How to create a customer journey map

How do your customers become your customers? The first thing that happens is they hear about your brand. Maybe a friend will mention you, or they’ll see your ad. The next step is their first interaction – perhaps they’ll click on the ad or visit your website after their friend’s recommendation. And then, they make a purchase, and you close the deal. Ummm, as you know, that’s not the case most of the time. There are many steps in between and a lot of work you need to do to get there. The answer is simple if you’re wondering how to increase conversion rate and guide your customers more effectively through your funnel. Create a customer journey map – it will give you clear actionable steps to boost both your sales and customer experience with your brand.

What is a customer journey?

A customer journey is all the interaction, from start to finish, that the customer has with your business achieving a specific goal in mind. A map of this journey is a visual representation that includes all the stages and actions along the way. The goal is to boost customer experience and make them want to interact with your brand. Every business searches for ideas on how to lower website bounce rate, and making a customer journey enjoyable all the way through is the key.

The advantages of making a map to follow your customers’ journey

Mapping customers’ journey comes with a lot of benefits:

• increasing the conversion and retention rates
• lowering the bounce rate
• enhancing user experience
• improving customer service
• finding (and creating) your target audience
• gaining insights
• changing your company’s focus to a customer-based approach
• enhancing your branding and reputation.

What should every customer journey map have?

However, not every map is going to be this valuable. What map works best for you will depend on the type of business you have, the industry you’re in, and your goals. There are plenty of journey map templates you can use. Different companies will need additional, tailor-made maps that suit them best. But there are some common elements:

• the buying milestones you want your customers to take
• concrete actions your customers need to take
• emotions you want your customers to feel (excitement and happiness, not frustration or anger due to a long and complicated process to achieve the goal)
• pain points you want to avoid caused by your strategy and solutions to these pain points.

Step by step on how to create a customer journey map

Now that you know what it is, let’s see how to create a customer journey map to help your business and boost your customer’s experience and satisfaction.

Step 1: Set the clear goals

First, you need to have a clear goal to work towards. You can create the best map there is, but if it doesn’t align with your broader business goals, it will not be effective. Once you set your goals, ensure every stage of the customer journey is a step toward achieving them. Your map is a tool that you use to make your business grow and prosper.

Step 2: Assess your resources

Next, you need to assess the resources you have at your disposal and the ones you need to achieve your goals. This includes reps, teams, your budget, and tools that can help you implement everything from your map in practice. For example, choosing the best conversion rate optimization software will significantly impact the rest of creating your journey map. However, be mindful not to make plans you can’t employ.

Step 3: Create buyer personas and define them

Another data you need before you create a customer journey map is who you’re making it for. This refers to your buyer personas – who and what they are like. Consider your audience’s demographic and psychographic profile – everything from age, gender, and occupation to their preferences, needs, and values. This info will guide your map, so don’t hesitate to take polls and conduct surveys to learn more about your customers.

Step 4: Identify your target customer persona

Of course, you won’t have only one buyer persona. You’ll likely end up with several profiles, depending on your products and services. The next step is to define these personas more precisely and let your map branch out to satisfy different needs. You can take their first interaction with your brand as a starting point. Then model a separate map for each of your target customer personas.

Step 5: Make a list of all customer touchpoints

After that, it’s time to do the essential part of every map. And that is to identify and define all customer touchpoints throughout the journey. What is a touchpoint? It’s every interaction and engagement of the customer with your brand. Depending on your marketing and sales campaigns and goals, these touchpoints differ from business to business.

Additionally, defining your actions for every touchpoint is a good idea. For example, you can use lead calling software after they ask for a demo. Or, you can send a reminder if they put items in their cart but don’t complete the purchase.  Your actions will depend on your customers’ actions.

Step 6: Make a list of all customer actions

So, each touchpoint should have its CTA (call-to-action) that you want a customer to perform when they reach it. Having your target personas in mind, identify the actions you want your customers to take at every step. This will move them down your sales funnel. Plus, you’ll gain valuable insights about each step. Segmenting your process lets you see what works well and what needs improvement. Again, consider the actions you should take at each touchpoint to enhance customers’ experience and encourage them to the next.

Step 7: Analyze and refine your map

Lastly, reflecting on your processes is vital for every business. Keep analyzing, revising, and adjusting your maps regularly, especially after releasing a new product. By going over data, you’ll find that your customers need extra support at some stages or that several customers may lose interest at some other point. By identifying the exact location of the journey when these things happen, you can work to make them better.

The bottom line

As you may see, a customer journey map is a valuable resource and tool. However, you must make it right and keep revising and improving it. So, follow our tips to create a customer journey map to boost your business and increase conversions.