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What Is a User Journey? Here’s The Whats, Whys & Hows of User Journeys

  • 8 min read
  • October 3, 2024
What Is a User Journey? Here’s The Whats, Whys & Hows of User Journeys

Understanding your users is key to delivering a seamless experience on your website or in your app. One of the most powerful tools for gaining this insight is mapping each user journey. 

A user journey map will provide you with a visual representation of the steps a user takes when interacting with your website or app. This will help you see things from their perspective. With this information, you can identify pain points, opportunities, and areas for improvement within your UX (user experience) and website design.

In this guide, we’ll break down the process of creating effective user journey maps, ensuring your website design delivers an intuitive, user-centric experience.

What is a User Journey?

A user journey map is a visualisation that outlines the path a customer takes to complete a task. A user journey begins at discovery and takes you all the way through to conversion or ongoing engagement. It highlights not only the actions a user takes, but their emotions, pain points, and motivations at each step. A user journey helps you understand the entire user experience of your app or website design and allows you to make data-driven decisions for improvements.

What are the Different Types of User Journeys?

On websites there are typically two user journeys:

  1. A UX User Journey. This focuses on the specific journey of a user through your app or website. Mapping this journey allows you to gain insights into how your different target users are interacting with your site/app and what they might be finding helpful or frustrating. In turn, this helps you design in a simpler and more optimal way. 
  2. An eCommerce (or Sales) User Journey. This journey focuses on a buyer’s journey through the sales funnel. By mapping this journey, this will show you where buyer’s typically hesitate, drop-off or bounce during the basket to check-out process on your website or app.

What Can a User Journey Reveal?

User journey maps provide clarity on how users interact with your app, website and brand across multiple touch points. They help you:

  1. Identify pain points in the user experience.
  2. Understand user motivations at each stage of their website visit.
  3. Align your team around a common vision of the user experience.
  4. Improve conversions by resolving frustrations.
  5. Optimise site touchpoints to enhance user satisfaction and streamline funnels like the checkout process.

For your team, mapping your user journeys can also help you create a shared-vision for the business and foster a user-centric mentality. This outlook will help you on the road to achieving your business goals.

KIJO’s 7 Step Guide to Creating a User Journey Map

1. Define Clear Objectives

Before you start, it’s essential to clarify what you want to achieve. Ask yourself:

  • What specific aspect of the user experience on your website are you mapping?
  • Are you focusing on a single target user’s journey through your website, or a broader journey like the checkout experience?

Your objectives should guide your journey map’s focus, whether it’s onboarding, checkout, or customer support experiences.

2. Gather User Data and Develop User Personas

To create an accurate journey map, you need a deep understanding of your users. A great way of doing this is to develop user personas. A user persona is a semi fictional person who is most likely to use your product or service, and access your website. Use both qualitative and quantitative research methods to develop yours, such as:

  • User interviews to understand motivations and emotions.
  • Surveys to gather insights from a broader audience.
  • Analytics to track user behaviours on your website or app.
  • Customer support data to identify common challenges or questions.

Then, create these personas. Each persona should have:

  • Demographics like age, location, occupation, etc.
  • Behaviour patterns like habits, preference and decision-making styles.
  • Goals and motivations for using your product or service.
  • Challenges they may encounter along the way.

Developing a user persona is inherently empathic. It puts your marketing team and/or UX designers in the shoes of the user themselves. The more data you have behind each of your user personas, the more precise your user journey maps will be.

Related Read: How to Create a User Persona

3. Map Out Touch Points

EAST STUFF's - a brand KIJO designed a website for - product pages displayed on two laptops placed on two circular plinths.

Touch points are the various ways users interact with your brand’s website or app. List every possible touch point your users might engage with on your website or app and categorise them by stages, such as:

  1. Awareness – How do users discover your brand’s website or app?
  2. Consideration – What steps do they take on the website/app to learn about your business offerings?
  3. Conversion – How do they make a purchase or complete a task on the website/app?
  4. Retention – What keeps them coming back to the website/app or engaging with it further?

By listing these touch points, you can ensure you’re delivering a seamless experience through your website/app.

4. Understand User Actions, Emotions & Pain Points

For each touchpoint, document the following:

  • User actions – What specific actions are users taking? Are they browsing, signing up, or making a purchase?
  • Emotions – How do users feel at each stage? Are they excited, confused, or frustrated?
  • Pain points – What challenges or barriers do they face? Are there areas where users drop-off, bounce or encounter difficulties?

Understanding both emotional and practical experiences your users have on your website or app will help you identify accurate areas for improvement.

5. Create the Visual User Journey Map

Now it’s time to visualise the user journey. Your map should clearly show:

  • The user persona(s).
  • The stages or steps in the journey.
  • The touchpoints and actions taken at each stage.
  • The emotions and pain points experienced along the way.

There’s no one-size-fits-all template, so feel free to tailor the map based on your objectives.

User Journey Examples – Exotics Care Online
KIJO's recently developed user journey for our client Exotics Care Online, as displayed on Figma software

We recently developed user journeys for our client Exotics Care Online; the UK’s first online veterinary service exclusively for exotics animals. This was a brand new company; this was their first ever website! So, we went through the process of identifying the main user persona of this new brand. This was “Clara Thorne”, a UK-based exotic pet owner. 

We identified “Clara’s” user persona. This included their goals and needs, their challenges, emotions and pain points, and thus the touch points that should appear on the website to help them achieve their goals. This then led us to creating a sitemap that made sense to “Clara’s” user  needs.

6. Identify Opportunities for Improvement

With your journey map in hand, review the entire flow to identify areas for enhancement. Questions to ask include:

  • Where are users experiencing frustration or dropping off?
  • Are there unnecessary steps in the journey that could be simplified?
  • Can we offer more support or better content at certain touchpoints?
  • How can we improve the emotional experience for the user throughout?

Your map should guide actionable improvements that lead to a smoother, more satisfying user experience across your website design and/or app.

7. Validate & Iterate

User journeys can evolve as your business grows, your product/service line expands and customer needs shift. After implementing changes, it’s crucial to test them. 

An example of a heat map analytical tool being used on KIJO's client's website: Specialist Blinds

Gather direct feedback from users, utilise tools like heatmaps, analyse performance metrics, and revisit the user journey map periodically. This way you can ensure it still reflects the most current user experience.

User Journey Best Practices

When developing user journeys, there are some best practices to keep in mind. 

  • Involve cross-functional teams – User journey maps affect multiple departments (marketing, product, customer support etc.). Involving diverse perspectives ensures all aspects of the user experience are considered.
  • Focus on the user’s point of view – Avoid mapping based solely on internal processes. The goal is to reflect the user’s experience, not your company’s workflow.
  • Prioritise pain points – Start addressing the most significant pain points first. These often offer the biggest wins in improving the user journey.
  • Keep it simple – A user journey map should be easy to follow. Avoid overcomplicating it with too much detail, especially in initial drafts.

Empower Your Business with User Journey Maps

Creating a user journey map is a powerful way to understand and enhance your website users experience. By taking a step-by-step approach — gathering data, identifying user personas, mapping touchpoints, and visualising the journey — you’ll uncover actionable insights that can transform your website’s usability.

Investing time in this process helps you create a user-centric product or service, driving higher user satisfaction, loyalty, and in turn, success. Start building your user journey maps today, and allow them to help you deliver more meaningful, impactful experiences across your website and app.

If you think your website could do with an expert eye regarding its user journeys, personas and design, contact the KIJO team today. 

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