mechanisms to help the vendor improve their offerings and sales process.
• Contract renewal discussions — Engaging in discussions with the B2B vendor regarding contract renewal terms and potential adjustments based on changing business needs.
• Cross-selling and upselling opportunities — Exploring opportunities to expand the relationship by considering additional vendor offerings.

Mapping the B2B buyer journey

Customer journey mapping requires a thoughtful approach to design truly innovative experiences tailored to the B2B context. 

It’s important to look for common pitfalls that typically accompany a journey mapping exercise. 

Some businesses make the mistake of overgeneralising the buyer’s journey. This results in them creating a one-size-fits-all customer journey map that doesn’t account for the unique needs of different customer segments. 

Another common mistake is focusing primarily on the sales stages and neglecting other key touchpoints of the buyer journey. This makes it difficult to capture the nuances of the buying experience truly.

The ideal customer journey map takes into account all the key stages of the journey with the view to achieving repeat business. It must also contain all the major elements necessary to improve customer touchpoints.

Check out the B2B customer journey map template below for an idea of the mapping process. 

Source: slideteam.net

Here are some techniques you can use to map the B2B customer journey:

Start by developing detailed user personas that represent your target B2B customers. The most effective way to create personas is first to identify the pain points, motivations, and decision-making criteria of various customer segments. 

This helps you understand their needs and tailor the customer journey map accordingly.

Engaging in one-on-one interviews with existing customers is a surefire way to gather insights about their experiences and interactions with your company.  You can also collect customer feedback data through the usual tools — customer satisfaction surveys, feedback forms, focus groups, etc. This helps identify areas of improvement and shape the customer journey map.

Leverage data analytics tools to analyse customer behaviour, engagement metrics , conversion rates, and customer journey progression. This data provides a quantitative understanding of the customer journey and helps identify bottlenecks or areas of improvement.

Involving your sales and customer service teams in the B2B customer journey mapping process is important. They have valuable insights into customer interactions and can provide detailed accounts of the pain points at each journey stage. 

Additionally, this collaboration can help buoy your marketing efforts and drive quicker outcomes.

Conduct workshops involving cross-functional teams from all relevant departments. Encourage brainstorming and collaboration to gain different perspectives.

Study the customer journeys of your competitors in the B2B space. Identify areas where they excel or fall short and use that knowledge to differentiate your own customer journey mapping. 

Keep in mind that the B2B customer journey is not static, so regularly review your customer journey map. There will always be new customer insights, market trends, and changing customer expectations to incorporate down the line. This ensures your customer journey map remains accurate and relevant.

Mapping the B2B customer journey is an essential practice for businesses seeking to understand and optimise their interactions with customers. By comprehensively mapping the key stages and touchpoints, businesses can gain valuable insights into customer behaviour, preferences, and pain points. 

Understanding the B2B customer journey enables companies to align their efforts to deliver a seamless and satisfying experience at every touchpoint. Ultimately, an effective B2B customer journey map serves as a roadmap for success, guiding businesses towards delivering exceptional experiences.

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What You’re Getting Wrong About Customer Journeys

• Ahir Gopaldas
• Anton Siebert

Companies often believe they should make their customers’ experiences as effortless and predictable as possible. But the authors’ research shows that this approach is overly simplistic—and can even backfire. While in some instances (say, watching movies on Netflix) customers want their journeys to be easy and familiar, in others (working out on a Peloton bike or playing World of Warcraft) they want to be challenged or surprised.

This article outlines four kinds of journeys: Routines are effortless and predictable and are suited to utilitarian products. Joyrides are effortless and unpredictable and work with products that deliver an on-demand thrill. Treks are effortful and predictable and are associated with products that help people achieve challenging long-term goals. Odysseys are effortful and unpredictable and are perfect for products that facilitate customers’ passion projects.

Each type of journey has its own design principles. Routines should offer consistent touchpoints in familiar sequences; joyrides, endlessly varied moments of delight. Treks require goal-posting (breaking big objectives down into small ones), and odysseys, substantive variation and journey tracking.

They shouldn’t always be effortless or predictable.

Idea in Brief

The context.

Marketing experts agree that the best way to keep your customers coming back for more is by facilitating a compelling series of experiences called a customer journey.

The Problem

Most experts promote an effortless and predictable journey—or a routine—as the gold standard. In many instances, that’s a mistake.

The Solution

Companies can keep customers engaged with not just routines but also joyrides, treks, and odysseys. All four types of journeys can help companies achieve long-term success in the marketplace.

Most marketing experts agree that it’s not enough to give customers a satisfying initial experience with a product. Instead, product managers must offer them a compelling series of experiences—a customer journey —to keep them coming back for more. The design of customer journeys is the new marketing battleground.

• AG Ahir Gopaldas is an associate professor of marketing and currently holds the Robert B. McKeon Endowed Chair in Business at Fordham University.
• AS Anton Siebert is a lecturer in marketing at Lancaster University in Leipzig.

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Vinayak Mahtani is the CEO and co-founder of bnbme Holiday Homes.

Starting a startup can be quite a journey and definitely is not for the faint of heart. It takes a combination of passion, resilience and audacity to dive into the entrepreneurial world and chase an idea or a solution that is missing in society. As a founder myself, I've seen firsthand how startups can be like a roller coaster—with peaks of success and valleys filled with challenges. To enjoy the ride, you need to be able to adapt and learn from setbacks so you can evolve from every twist and turn.

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At my company, we have always emphasized developing the company's vision, which evolved from managing one property to managing over 100 properties as a multinational startup based in Dubai. What helped me define our vision was looking at the problem at hand and thinking about how I could see my business solving that specific problem. From there, we added our values and the result became the vision of the company. This vision is present in all aspects of the business—in our daily discussions, as well as in the key performance indicators we use to measure success.

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Personally, I built strong personal relationships by being transparent about our business model and seeking feedback. By asking customers about their timing preferences and areas where we could improve, it made them feel like a stakeholder in the business.

The path to entrepreneurship is not a straight road. Instead of worrying about the destination, embrace the journey. Often one wrong route is not a dead end but an opportunity that leads to experiences that add value on your way to the final destination. Entrepreneurship is all about learning from one's mistakes and taking a nontraditional approach to establishing the business. At my company, we have always believed in embracing every culture and experience we have encountered—I believe that has set us apart and it can help you, too.

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• Here's a photographic journey through her career, her many eras, and her blockbuster tours.

In the 18 years since Taylor Swift released her first album, she's been a country star, a pop star, and a voice of a generation.

She's a four-time album of the year winner, a billionaire, and the first person with a tour grossing $1 billion . She also rocked the music industry when she decided to re-record her first five albums so she'd own the rights to her own music.

Plus, her 11th album, " The Tortured Poets Department ," is set for a massive debut on the charts after it was released on Friday.

But she wasn't always this juggernaut. Here's a look at her impressive career, from her 2006 debut to her 2024 superstardom.

Taylor Swift released her self-titled debut album in 2006. At the time, there was no telling that this 16-year-old country singer would become one of the most iconic musicians in history.

But by May 2007, Swift was already playing to large crowds. At the time, her aesthetic consisted of flowy dresses, acoustic guitar, curly hair, and cowboy boots.

Her guitar has been a constant companion from 2007 to 2024.

Swift's debut single was "Tim McGraw," named, of course, after the country star. In May 2007, she performed the song to him and his wife, Faith Hill, at the Academy of Country Music Awards.

An EP, “Beautiful Eyes,” was released in July 2008, just two months after she performed at Stagecoach Music Festival — essentially, country music's Coachella.

Even as her star was rising, Swift made time to take selfies with fans — on digital cameras!

By August 2009, her second album "Fearless" had been released and she was headlining Madison Square Garden.

A turning point in her career came during the MTV Video Music Awards in September 2009, when Kanye West interrupted her acceptance speech to declare Beyoncé deserved the award.

Source: Business Insider

In December, she performed with one of her then-musical idols, John Mayer. The two would go on to briefly date, inspiring her song "Dear John."

At the 2010 Grammys, Swift performed with Stevie Nicks — 14 years later, Swift referenced their connection in the song "Clara Bow."

Later that night, the "You Belong With Me" singer was gobsmacked to win album of the year. She'd later write about this night in "Long Live."

Her third album, "Speak Now," was released in October 2010. The world tour began in February 2011.

It sold over 1 million copies in its first week, the highest single-week sales for a female country artist. She also became the first female artist to have 11 songs on the Hot 100 simultaneously.

Source: Los Angeles Times

She continued to collaborate with musical legends. She brought James Taylor out at her Madison Square Garden show in November 2011.

In 2012, she made her first jump away from country music to more straightforward pop. The cowboy boots were nowhere to be found.

The debut single from her fourth album, "Red," called "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," became her first No. 1 on the Hot 100.

As her musical style changed, so did her style. She traded flowing dresses and cowboy boots for form-fitting dresses and high heels; gone was the curly hair, traded for sleek straight tresses.

The Red Tour grossed $150.2 million, making it the highest-grossing country tour ever when it ended in 2014.

Source: Billboard

She became the first female solo artist in 20 years to perform a stadium tour in Australia. The last female artist to do it was Madonna in 1993.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

In August 2014, she left behind country with the song "Shake It Off," a pure pop song.

Later that year, she performed at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show beside then-BFF Karlie Kloss.

"1989," Swift's fifth album, remains a high point of her career. It elevated Swift to pop-icon status and spawned three No. 1 hits and two more top-10 singles.

It was also the era of her "squad." People are still captivated by who is in Swift’s inner circle.

To top off the "1989" era, she won her second album of the year Grammy in February 2016.

Her bleached blonde era — known as "Bleachella," since she debuted it at Coachella in 2016 — showed that people were obsessed with her every move.

But by July 2016, Swift had vanished. Her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West had resurfaced, with many on social media turning against her.

In 2017, she cleared her social media and told us: "There will be no explanation, just reputation." Her sixth album, "Reputation," was released in November.

"Reputation" brought a new dark and gritty aesthetic. But the old Taylor, who loves interacting with her fans, was still in there.

The Reputation Stadium Tour was her first all-stadium tour. Upon its completion in November 2018, it grossed $345.7 million, making it the highest-grossing North American tour ever.

Source: Forbes

In a savvy move, she reclaimed the snake imagery that had been used against her by critics.

But after her two years of all-black edginess, 2019 brought a complete aesthetic shift.

Her seventh album, "Lover," which was released in August 2019, is full of love songs, pastel rainbows, and bubblegum pop.

"Lover" was her sixth consecutive No. 1 album and the best-selling album of 2019. Her concerts for the album were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In July 2020, Swift surprised fans with her eighth album, "Folklore." It would go on to win album of the year — she was the first woman ever to win three times.

After a seven-year hiatus, she returned to her country roots. She performed the song "Betty" at the 2020 Academy of Country Music Awards.

In November 2021, Swift released the 10-minute version of her song "All Too Well" from 2012. She also directed an accompanying short film starring Dylan O'Brien and Sadie Sink.

"Red (Taylor’s Version)," her re-recorded version of the 2012 album "Red" was a huge hit. "All Too Well (10-Minute Version)" became the longest No. 1 song in the chart's history.

But just re-recording wasn't enough for Swift. In August 2022, she announced her 10th album, "Midnights," which became yet another hit.

The year 2023 was the year of Swift, as she embarked on her globe-spanning Eras Tour. The setlist pays homage to her career. She brought out the gold fringe for the "Fearless" set.

Since "Lover" never got a tour of its own, it kicks off the show. Four years after its release, Swifties got "Cruel Summer" to the top of the Hot 100.

During her "Speak Now" set, she brings back her koi-fish guitar and the purple dresses.

During the "Red" set, she interacts with some of her youngest fans.

In the "1989" portion, we get taken back in time to when Swift loved a two-piece set.

The "Reputation" era might be long gone, but the snakes are back for this portion of the show.

She also pays homage to the woodsy, cottage-core vibes of "Folklore" and its sister album, "Evermore."

Swift ends the night with the "Midnights" set, which spawned two of her two most recent hits, "Karma" and "Anti-Hero."

The Eras Tour has become a global phenomenon. It's the first tour to ever surpass $1 billion in revenue ... and it's not over yet.

In February 2024, Swift became the first artist to win album of the year four times when she won for "Midnights." That night, she announced her 11th album, "The Tortured Poets Department."

On its release, Swift surprised fans by announcing "TTPD" is a double album, and she dropped 15 more songs. It's set to be, once again, huge.

In 18 years, Swift has released 11 albums, four re-records, won 14 Grammys, had 11 No. 1 hits, become a billionaire, and broken countless records. She's showing no sign of slowing down.

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