Learn everything about user journey maps, including what they are, their types, and what they should cover. Also, find out how to create them effectively, understand their benefits, and explore the best tools for creating them.
User journey maps, also known as customer journey maps are tools for creating better customer experiences, whether you’re designing an app or a website. They visually represent your knowledge of potential users and their experiences, eventually helping you empathize with your customers and gain insights to improve your current offerings.
In this comprehensive guide, we will explain what exactly a user journey map is, and highlight its purpose, types, and all it includes. We will also walk you through the steps to create a user journey map, uncover its benefits, explore the best tools, and answer the most frequently asked questions about them.
Contents:
- What Is a User Journey Map?
- What Are the Various Types of User Journey Maps?
- What All Should a User Journey Map Cover?
- How To Create a User Journey Map?
- Benefits of User Journey Mapping
- 10 Best (Free & Paid) User Journey Mapping Tools
- FAQs
- In Conclusion
What Is a User Journey Map?
A user journey map is a visual representation that outlines the series of steps a customer takes to achieve a specific goal. It covers the customer’s experience while interacting with a brand’s app or website. User journey maps are a beneficial tool for understanding user interactions, pain points, and experiences across different touchpoints and channels. This tool helps brands understand user behavior, identify opportunities for improvement, and optimize the user experience (UX).
What Is the Purpose of Creating a User Journey Map?
As UX designers, it is important to be able to empathize with customers and create products that address their pain points and ensure a great experience. When developing a user journey map, the purpose is to solve a problem from a user’s perspective. There are several ways in which these maps can be helpful. Read on to know some of them:
- User journey maps can identify gaps in your product's user experience. These maps provide insight into how a user may think or feel while interacting with your product. They help you understand the user’s goals and identify challenges that you might not have considered.
- Creating user journey maps provides team members and stakeholders with a clearer idea of how users engage with the app or the website. This guides them during the product development process and helps them avoid potential misalignments and assumptions.
- User journey maps provide valuable insights into a user's thoughts and emotions while interacting with your product. By mapping out user interactions and their emotions, you may notice design flaws or discover opportunities to make informed decisions about product features, marketing strategies, and customer support.
What Are the Various Types of User Journey Maps?
By understanding and learning about various types of user journey maps, you can design your products more efficiently. While there isn’t a one-size-fits-all template for a user journey maps, here are a few that are commonly used:
- A UX journey map zeroes in on the user experience of a specific product, often an app or website, and helps understand how customers engage with your software. This highlights the benefits as well as obstacles the user may experience and enables the creation of simpler and more user-friendly interfaces.
- A sales journey map traces the buyer’s journey through key stages: awareness, consideration, and decision. Marketing teams can leverage these maps to analyze customer interactions with a brand across various communication channels, ultimately aiming to maximize sales.
- A customer experience journey map illustrates the steps your customers will take while engaging with your product, be it an app or a website. The greater the number of touchpoints, the more complex yet essential this map becomes. It provides a comprehensive overview of the customer-brand relationship over time. There are two main types:
- Current-State Customer Journey Map: Examines current customer interactions, pinpointing areas for improvement.
- Future-State Customer Journey Map: Imagines new customer experiences, pushing innovation by predicting how interactions could evolve.
What Should a User Journey Map Cover?
Image Courtesy: Nielsen Norman Group
When you begin mapping user journeys, you’ll identify ways to customize your maps according to your company’s vision, product, and target audience. A quick search for user journey maps online will give you various creative examples to take inspiration from. However, upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that many of these maps share several common elements. Let’s take a close look at them.
When mapping user journeys, it’s essential to customize your maps according to your company’s vision, product, and target audience. A quick search for user journey maps online will give you creative examples to take inspiration from. Upon closer inspection, you’ll notice that many of these maps share several common elements. Let’s take a close look at the must-haves within a user journey map:
User Persona—This usually represents the target audience and provides information about their goals, needs, pain points, and points of view.
Environment or Scenario—This describes the user interactions you’re trying to map out through case studies about user behavior.
Stages of the journey—This explains the various high-level stages of the user journey.
User Actions—These are insights into the actions taken by users in different stages of their journey.
User emotions and mindsets—This describes the users' emotions and thoughts as they move through various stages of the journey.
Opportunities— This helps you connect with your users, understand their problems on a deeper level, and identify gaps that can improve the UX of your product.
Internal ownership details— This ensures every team member knows their responsibilities for making the necessary changes.
Incorporating all of these elements into your user journey maps will provide a comprehensive view of the user experience, helping you identify opportunities for improvement and ensure everyone in your team is aligned with their responsibilities.
How To Create a User Journey Map?
Now that we’ve established the purpose of a user journey map and what all it covers, let’s understand the steps involved in creating one that accurately reflects the user experience and provides valuable insights.
Define Your Goals
Before creating a user journey map, it is essential to define your goals. Determine what you want to achieve. Are you trying to make a section of your app more user-friendly, or are you mapping the journey of a new target audience? Define who the map is for. Identifying your goals—whether it is understanding pain points, improving the user experience, or increasing conversation rates—is integral.
Conduct User Research
Gather data through interviews, surveys, and analytics to learn about user behaviour and experiences. Access all the interactions users have had with your product or service, from initial contact to post-purchase.
Create User Personas
While creating user personas, you need to keep in mind that not all customers will have the exact needs. Select a particular set of users based on your research, create a persona for each unique segment, and build detailed profiles of them based on your research. Use interviews, demographics, group discussions, and user feedback to develop these personas.
Define Expectations and Pain Points
Once you have a clearer understanding of your target audience, spend some time to consider their needs and desires. Identify the problem your product or service can resolve for them. Consider their expectations, potential issues they might encounter, and any aspects of your product that could cause frustration.
List Touchpoints and Communication Channels
A touchpoint refers to any interaction between a user and a product or business. These touchpoints can exist across various channels, such as apps, websites, social media channels, advertisements, or face-to-face communications. Compile a comprehensive list of all the touchpoints and communication channels you’ve defined in the scenario.
Map the User Journey
After collecting the relevant data, the next step is to visualize this information in the form of a map. Your map could be a simple timeline or a highly detailed storyboard with flowcharts and diagrams that visually display the various phases. You could also use a low-tech approach with sticky notes on a whiteboard or use a digital medium with an Excel spreadsheet or software program. Some of the common UX tools that offer journey mapping features include Figma, Sketch, and Adobe XD. Ensure the map is easy to understand and communicates the key insights effectively.
Validate and Improve the Map
Experience the user journey firsthand to ensure its accuracy. Share them with stakeholders across the organization, conduct usability tests, analyze data, and gather user feedback to confirm that your map accurately reflects the user experience. Continuously refine and update the map as you identify any inconsistencies.
Image Courtesy: Visual Paradigm
Benefits of User Journey Mapping
Now that we’ve walked you through the step-by-step process of creating a user journey map, let’s take a closer look at the reasons why you should consider using these maps.
Decoding User Perspective
User journey maps need to be approached with empathy to be able to read the users’ minds and comprehend their needs, difficulties, and motivations behind their actions. It creates a deeper understanding of why users behave or feel the way they do. These insights often challenge product designers to bridge the gap between what is feasible and what needs to be done.
Aligned Team Understanding
When diverse teams, such as UX designers, product, sales, marketing, customer service, and management, come together with their distinct perspectives, it helps to understand how they interact with the customer. This collective feedback aligns everyone towards a common goal and accelerates the process of solving customer experience issues.
Identifying Blind Spots and Opportunities
Creating a user journey map provides a structured overview of how well your product meets user needs and identifies areas that are unresolved or addressed by other tools. It highlights crucial moments that may not receive enough attention otherwise, disclosing opportunities and blind spots to focus on for future improvements.
Creating Personalised Experiences
Understanding the nuances of your user's journey allows you to customize experiences, ensuring each interaction feels deeply personalized. This builds a strong customer relationship based on loyalty.
Strategic Resource Allocation
Journey mapping insights enable you to pinpoint exactly where to allocate your time, energy, and budget for maximum impact on customer satisfaction and business growth. Instead of overspending on any of your resources, you can strategically invest them where they will have the most significant impact.
Upgrading Customer Experience
Meeting customer expectations is integral, but consistently exceeding them is what sets your brand apart. By identifying potential issues, you can resolve your customer’s pain points and also convert good interactions into exceptional ones. This approach creates an engaging relationship and naturally turns customers into advocates for your brand. It also drives word-of-mouth referrals, improving your brand’s reputation and growth.
Get Ahead of Your Competitors
Mapping helps you identify opportunities to differentiate your brand by providing additional value to your customers. These insights ensure your brand remains relevant, allowing you to adapt your product and business model as customer needs evolve. In a market, where building a great product is no longer enough, this adaptability gives you an edge over your competitors.
10 Best (Free & Paid) User Journey Mapping Tools That You Must Try
User journey mapping tools help you visualize the journey using diagrams, flow charts, and other advanced visual aids. Here’s a curated list of some of the most popular free & paid tools in the market:
1. Lucidchart
Image Courtesy: Lucidchart
Lucidchart is a diagramming tool, but it's flexible enough to capture detailed user journey maps. With customizable templates, formatting options, and shape libraries, this tool allows you to visualize and share your insights. This helps you target specific personas, improve customer engagement, and double down on your organization’s revenue. The free plan allows for up to 3 documents, while the paid plan offers unlimited documents and advanced features.
Available on: Web browser
Price:
- Individual plan starts at $7.95/user /month
- Team plan starts at $9/user/month
2. Miro
Image Courtesy: The Product Manager
Miro is a versatile online collaborative whiteboard platform that offers a wide range of templates, including several for user journey mapping. Its strength lies in its flexibility and real-time collaboration features. Users can add sticky notes, images, and links to their journey maps. The free plan allows for 3 editable boards, while the paid plans offer unlimited boards and advanced features like custom templates and integrations.
Available on: Web browser
Price:
- Paid plan costs anywhere between $8-16/month for teams and comes with unlimited features
3. Figma
Image Courtesy: Captain Design
Figma is a powerful collaborative design tool that can be used for creating user journey maps. It comes with a range of features and allows all the design work to happen in a single workspace, making the process convenient. Its real-time collaborative feature makes it easy for multiple team members to access, edit, and comment on journey maps. The free plan allows for up to 3 projects and 2 editors, while the paid plan offers unlimited projects and features.
Available on: Web browser, Windows, macOS, and Linux
Price:
- Premium plan comes free for students and costs $12/month/editor with unlimited projects
4. Draw.io
Image Courtesy: Draw.io
Draw.io is a free, open-source diagramming tool that helps create journey maps.
It offers a good collection of templates and shapes for those looking to work on visuals, flowcharts, and network diagrams. It is browser-based, doesn’t require you to register or log in, and can be integrated with various storage solutions like Google Drive and OneDrive. It enables you to save designs wherever you want and ensures the tool doesn’t have any access to your designs, giving complete data ownership and privacy.
Available on: Web browser
Price: Free
5. UXPressia
Image Courtesy: UXPressia
UXPressia is specifically designed for customer experience professionals. It provides templates for customer journey maps, impact maps, and personas. The tool allows for the creation of interactive, shareable journey maps with multiple scenarios. It also offers features like touchpoint analysis and emotional journey tracking. The free plan is limited to one project, while paid plans offer more projects and collaboration features.
Available on: Web browser, Windows, macOS, Android, and Linux
Price:
- Starter plan begins at $16/user /month
- Pro plan starts at $9/user/month
6. Custellence
Image Courtesy: Custellence
Custellence is a dedicated user journey mapping tool. It allows for the creation of multi-lane journey maps and offers features like journey metric tracking and touchpoint management. The tool enables users to effortlessly create and share user journey maps with their team in real-time, encouraging engagement and cross-functional collaboration. Its intuitive interface allows team members to quickly adapt and learn the tool. Custellence provides a flexible map structure, a unique image collection, and much more, making it a powerful asset for creating user journeys.
Available on: Web browser, Windows, macOS, and Linux
Price:
- Paid plan starts at $625/month and comes with a 30-day free trial
7. Flowmapp
Image Courtesy: Flowmapp
Flowmapp is a UX planning platform that includes tools for sitemaps, user flows, and journey maps. Its journey mapping tool allows for the creation of detailed, multi-touchpoint customer journeys. Flowmapp offers features like templates, import/export options, and real-time commenting for creating personas and user stories. The free plan allows for 2 active projects, while paid plans offer more projects and collaboration features.
Available on: Web browser
Price:
- Paid plan starts at $15/month or $99/year
8. Smaply
Image Courtesy: Smaply
Smaply focuses exclusively on journey mapping, persona creation, and stakeholder mapping. It offers a structured approach to journey mapping with predefined sections for touchpoints, channels, and emotional journeys. Smaply is particularly useful for teams that need to create and manage multiple journey maps and personas. It doesn't offer a free plan but provides a 14-day free trial.
Available on: Web browser, Windows, macOS, and Linux
Price:
- Paid plan starts at $20/user/month
9. Microsoft Visio
Image Courtesy: Template.net
Microsoft Visio is a powerful diagramming tool that helps create diverse diagrams and flowcharts for journey mapping. This visualization tool enables users to create both simple and complex customer data diagrams using a wide array of built-in shapes, objects, and templates. Designed to simplify the diagramming process, Visio makes customer journey mapping straightforward and efficient. As a Microsoft product, it integrates well with other MS tools and is particularly useful for organizations already using the Microsft ecosystem. It's available as part of some Microsoft 365 plans or as a standalone product.
Available on: Web browser, Windows, and macOS
Price:
- Plan 1 starts at $5/user/month
- Plan 2 starts at $15/user/month
10. Visual Paradigm
Image Courtesy: Visual Paradigm
Visual Paradigm is a customer journey mapping and development tool that streamlines UX design and automates the information acquisition process. It allows you to zoom in on specific customer journeys within particular channels, providing deep insights that can help improve customer retention and boost conversion rates. Additionally, it offers a range of project tools, making it a comprehensive solution for improving customer experience and project management.
Available on: Web browser, Windows, macOS and Linux
Price:
- An enterprise package starts at $1999
- Modeller plan starts at $99
- Standard plan starts at $349
- Professional plan starts at $799
FAQs About User Journey Maps
Read on for the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about user journey maps.
1. What are the four stages of journey mapping?
The four stages of journey mapping are:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
- Retention
2. What is the benefit of user journey mapping?
User journey mapping provides a visual representation of a customer’s experience with a product or a service. It helps organizations understand customer needs and pain points, in turn identifying areas for improvement, streamlining processes, and enhancing overall customer satisfaction. By highlighting touchpoints and emotions at each stage, journey mapping enables organizations to create more empathetic as well as user-centric designs and strategies. Ultimately, it leads to better decision-making, improved customer retention, and increased business efficiency.
3. What is the difference between user journey map and experience map?
User journey maps and experience maps are both visualisation tools for customer experience design, but they differ in scope and focus.
User journey maps and experience maps are both visualization tools for customer experience design, but they differ in scope and focus. User journey maps are specific to a particular user persona based on a single interaction, and detail steps, thoughts, and emotions that are important to a product or service. In contrast, experience maps are broader, covering multiple user types and representing the overall experience with a brand or organization across various touchpoints and channels.
While user journey maps provide a targeted view, experience maps offer a comprehensive overview of all potential customer interactions. The choice between which one to use depends on the project's goals and the required level of detail.
Conclusion
We hope that our guide has helped you decode the workings of user journey maps and inspired you to create them with confidence. Whether you’re looking to upskill as a UX designer or collaborating with a design team, user journey maps can be highly beneficial for improving customer experiences.
If you are interested in learning how user journey maps are integrated into the actual design process, we highly recommend checking out this UX Design project by AND learner Abhishekh Singh.
For further information, here are some additional resources you can refer to:
- Watch this session by Shiva Viswanathan, Design Head of Ogilvy Pennywise, and Naman Singh, Product Experience Designer at RED.
- Talk to a course advisor to discuss how you can transform your career with one of our courses.
- Pursue our UX UI Design courses - all courses are taught through live, interactive classes by industry experts, and some even offer a Job Guarantee.
- Take advantage of our scholarship and funding options to overcome any financial hurdle on the path of your career transformation.
Note: All information and/or data from external sources is believed to be accurate as of the date of publication.
