What is user journey mapping?

User journey is the route your potential customers take to reach your online content. As the foundation of good User Experience (UX), good UX can be the difference between a user staying on your site or leaving for a competitor. It is estimated that businesses lose 35% of sales due to bad UX. In this blog we will cover a step-by-step guide on how to identify your customer personas, map their various journeys onto your website and how to take that into consideration in your web design.

Identifying your customer personas.

Your first step in analysing your customer journey is to decide on your ideal customer personas. Depending on the nature of your business, the amount of personas you have will differ. Here are some questions to get you started forming your personas.

What are the specifics about your ideal customer? Gender, Age, Socio-economic status, Single/In a relationship, Homeowner, Family.
What is their job? (if relevant)
Is their job in a specific industry? (if relevant)
What are the challenges associated with that role? (if relevant)
What problems do they have that need to be solved?

What are your personas searching for?

Now you have gotten to know your personas, what drives them to your site? By identifying the challenges your personas face, you can then begin to understand what they might be searching to find your brand. For example, Person A has broken the door handle in their bathroom, they search ‘How to fix a door handle’, your blog ‘Fixing a door handle in less than 10 minutes’ appears in the search results and they click. Upon reading the blog they realise they will need to purchase a new door handle, embedded into your blog is a link to your door handles, they browse their options, they become a customer.

Multiple ways in.

Search is changing - social media is quickly becoming a search engine for many. 40% of Gen Z searchers turn to TikTok or Instagram before performing a traditional Google Search. If Gen Z are one of your personas it’s important to consider this in your user journey mapping and overall strategy. For your web presence, this means your website's mobile UX experience needs to be just as slick as on desktop.

User Experience (UX).

So how does all of this affect your website's user experience? In simple terms, it needs to be as easy as possible for your user to find what they’re looking for. Optimising SEO for the search terms your user personas are likely to be searching is step one. Once your ideal customer is on your site, taking the opportunity to present other information your user might need in a clear and concise way means they don’t go elsewhere to look.

In the example of Person A and the door handle, a link to the ecommerce page specific to door handles was easy to click. But the consideration doesn’t end there, the user experience must be a slick process from beginning to end to ensure the sale isn’t lost.