How to create a customer journey map that drives results

Creating a customer journey map is one of the most important things you can do to ensure higher conversions. Keep reading to find out how to make your journey map a treasure map— and how data can help you in the process…

Here’s a slightly concerning stat for you: Bounce rates rose to 49% in 2022., compared to 47% in 2021.

This might sound like an insignificant increase, but it actually means there are 4% fewer visitors progressing forward towards a possible conversion.

That’s far from ideal.

With nearly half of all traffic consisting of one-and-done visits, understanding your users’ needs and optimizing their experiences with your brand is pretty important.

But how can you create a truly holistic view of your customer experience and ensure their journey from A to B (via C, D, E and F, etc.) is seamless?

The answer: customer journey mapping.

What is customer journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping is a powerful tool that helps you understand your customers’ needs, pain points and experiences while identifying areas of improvement.

The process involves mapping out all your touchpoints and visualizing the entire customer journey, from awareness to purchase to post-purchase support.

This comprehensive view is key to optimizing your business KPIs—whether conversions or revenue—and making better, more informed decisions when it comes to your products, services and marketing strategy.

“A customer journey map is a very simple idea: a diagram that illustrates the steps your customer(s) go through in engaging with your company, whether it be a product, an online experience, retail experience, or a service, or any combination.” —Adam Richardson, Harvard Business Review

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!

4 easy steps to creating a journey map

We’ve outlined four simple steps you can take to start your customer journey mapping process. 

To drive results, follow these four steps:

1. Start by identifying your target customer. Who are you trying to reach with your product or service? Once you know your target customer, you can start to understand their needs and motivations.
2. Define key touchpoints. Where do customers interact with your brand? What steps do customers take to interact with your brand? This could include visiting your website, reading reviews, talking to customer support, and making a purchase on your app.
3. Map out your customer needs. For each touchpoint, identify your customer’s goals, needs, and pain points. What are they trying to achieve? What information do they need? What challenges are they facing?
4. Identify areas for improvement. Once you have a good understanding of the customer journey, you can identify areas for improvement. This could be as simple as making it easier for customers to find the information they need, streamlining the checkout process, or providing better customer support.

Once you’ve finished mapping your journey—depending on what industry you’re in—it could look something like this: 

Image source: Zapier

Things to think about during the process

Don’t forget this process takes time, effort and research—you can’t (and shouldn’t) do it alone. Here are a few key things to keep in mind:

• Use data throughout the process to inform your journey map. It’s important to use customer data and insights from website analytics (like Contentsquare), customer surveys, and social media to make informed decisions.
• Get input from your teams across your organization. Your journey map should be a collaborative effort. Get input from your sales, marketing, customer support and product development teams.
• Review and update your journey map regularly. Your customers are constantly evolving, so your journey map should be too. Ensure it’s accurate and up-to-date by reviewing it on a regular basis. 

In retail banking? Read this blog for our 7 steps to creating a retail banking customer journey map. 

The benefits of creating a journey map

Don’t get us wrong, breaking down your customer journey phase by phase is a laborious task but it’s crucial to ensuring the experience you provide is relevant and—most importantly—frictionless. 

If you’re still on the fence about journey mapping, here are three benefits to convince you to get started now:

You will (almost) instantly improve your customer experience

Journey mapping is an eye-opening process. Once you start digging into your customer journeys, you’re likely to identify areas of frustration pretty quickly. 

For retailers, for example, journey mapping is beneficial for pinpointing areas where they might be losing customers or where cart abandonment is high. 

And knowing where customers struggle will help you prioritize the right optimizations, improve your customers’ experience and even fuel ideas for your experimentation strategy. 

You can optimize your marketing campaigns

Marketers can use the insights from the journey mapping process to create targeted campaigns that promote products to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right way. 

Journey mapping can help you level-up your marketing strategy by helping you:

• Identify different customer segments 
• Coordinate efforts across multiple channels 
• Set specific objectives aligned with customer goals
• Improve campaign measurement

You can use it to develop new products and services

Journey mapping isn’t just for marketing teams. It can play a key role in identifying new product and service opportunities that meet the needs of your customers.

Product owners and dev teams that closely align product development to their customer journeys can reduce the risk of product failure and increase the likelihood of successful adoption. 

It’s also a great way to gather customer feedback, which can be invaluable in shaping new product development and identifying unmet needs or areas for improvement.

Create a journey map that drives results with Contentsquare

Qualitative surveys and interviews are extremely powerful tools for gathering insights for your journey map. 

But combine that with quantitative data and you’ll hit the sweet spot. 

Contentsquare’s Digital Experience Analytics platform provides qualitative and quantitative insights into your customers’ online behavior in real-time—and provides you with a range of tools to help you build a killer customer journey map, including:

• Customer Journey Analysis: See how users progress through your site and app, page by page, from entry to exit.
• Session Replay:  By watching real-time recordings of how your customers interact with your website you can instantly see where your customers struggle the most. 
• Zone-Based Heatmaps: Heatmaps allow you to see exactly where customers are clicking, scrolling and hovering on your website to understand what content is most engaging and where you might need to make improvements.
• Form Analytics: Discover how customers interact with your website’s forms and identify what’s working and where customers get stuck or abandon your forms.

Remember, journey mapping is not a one-time process. With Contentsquare you can create a comprehensive journey map and continuously improve on it—helping you stay agile and responsive to ever-changing customer needs.

Intuitive visualizations of your customers journey.

I want this product!