What is Customer Journey Mapping?
A user or customer journey is the journey your user takes to get from one place to another on your site. But it can also offer a lot more insight than this and actually plot the whole life-cycle of a customer’s relationship with your organisation from their first contact through all their other interfaces with your site and business.
Customer journey mapping is plotting how users interact with your site and business organisation but it also potentially predicts how they could interact and where their experience might be improved or facilitated. This process can be applied to existing sites or products and to new ones in development and design phases. A standard single journey is typically a fairly small number of steps but it could, theoretically, be any number or length and continue for any period of time. It will depend on the context of your current need how this is defined and used and each small passage contributes to the overall customer journey experience.
When do you need a customer journey map?
Customer journey maps can be useful in a number of situations:
- When designing products where pathways and taxonomy are critical to success;
- When testing a new (or existing/updated) site or product;
- When seeking to gain customer insights for new or improved products/services;
- When looking to define and develop functionality for a project;
- When explaining new products or products in development to stakeholders and management
Why should you use a customer journey map?
- It can aid a designer/developer in understanding customer thinking and actions in the context of a new or existing product or service;
- It provides an overview of customer experience and can identify gaps, inefficiencies, frustration and other potentially damaging elements in your product or site;
- It encourages user-oriented thinking throughout the process and organisation;
- It ensures that the end-user is kept in sight and mind when developing if every decision is mapped onto the customer journey;
- It can provide cohesion and accountability throughout an organisation by providing a shared vision and assigning responsibilities for improvement and modification of the journey.
In a world of ever-widening choice and information you need to put the user at the heart of any strategy. The customer journey map is a way of making sure this happens and that the customer is identified, understood and catered for in any development your business undertakes. If you are interested in learning more about this invaluable tool why not ring us on +44(0)800 0246247 or email us at hello@ux247.com
[…] Customer journeys can be as simple as getting from point A to point B on your website or app, or it could be the entire experience from finding out about your product to committing to a purchase or other valuable interaction. […]