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Getting started with customer journey maps

By December 14, 2022January 8th, 2025No Comments

Do you see your customers visiting your website only for them to leave without making a purchase after being lost in your product page? It’s frustrating when you are trying to navigate your customers from Point A to Point B but it just seems as if they are moving in circles!

Customer to product purchase navigation

Is there a solution to this predicament? Of course there is! It is time you create a customer journey map so that you can improve the quality of your customer experience and increase revenue.

 

What is a customer journey map?

Active campaign customer journey map example

(source by Active Campaign)

What are the benefits?

It may seem like a tedious process but it is an important step to understanding your customers and optimising your marketing strategy. By putting in the extra work to create your customer journey map you can:

  • Identify touchpoints that might negatively affect user flow
  • Identify saturated areas that can be better optimised
  • Gain an understanding of how different user personas move through the customer journey
  • Understand buyers expectations compared to their actual experience
  • Streamline the customer journey

94% of businesses state that having a customer journey map helped them develop newer products/services that match customer needs while another 91% claims that their maps drove sales.

Having a customer journey map does not only stop with increased revenue, it provides you with strategy and consistency to give your customers the best experience which leads to customer loyalty!

 

Where should you start?

 

1. Research a customer persona

What is the customer journey map all about? It’s about understanding the customer and their experiences when they engage with your brand. But what if you have hundreds, no, thousands of customers? How on earth will you be able to map out every single interaction for all of your customers?

The answer is simple: you don’t. You choose a persona.

That’s right. All you need is to select one of your customer personas and gather as much data about them. A persona is a representation of your average customer which offers a detailed demographic such as behavioural traits, gender, income, age, and more!

So how do you gather all this information/data? You need to start asking questions. Get customer feedback, conduct surveys of your existing customers or even speak to your employees! Focussing on 1 persona despite having several other types of customers can help expedite the research process. It will help save time for you to start implementing changes before doing other research.

If you are struggling to do this, use this free buyer persona template!

 

2. List all touchpoints

A touchpoint is when your customer comes into contact with your company and forms an opinion about your brand. It is important to note that each interaction has an impact. You can influence how consumers engage with your brand by understanding and managing your various touchpoints..

Touchpoints can help consumers see the real value in your product and your brand, or they can offer negative impact or perception. List down every touchpoint that your customer persona will go through so that you can map the current state of your brand!

So what are some examples of touchpoints? Customer touchpoints can be divided into 3 different categories: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.

For example, before your customer buys from your company, how are they interacting with your brand? This can include:

Pre-purcahse touchpoints

During the purchase process, your customers could be engaging with your brand with these:

During purchase touchpoints

The journey does not end after the customer buys the product. The goal is to turn them into loyal customers who will return again and again. Therefore, don’t forget about touchpoints after the purchase! This can include:

Post-purchase touchpoints

 

3. Map your current state

To be clear, there is no “right” way to format a customer journey map, you can make it in whatever way makes sense to you.. You can hand draw it, create graphs, or use pre-made templates online! With these tools, you can start to map out the current state of your customer journey. This will be done with your customer persona, all the touchpoints listed and their experiences with your brand.

The key is to be honest and draw up all the data from surveys that you have sent out to customers. It is helpful to receive input from stakeholders who can offer a different perspective to yours, which can allow a more extensive and informative customer journey map.

The reason for creating this map is so that you can identify gaps such as customer pain points. Is there a lot of friction when your customers enter your website? Are all your potential customers on Instagram when you do not own an Instagram account?

Having a map of your current customer journey can help you with the next step which is:

 

4. Map future states

Now that you have identified the weak points or saturated touchpoints in your current customer journey map, it is now time to create a map for the future. This one will be tailored to your customers based on their expectations and will provide an optimised user experience.

 

Conclusion

Customer journey mapping may appear to be a time-consuming task, but if done correctly, it can serve as a guide when developing your strategy and ensure that all of your marketing efforts are customer-centric. So what are you waiting for? Get mapping!