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.
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.