online shopping customer journey map

The stages may not be the same for you — in fact, your brand will likely come up with a set of unique stages of the customer journey. But where do you start? Let's take a look.

Generally, there are 5 phases that customers go through when interacting with a brand or a product: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Retention, and Loyalty.

1. Awareness Stage

In the awareness stage, customers realize they have a problem. At this point, they may not know that they need a product or service, but they will begin doing research either way.

During this stage of the customer journey, brands should deliver educational content to help customers diagnose a problem and offer potential solutions. Your aim should be to help customers alleviate their pain point, not encourage a purchase.

Some educational content that I've created in the past are:

• How-to articles and guides
• General whitepapers
• General ebooks
• Free courses

Educational content may also be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Social media
• Search engines

2. Consideration

In the consideration stage, customers have done enough research to realize that they need a product or service. At this point, they begin to compare brands and offerings.

During this stage, brands should deliver product marketing content to help customers compare different offerings and, eventually, choose their product or service. The aim is to help customers navigate a crowded marketplace and move them toward a purchase decision.

Product marketing content may include:

• Product listicles
• Product comparison guides and charts
• Product-focused white papers
• Customer success stories or case studies

Product marketing content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Your website
• Conferences

3. Decision Stage

In the decision stage, customers have chosen a solution and are ready to buy.

During this stage, your brand should deliver a seamless purchase process to make buying products as easy as possible. I wouldn't recommend any more educational or product content at this stage — it's all about getting customers to make a purchase. That means you can be more direct about wanting customers to buy from you.

Decision-stage content may include:

• Free consultations
• Product sign-up pages
• Pricing pages
• Product promotions (i.e "Sign up now and save 30%")

Decision-stage content may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

4. Retention Stage

In the retention stage, customers have now purchased a solution and stay with the company they purchased from, as opposed to leaving for another provider.

During this stage, brands provide an excellent onboarding experience and ongoing customer service to ensure that customers don't churn.

Retention-stage strategies may include:

• Providing a dedicated customer success manager
• Making your customer service team easily accessible
• Creating a knowledge base in case customers ever run into a roadblock

Retention-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

5. Loyalty Stage

In the loyalty stage, customers not only choose to stay with a company — they actively promote it to family, friends, and colleagues. The loyalty stage can also be called the advocacy stage.

During this phase, brands should focus on providing a fantastic end-to-end customer experience. This should span from your website content to your sales reps all the way to your social media team and your product's UX.

Most importantly, customers become loyal when they've achieved success with your product — if it works, they're more likely to recommend your brand to others.

Loyalty-stage strategies may include:

• Having an easy-to-navigate website
• Investing in your product team to ensure your product exceeds customer expectations
• Making it easy to share your brand with others via a loyalty or referral program
• Providing perks to continued customers, such as discounts

Loyalty-stage strategies may be delivered via customer touchpoints such as:

• Your products

To find out whether your customers have reached the loyalty stage, try a Net Promoter Score survey , which asks one simple question: "On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a friend?" To deliver this survey, you can use customer feedback software like Service Hub .

Now, let's get to the good stuff. Let's talk about creating your customer journey map.

What is the customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer's experience with a company. It also provides insight into the needs of potential customers at every stage of this journey and the factors that directly or indirectly motivate or inhibit their progress.

The business can then use this information to improve the customer's experience, increase conversions, and boost customer retention.

Now, the customer journey map is not to be confused with a UX journey map. But, for clarity, let's distinguish these two below.

What is UX journey mapping?

A UX journey map represents how a customer experiences their journey toward achieving a specific goal or completing a particular action.

For example, the term "UX journey mapping" can be used interchangeably with the term "customer journey mapping" if the goal being tracked is the user's journey toward purchasing a product or service.

However, UX journey mapping can also be used to map the journey (i.e., actions taken) towards other goals, such as using a specific product feature.

Why is customer journey mapping important?

While the customer journey might seem straightforward — the company offers a product or service, and customers buy it — for most businesses, it typically isn't.

In reality, it's a complex journey that begins when the customer becomes problem-aware (which might be long before they become product-aware) and then moves through an intricate process of further awareness, consideration, and decision-making.

The customer is also exposed to multiple external factors (competitor ads, reviews, etc.) and touchpoints with the company (conversations with sales reps, interacting with content, viewing product demos, etc.).

Keep in mind that 80% of customers consider their experience with a company to be as important as its products.

By mapping this journey, your marketing, sales, and service teams can understand, visualize, and gain insight into each stage of the process.

You can then decrease any friction along the way and make the journey as helpful and delightful as possible for your leads and customers.

Customer journey mapping is the process of creating a customer journey map — the visual representation of a company's customer experience. It compiles a customer's experience as they interact with a business and combines the information into a visual map.

The goal of this process is to draw insights that help you understand how your customers experience their journeys and identify the potential bottlenecks along the way.

It's also important to note that most customer journeys aren't linear. Instead, buyers often experience a back-and-forth, cyclical, multi-channel journey.

Let's look at the stages that you should include in any customer journey.

• The Buying Process
• User Actions
• User Research

1. The Buying Process

To determine your customers' buying process, you'll want to pull data from all relevant sources (prospecting tools, CMS, behavior analytics tools, etc.) to accurately chart your customer's path from first to last contact.

However, you can keep it simple by creating broad categories using the typical buying journey process stages — awareness, consideration, and decision — and mapping them horizontally.

2. Emotions

Whether the goal is big or small, remember your customers are solving a problem. That means they're probably feeling some emotion — whether that's relief, happiness, excitement, or worry.

Adding these emotions to the journey map will help you identify and mitigate negative emotions and the pain points that cause them.

On HubSpot's journey map , we use emojis to represent potential emotions at different stages of the customer journey. 

3. User Actions

This element details what a customer does in each stage of the buying process. For example, during the problem-awareness stage, customers might download ebooks or join educational webinars.

Essentially, you're exploring how your customers move through and behave at each stage of their journey.

4. User Research

Similar to the last section, this element describes what or where the buyer researches when they are taking action.

More than likely, the buyer will turn to search engines, like Google, to research solutions during the awareness stage. However, it's important to pay attention to what they're researching so you can best address their pain points.

5. Solutions

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot's free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer's journey, a day in the life of your customer, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company's buyer persona. Not only will this lead to improvements to your product, but also a better customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you're creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don't have one, I would recommend creating a buyer persona . This is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics representing your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics at the ready.

Don't have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot's Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started. 

Some great ways to get valuable customer feedback are questionnaires and user testing. The important thing is to only reach out to actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services and who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you've learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I would recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a UX journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company — so if you group too many personas into one journey, your map won't accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it's best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don't worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there's no overlap.

This is essential in creating a UX journey map because it provides insight into your customers' actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they're quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you also need to look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels
• Email marketing
• Third-party review sites or mentions

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand, impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding -- you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

HubSpot's free customer journey map template makes it easier than ever to visualize the buyer's journey. It saved me some time organizing and outlining my customer experience and it made it clear how a website could impact my user's lives. 

The customer journey map template can also help you discover areas of improvement in your product, marketing, and support processes.

Download a free, editable customer journey map template.

Types of Customer Journey Maps and Examples

There are four types of customer journey maps , each with unique benefits. Pick the one that makes the most sense for your company.

Current State

These customer journey maps are the most widely used type. They visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience while interacting with your company. They're best used for continually improving the customer journey.

Image Source

Day in the Life

These customer journey maps visualize the actions, thoughts, and emotions your customers currently experience in their daily activities, whether or not that includes your company.

This type gives a broader lens into your customers' lives and what their pain points are in real life.

Day-in-the-life maps are best used for addressing unmet customer needs before customers even know they exist. Your company may use this type of customer journey map when exploring new market development strategies .

Future State

These customer journey maps visualize what actions, thoughts, and emotions that your customers will experience in future interactions with your company. Based on their current interaction with your company, you'll have a clear picture of where your business fits in later down the road.

These maps are best for illustrating your vision and setting clear, strategic goals.

Service Blueprint

These customer journey maps begin with a simplified version of one of the above map styles. Then, they layer on the factors responsible for delivering that experience, including people, policies, technologies, and processes.

Service blueprints are best used to identify the root causes of current customer journeys or the steps needed to attain desired future customer journeys.

If you want a look at a real customer journey map that HubSpot has used recently, check out this interview we conducted with Sarah Flint, Director of System Operations at HubSpot. We asked her how her team put together their map (below) as well as what advice she would give to businesses starting from scratch. 

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Set a goal for the journey map.
• Survey customers to understand their buying journey.
• Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently.
• Consider UX journey mapping for each buyer persona.
• Review and update each journey map after every major product release.
• Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams.

1. Set a goal for the journey map.

Determine whether you aim to improve the buying experience or launch a new product. Knowing what the journey map needs to tell you can prevent scope creep on a large project like this.

2. Survey customers to understand their buying journey.

What you think you know about the customer experience and what they actually experience can be very different. Speak to your customers directly, so you have an accurate snapshot of the customer's journey.

3. Ask customer service reps about the questions they receive most frequently.

Sometimes, customers aren't aware of their specific pain points, and that's where your customer service reps come in.

They can help fill in the gaps and translate customer pain points into business terms you and your team can understand and act on.

4. Consider UX journey mapping for each buyer persona.

It's easy to assume each customer operates the same way, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

Demographics, psychographics, and even how long someone has been a customer can determine how a person interacts with your business and makes purchasing decisions.

Group overarching themes into buyer personas and create a UX journey map for each.

5. Review and update each journey map after every major product release.

Every time your product or service changes, the customer's buying process changes. Even slight tweaks, like adding an extra field to a form, can become a significant roadblock.

So, reviewing the customer journey map before and after implementing changes is essential.

6. Make the customer journey map accessible to cross-functional teams.

Customer journey maps aren't very valuable in a silo. However, creating a journey map is a convenient way for cross-functional teams to provide feedback.

Afterward, make a copy of the map accessible to each team, so they always keep the customer top of mind.

Breaking down the customer journey, phase by phase, aligning each step with a goal, and restructuring your touchpoints accordingly are essential steps for maximizing customer success .

Here are a few more benefits to gain from customer journey mapping.

1. You can refocus your company with an inbound perspective.

Rather than discovering customers through outbound marketing, you can have your customers find you with the help of inbound marketing.

Outbound marketing involves tactics targeted at generalized or uninterested audiences and seeks to interrupt the customers' daily lives. Outbound marketing is costly and inefficient. It annoys and deters customers and prospects.

Inbound marketing involves creating helpful content that customers are already looking for. You grab their attention first and focus on the sales later.

By mapping out the customer journey, you can understand what's interesting and helpful to your customers and what's turning them away.

2. You can create a new target customer base.

You need to understand the customer journey properly to understand your customers' demographics and psychographics.

It's a waste of time and money to repeatedly target too broad of an audience rather than people who are actually interested in your offering.

Researching the needs and pain points of your typical customers will give you a good picture of the kinds of people who are trying to achieve a goal with your company. Thus, you can hone your marketing to that specific audience.

3. You can implement proactive customer service.

A customer journey map is like a roadmap to the customer's experience.

It highlights moments where people experience delight and situations where they might face friction. Knowing this ahead of time allows you to plan your customer service strategy and intervene at ideal times.

Proactive customer service also makes your brand appear more reliable. For example, when I worked in customer support, we would anticipate a surge in tickets around the holidays. To be proactive, we'd send out a message to customers letting them know about our team's adjusted holiday hours. We would aalso tell them about additional support options if we were unavailable and what to do if an urgent problem needed immediate attention.

With expectations set, customers won't feel surprised if they're waiting on hold a little longer than usual. They'll even have alternative options to choose from — like a chatbot or knowledge base — if they need to find a faster solution.

4. You can improve your customer retention rate.

When you have a complete view of the customer journey, it's easier to pick out areas where you can improve it. When you do, customers experience fewer pain points, leading to fewer people leaving your brand for competitors.

After all, 33% of customers will consider switching brands after just one poor experience.

UX journey mapping can point out individuals on the path to churn. If you log the common behaviors of these customers, you can start to spot them before they leave your business.

While you might not save them all, it's worth the try. Increasing customer retention rates by just 5% can increase profits by 25%-95%.

5. You can create a customer-focused mentality throughout the company.

As your company grows, it can be tricky to coordinate all your departments to be as customer-focused as your customer service, support, and success teams are. That's because each department has varying goals, meaning they might not be prioritizing customer needs -- they might focusing on website traffic, leads, product signups, etc.

One way to overcome this data silo is to share a clear customer journey map with your entire organization. The great thing about these maps is that they map out every single step of the customer journey, from initial attraction to post-purchase support. And, yes, this concerns marketing, sales, and service. 

For more examples of customer journey maps, read on to the next section for a few templates you can use as a baseline for your company's map. 

Customer Journey Mapping Examples

To help guide your business in its direction, here are examples to draw inspiration from for building out your customer journey map.

1. HubSpot's Customer Journey Map Templates

HubSpot's free Customer Journey Map Templates provide an outline for companies to understand their customers' experiences.

The offer includes the following:

• Current State Template
• Lead Nurturing Mapping Template
• A Day in the Customer's Life Template
• Customer Churn Mapping Template
• Customer Support Blueprint Template

Each of these templates helps organizations gain new insights into their customer base and help make improvements to product, marketing, and customer support processes.

Download them today to start working on your customer journey map.

2. B2B Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map clearly outlines the five steps Dapper Apps believes customers go through when interacting with them.

As you can see, it goes beyond the actual purchasing phase by incorporating initial research and post-purchase needs.

This map is effective because it helps employees get into the customers' minds by understanding the typical questions they have and the emotions they're feeling.

There are incremental action steps that Dapper Apps can take in response to these questions and feelings that will help it solve all the current problems customers are having.

3. Ecommerce Customer Journey Map Example

This fictitious customer journey map is a clear example of a day-in-the-life map.

Rather than just focusing on the actions and emotions involved in the customer's interaction with the company, this map outlines all the actions and emotions the customer experiences on a typical day.

This map is helpful because it measures a customer's state of mind based on the level of freedom they get from certain stimuli.

This is helpful for a company that wants to understand what its target customers are stressed about and what problems may need solving.

4. Future B2C Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map, designed for Carnegie Mellon University, exemplifies the usefulness of a future state customer journey map. It outlines the thoughts, feelings, and actions the university wants its students to have.

Based on these goals, CMU chose specific proposed changes for each phase and even wrote out example scenarios for each phase.

This clear diagram can visualize the company vision and help any department understand where they will fit into building a better user experience.

5. Retail Customer Journey Map Example

This customer journey map shows an in-depth customer journey map of a customer interacting with a fictitious restaurant.

It's clear that this style of map is more comprehensive than the others. It includes the front-of-stage (direct) and back-of-stage (non-direct or invisible) interactions a customer has with the company, as well as the support processes.

This map lays out every action involved in the customer experience, including those of the customer, employees directly serving diners, and employees working behind the scenes.

By analyzing how each of these factors influences the customer journey, a company can find the root cause of mishaps and problem-solve this for the future.

To get your business from point A — deciding to focus on customer journeys — to point B — having a journey map — a critical step to the process is selecting which customer mindset your business will focus on.

This mindset will determine which of the following templates you'll use.

1. Current State Template

If you're using this template for a B2B product, the phases may reflect the search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decision, and post-purchase support processes.

For instance, in our Dapper Apps example, its phases were research, comparison, workshop, quote, and sign-off.

2. Day in the Life Template

Since this template reflects all the thoughts, feelings, actions, needs, and pain points a customer has in their entire daily routine — whether or not that includes your company — you'll want to map out this template in a chronological structure.

This way, you can highlight the times of day at which you can offer the best support.

Get an interactive day in the life template.

3. Future State Template

Similar to the current state template, these phases may also reflect the predicted or desired search, awareness, consideration of options, purchasing decision, and post-purchase support processes.

Since this takes place in the future, you can tailor these phases based on what you'd like the customer journey to look like rather than what it currently looks like.

Get an interactive future state template.

4. Service Blueprint Template

Since this template is more in-depth, it doesn't follow certain phases in the customer journey.

Instead, it's based on physical evidence — the tangible factors that can create impressions about the quality and prices of the service — that often come in sets of multiple people, places, or objects at a time.

For instance, with our fictitious restaurant example above, the physical evidence includes all the staff, tables, decorations, cutlery, menus, food, and anything else a customer comes into contact with.

You would then list the appropriate customer actions and employee interactions to correspond with each physical evidence.

For example, when the physical evidence is plates, cutlery, napkins, and pans, the customer gives their order, the front-of-stage employee (waiter) takes the order, the back-of-stage employee (receptionist) processes the order, and the support processes (chefs) prepare the food.

Get an interactive service blueprint template.

5. Buyer's Journey Template

You can also use the classic buyer's journey — awareness, consideration, and decision — to design your customer journey map.

Get an interactive buyer's journey template.

Charter the Path to Customer Success

Once you fully understand your customer's experience with your business, you can delight them at every stage of their buying journey. Remember, many factors can affect this journey, including customer pain points, emotions, and your company's touchpoints and processes.

A customer journey map is the most effective way to visualize this information, whether you're optimizing the customer experience or exploring a new business opportunity to serve a customer's unrecognized needs.

Use the free templates in this article to start mapping the future of customer success at your business.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August, 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free customer journey map templates.

Service Hub provides everything you need to delight and retain customers while supporting the success of your whole front office

• Jun 3, 2022
• 10 min read

The eCommerce customer journey and how to map it

Think about the last purchase you made.

How long did it take you to click ‘buy’? How many different sites, ads, emails, and stores did you check out before finally fetching your wallet?

Suffice to say that the typical buyer journey is anything but linear. Few shoppers convert right away, and every brand is challenged with adjusting their eCommerce marketing strategy to anticipate buyer movements both online and offline.

So, what can you do to stay ahead? Let’s talk more about what the eCommerce customer journey entails, and how to map your customer’s path to purchase when starting your business .

What is the eCommerce customer journey?

5 stages of the ecommerce customer journey, what factors affect the customer journey, customer journey mapping: why it’s a must, how to map the buyer journey for your business, example of a journey map.

Every so often, a buyer will take a relatively straight path to purchase. They'll search for a product, find your item, and within the same sitting, they'll complete the purchase.

But much more often, customers will be “pinballed” between various touchpoints. They’ll see between 6,000 to 10,000 ads in a day as they’re scrolling through their phones, checking their emails, or listening to Spotify. Then, once they decide to do some shopping, they’ll likely hop between Amazon, your site, and a competitor’s shop.

The eCommerce customer journey is the sum of all of these interactions (see our guide on what is eCommerce ). It begins with the moment a customer becomes aware of your brand to when he or she finally makes a purchase.

Some buyers will convert within mere days—while others may take several months or years. Tipping the scale towards the former outcome will require understanding the core stages and touchpoints of the customer journey and knowing how to make the best impact on your buyers.

Your customers’ overall journey can be broken down into five key stages.

01. Awareness

Your customer stumbles across your brand for the first time. Be it through an ad, social media, word of mouth, or SEO–they are now aware of your products. However, as noted earlier, many will not convert right away. Some may not even be looking to purchase anything at all.

At this stage, you’ll want to make sure you understand how people are finding your brand and who they are. Are they the buyer personas you expected to reach? How do demographics, acquisition source, and other factors affect what action your audience takes next?

While many visitors at this stage may just be “window browsing,” you’ve at least built some sort of brand recognition. Now it’s time to do something with it: retarget people, learn more about their interests, and guide them towards products that are most relevant to them.

02. Consideration

At this point, your buyer shows actual interest in your product. They’ve got their eyes on a particular product or set of products, and are deciding which one is worth buying.

Some may be trying to decide whether your item is a need versus a want. Others may be checking out product specs to make sure that your item is worth the price. Still others may be deal hunting or checking out options on competitive sites.

In any case, you’ll want to track which product pages people are spending the most time on, which products they’re comparing, and what other brands are on their radar. How can you convince them that your product is better? What can you do to build their confidence in your brand or incentivize a purchase?

03. Decision

Alas, your buyer makes a purchase on your site—assuming that the checkout process is easy and buyer friendly.

Your number one goal here is to make sure that the checkout process is seamless. Create a simple checkout flow, offer multiple (and secure) payment options, communicate your return policy, and provide all the information buyers need to feel supported by your brand.

Buyers should know when to expect their packages and any fees associated with their purchase. Don’t let any unwelcome surprises or lack of information lead to customers canceling their orders early.

04. Retention

Once a buyer makes their first purchase with your brand, they’ll ideally become a repeat customer . A positive customer experience—including excellent customer service, on-time delivery, and a multichannel marketing strategy—can work together to build customer loyalty .

Note that even though you’ve won the first sale, you’ll need to continuously earn a buyer’s patronage time and time again. Be consistent in your messaging. Engage buyers frequently. Offer incentives or employ strategies for upselling and cross-selling .

05. Advocacy

Happy customers have the potential to attract other happy customers. Buyers at this final leg of the customer journey are (hopefully) so happy with your product and/or service that they’re eager to spread the word to their friends and family.

Of course, this isn’t a passive activity. You’ll want to proactively nurture brand ambassadors by creating a customer loyalty program , hosting giveaways, showing appreciation, and taking other steps to inspire advocacy.

Your customers are a moving target. Between their unique preferences and backgrounds—plus their prior experiences with brands—there are tons of factors that shape the way they make their purchases.

As you track the various ways that customers interact with your brand, consider how trends like the ones below can make a big impact on the buyer journey.

Social and economic changes - e.g., the recent pandemic. These events tend to spur shifts in buying behaviors and expectations, as many types of businesses and buyers alike adapt to new realities. With each shift, consumers tend to get smarter and potentially pickier on what defines a good value and how to spend their money.

Convergence of online and offline shopping - Omnichannel retail isn’t just a concept anymore. Today, the lines between the offline and online worlds are increasingly blurred—with digital native brands like Warby Parker opening physical showrooms, and longtime retailers like T.J. Maxx investing more in online commerce. Curbside pickup, BOPIS, and in-store returns are just the beginning of what’s to come; brands should expect the customer journey to entail a greater mix of online and offline touchpoints, regardless of whether a customer originated online or not.

Corporate responsibility - Brands today are expected to do good. Inactivity or a difference in values could shape a customer’s engagement with your brand at any point of the buyer’s journey.

Choice paralysis - The proliferation of brands and products online have the ability to frustrate consumers. Make sure that your website is organized in such a way that customers know exactly where to find what they’re looking for. Make it easier for them to filter out noise and/or compare similar options. The last thing you want is for an overabundance of options—or poor site design—to deter your customers from buying. Learn more about combatting choice paralysis .

While customer journey mapping is an imperfect science, the benefits are undeniable.

In fact, 30% of surveyed retailers reported significant improvements in customer lifetime value and customer advocacy after investing in digital customer experience (CX). Roughly 23% reported an increase in average order size as well.

This exercise can help you to achieve multiple goal including:

Getting more clarity over how buyers interact with you - By carefully mapping your customer journey, you can gain a clear understanding of your buyers and their habits. A map helps you to see things from the buyer's perspective rather than your business’s perspective.

Improving customer retention rates - A map helps you to identify when and why prospective buyers are dropping. For example, an ill-worded message or one displayed in the wrong place at the wrong time could be all that’s causing buyers to regress in their journey. By making strategic changes and reducing friction in the customer experience, you can enjoy an easier time attracting and retaining buyers.

Sharpening your focus and organization - This exercise will force you to lay everything on the table–from all of your marketing campaigns to all the possible interactions a customer may have with your brand. From there, you can determine the health of each channel, who owns which touchpoint, and realistic goals for each event.

Increasing revenue - When you understand how buyers interact with your business in detail, you can more accurately cater your communications, offers, content, and promotions to influence sales. It’s all too easy to rely on assumptions or old habits when engaging customers. A journey map helps to shed light on biases and pain points that you may not have known were there before.

So how do you actually map the customer journey? Here are five steps to get you started.

Step 1. Describe your buyer personas

Before building a map, you must clearly define your target customer types. Are you looking to engage parents, young adults, or consumers with specific hobbies?

Your personas should include as much detail as possible. Make sure to base them around real data—not made-up, fake, or idealistic data. Talk to various stakeholders, interview your customers, consult social media, or perform user testing.

In other words, don't build a buyer profile based on what you think a customer should look like. Create your buyer personas using actual data you gathered from the places where they hang out and from talking directly to your target audience.

Step 2. Define the main character of your map

Now, you can decide which set of customers you’d like to analyze as part of the journey mapping process. The map will look different for each type of buyer you target, and trying to address all of them at once will only muddy the data.

To start, pick the most common persona (i.e., the most valuable or largest cohort). You’ll have an easier time collecting data this way, plus taking meaningful action from your journey map.

Step 3. Analyze on-site behaviors

As an initial step, check out the behaviors on your website and jot down the top pages that people enter your site from, where they exit or bounce, and which ones are the highest converting. Tools like Google Analytics and Wix Analytics can help to fill in these blanks.

To get more specific, make sure to filter your data according to criteria that’s most relevant to your buyer persona: geo, new versus returning users, and device (to name a few).

You may already start to see areas where people drop off and opportunities to optimize your site. You can additionally gain insight into what your buyer is more interested in buying based on where they linger on your site (though note that this could be heavily influenced by how accessible a page is from other areas of your site).

Step 4. List all other customer touchpoints

List out all the ways that your target buyer can interact with your company, both on and off your site. Include things like:

Social media

Review sites

Publications

Popup stores

Onsite banners

Physical stores

Marketplaces that you sell on

Help center

Loyalty program

Seasonal promotions

From here, you’ll want to list out all the possible actions someone could take from each channel. For instance, when someone interacts with a blog, he or she may subscribe to your newsletter, download a piece of content that you promote, click to another blog—or even request a demo. Alternatively, your visitor may bounce.

The purpose of this exercise is to audit all the CTAs you include on a single page, as well as links and other messaging that may influence a visitor’s behaviors. You’ll moreover want to look into whether reality aligns with expectations.

When you compare your list of expected behaviors with the data you gathered from Google Analytics, Wix Analytics, and other sources—do the results align? How can you better define the purpose of each channel, and match your goals with a visitor intent?

Step 5. Visualize the journey

Finally, you can document all of your findings into one easy-to-reference map. The scope of your journey map can vary depending on your goal. For instance, you could show the complete customer journey (as shown below) or hone in on just a part of it where you see the most room for improvement.

A map may cover everything from a buyer’s emotions, to their actions, to roles and responsibilities on your team at each stage. It can serve as both a tool for predicting buyer behaviors and keeping your team organized.

That said, there are several types of journey maps you can create:

Current state map - This shows how customers interact with your brand today. You could use it to compare behaviors between two different segments of buyers, or to uncover how customer emotions and behaviors vary depending on how they find your products (as an example).

Future state map - This illustrates the ideal journey that you want your customers to take. It helps your team rally around specific goals and identify critical points of a customer’s journey.

Day in the life map - This is similar to a current state map, except that it doesn’t start and end with a buyers’ interaction with your brand. It aims to understand all of their daily activities and lifestyles, with the goal of developing new, meaningful touchpoints.

Service blueprints - This takes a simplified version of one of the maps above, then adds in details about the various people, technologies, and processes that take place behind the scenes. The purpose is to audit and optimize how your team functions in the background to support the customer journey.

Let’s imagine that you own an online shop for pet supplies. You want to create a current state map in order to see how your core customers (new dog owners) are interacting with your brand. Your map may look something like this.

This helps your team keep track of the most effective campaigns, products, and channels. You’ll likely look to expand upon this map soon, as you get even more granular in your research or launch new campaigns.

There is no right or wrong way to create an eCommerce journey map. The framework outlined here is just meant to provide a good starting point. Once you have a baseline, you can continue to modify and rework your journey map to fit your unique business.

Remember that the customer journey is constantly evolving. Re-evaluate your eCommerce journey map once a quarter or at least once every six months. Aim to reduce friction in the customer journey and put assumptions to the test.

Allison Lee

Editor, Wix eCommerce

Allison is the editor for the Wix eCommerce blog, with several years of experience reporting on eCommerce news, strategies, and founder stories.

• Sell Online

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What is a Customer Journey Map? [Free Templates]

Learn what the customer journey mapping process is and download a free template that you can use to create your own customer journey map.

Table of Contents

Mapping the customer journey can give you a way to better understand your customers and their needs. As a tool, it allows you to visualize the different stages that a customer goes through when interacting with your business; their thoughts, feelings, and pain points.

And, it’s shown that the friction from those pain points costs big: in 2019, ecommerce friction totaled an estimated 213 billion in lost US revenue .

Customer journey maps can help you to identify any problems or areas where you could improve your customer experience . In this article, we’ll explain what the customer journey mapping process is and provide a free template that you can use to create your own map. Let’s get started!

Bonus: Get our free, fully customizable Customer Experience Strategy Template that will help you understand your customers and reach your business goals.

What is a customer journey map?

So, what is customer journey mapping? Essentially, customer journey maps are a tool that you can use to understand the customer experience. Customer journey maps are often visual representations showing you the customer’s journey from beginning to end. They include all the touchpoints along the way.

There are often four main stages in your sales funnel, and knowing these can help you create your customer journey maps:

• Inquiry or awareness
• Interest, comparison, or decision-making
• Purchase or preparation
• Installation, activation, or feedback

Customer journey maps are used to track customer behavior and pinpoint areas where the customer experiences pain points. With this information uncovered, you can improve the customer experience, giving your customers a positive experience with your company.

You can use customer journey mapping software like Excel or Google sheets, Google Decks, infographics, illustrations, or diagrams to create your maps. But you don’t actually need customer journey mapping tools. You can create these maps with a blank wall and a pack of sticky notes.

Though they can be scribbled on a sticky note, it’s often easier to create these journeys digitally. That way, you have a record of your journey map, and you can share it with colleagues. We’ve provided free customer journey mapping templates at the end of this article to make your life a little easier.

The benefits of using customer journey maps

The main benefit of customer journey mapping is a better understanding of how your customers feel and interact with your business touchpoints. With this knowledge, you can create strategies that better serve your customer at each touchpoint.

Give them what they want and make it easy to use, and they’ll keep coming back. But, there are a couple of other great knock-on benefits too.

Improved customer support

Your customer journey map will highlight moments where you can add some fun to a customer’s day. And it will also highlight the pain points of your customer’s experience. Knowing where these moments are will let you address them before your customer gets there. Then, watch your customer service metrics spike!

Effective marketing tactics

A greater understanding of who your customers are and what motivates them will help you to advertise to them.

Let’s say you sell a sleep aid product or service. A potential target market for your customer base is young, working mothers who are strapped for time.

The tone of your marketing material can empathize with their struggles, saying, “The last thing you need is someone asking if you’re tired. But we know that over half of working moms get less than 6 hours of sleep at night. While we can’t give you more time, we know how you can make the most of those 6 hours. Try our Sleep Aid today and sleep better tonight.”

Building out customer personas will show potential target audiences and their motivation, like working moms who want to make the most of their hours asleep.

Product advancements or service improvements

By mapping your customer’s journey, you’ll gain insights into what motivates them to make a purchase or prevents them from doing so. You’ll have clarity on when or why they return items and which items they buy next. With this information and more, you’ll be able to identify opportunities to upsell or cross-sell products.

A more enjoyable and efficient user experience

Customer journey mapping will show you where customers get stuck and bounce off your site. You can work your way through the map, fixing any friction points as you go. The end result will be a smoothly-running, logical website or app.

A customer-focused mindset

Instead of operating with the motivation of business success, a customer journey map can shift your focus to the customer. Instead of asking yourself, “how can I increase profits?” ask yourself, “what would better serve my customer?” The profits will come when you put your customer first.

At the end of the day, customer journey maps help you to improve your customer experience and boost sales. They’re a useful tool in your customer experience strategy .

How to create a customer journey map

There are many different ways to create a customer journey map. But, there are a few steps you’ll want to take regardless of how you go about mapping your customer’s journey.

Step 1. Set your focus

Are you looking to drive the adoption of a new product? Or perhaps you’ve noticed issues with your customer experience. Maybe you’re looking for new areas of opportunity for your business. Whatever it is, be sure to set your goals before you begin mapping the customer journey.

Step 2. Choose your buyer personas

To create a customer journey map, you’ll first need to identify your customers and understand their needs. To do this, you will want to access your buyer personas.

Buyer personas are caricatures or representations of someone who represents your target audience. These personas are created from real-world data and strategic goals.

If you don’t already have them, create your own buyer personas with our easy step-by-step guide and free template.

Choose one or two of your personas to be the focus of your customer journey map. You can always go back and create maps for your remaining personas.

Step 3. Perform user research

Interview prospective or past customers in your target market. You do not want to gamble your entire customer journey on assumptions you’ve made. Find out directly from the source what their pathways are like, where their pain points are, and what they love about your brand.

You can do this by sending out surveys, setting up interviews, and examining data from your business chatbot . Be sure to look at what the most frequently asked questions are. If you don’t have a FAQ chatbot like Heyday , that automates customer service and pulls data for you, you’re missing out!

Get a free Heyday demo

You will also want to speak with your sales team, your customer service team, and any other team member who may have insight into interacting with your customers.

Step 4. List customer touchpoints

Your next step is to track and list the customer’s interactions with the company, both online and offline.

A customer touchpoint means anywhere your customer interacts with your brand. This could be your social media posts , anywhere they might find themselves on your website, your brick-and-mortar store, ratings and reviews, or out-of-home advertising.

Write as many as you can down, then put on your customer shoes and go through the process yourself. Track the touchpoints, of course, but also write down how you felt at each juncture and why. This data will eventually serve as a guide for your map.

Step 5. Build your customer journey map

You’ve done your research and gathered as much information as possible, now it’s time for the fun stuff. Compile all of the information you’ve collected into one place. Then, start mapping out your customer journey! You can use the templates we’ve created below for an easy plug-and-play execution.

Step 6. Analyze your customer journey map

Once the customer journey has been mapped out, you will want to go through it yourself. You need to experience first-hand what your customers do to fully understand their experience.

As you journey through your sales funnel, look for ways to improve your customer experience. By analyzing your customer’s needs and pain points, you can see areas where they might bounce off your site or get frustrated with your app. Then, you can take action to improve it. List these out in your customer journey map as “Opportunities” and “Action plan items”.

Types of customer journey maps

There are many different types of customer journey maps. We’ll take you through four to get started: current state, future state, a day in the life, and empathy maps. We’ll break down each of them and explain what they can do for your business.

Current state

This customer journey map focuses on your business as it is today. With it, you will visualize the experience a customer has when attempting to accomplish their goal with your business or product. A current state customer journey uncovers and offers solutions for pain points.

Future state

This customer journey map focuses on how you want your business to be. This is an ideal future state. With it, you will visualize a customer’s best-case experience when attempting to accomplish their goal with your business or product.

Once you have your future state customer journey mapped out, you’ll be able to see where you want to go and how to get there.

Day-in-the-life

A day-in-the-life customer journey is a lot like the current state customer journey, but it aims to highlight aspects of a customer’s daily life outside of how they interact with your brand.

Day-in-the-life mapping looks at everything that the consumer does during their day. It shows what they think and feel within an area of focus with or without your company.

When you know how a consumer spends their day, you can more accurately strategize where your brand communication can meet them. Are they checking Instagram on their lunch break, feeling open and optimistic about finding new products? If so, you’ll want to target ads on that platform to them at that time.

Day-in-the-life customer journey examples can look vastly different depending on your target demographic.

Empathy maps

Empathy maps don’t follow a particular sequence of events along the user journey. Instead, these are divided into four sections and track what someone says about their experience with your product when it’s in use.

You should create empathy maps after user research and testing. You can think of them as an account of all that was observed during research or testing when you asked questions directly regarding how people feel while using products. Empathy maps can give you unexpected insights into your users’ needs and wants.

Customer journey map templates

Use these templates to inspire your own customer journey map creation.

Customer journey map template for the current state:

The future state customer journey mapping template:

A day-in-the-life customer journey map template:

An empathy map template:

A customer journey map example

It can be helpful to see customer journey mapping examples. To give you some perspective on what these look like executed, we’ve created a customer journey mapping example of the current state.

Buyer Persona:

Curious Colleen, a 32-year-old female, is in a double-income no-kids marriage. Colleen and her partner work for themselves; while they have research skills, they lack time. She is motivated by quality products and frustrated by having to sift through content to get the information she needs.

What are their key goals and needs? Colleen needs a new vacuum. Her key goal is to find one that will not break again.

What are their struggles?

She is frustrated that her old vacuum broke and that she has to spend time finding a new one. Colleen feels as though this problem occurred because the vacuum she bought previously was of poor quality.

What tasks do they have?

Colleen must research vacuums to find one that will not break. She must then purchase a vacuum and have it delivered to her house.

Opportunities:

Colleen wants to understand quickly and immediately the benefits our product offers; how can we make this easier? Colleen upholds social proof as a decision-making factor. How can we better show our happy customers? There is an opportunity here to restructure our website information hierarchy or implement customer service tools to give Colleen the information she needs faster. We can create comparison charts with competitors, have benefits immediately and clearly stated, and create social campaigns.

Action Plan:

• Implement a chatbot so customers like Colleen can get the answers they want quickly and easily.
• Create a comparison tool for competitors and us, showing benefits and costs.
• Implement benefit-forward statements on all landing pages.
• Create a social campaign dedicated to UGC to foster social proof.
• Send out surveys dedicated to gathering customer feedback. Pull out testimonial quotes from here when possible.

Now that you know what the customer journey mapping process is, you can take these tactics and apply them to your own business strategy. By tracking customer behavior and pinpointing areas where your customers experience pain points, you’ll be able to alleviate stress for customers and your team in no time.

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Colleen Christison is a freelance copywriter, copy editor, and brand communications specialist. She spent the first six years of her career in award-winning agencies like Major Tom, writing for social media and websites and developing branding campaigns. Following her agency career, Colleen built her own writing practice, working with brands like Mission Hill Winery, The Prevail Project, and AntiSocial Media.

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How to build an ecommerce customer journey map

Optimizing the journey a customer takes from finding a brand to making a purchase is an essential step toward increasing ecommerce conversions.

An ecommerce customer journey map is a great way to analyze customer experience and identify any blockers visitors face that prevent them from making a purchase.

This is Carts Guru's ultimate guide to creating an ecommerce customer journey map.

What we'll cover in this guide:

• What is an e-commerce customer journey?
• Why map your e-commerce customers' experience?

Step 1: Define customer personas

Step 2: analyze relevant data, step 3: identify key touch-points, step 4: create an e-commerce customer journey map.

• Step 5: Using an e-commerce customer journey map

Let's get started.

What is an ecommerce customer journey?

An ecommerce customer journey begins with one of two key things, a problem to solve, or an opportunity to grasp, ie. a ‘need’ or a ‘want’.

Let’s look at purchasing a new exercise bike as an example. The customer journey could begin with a problem, ie. their old bike is broken or out of date. In contrast, it could start with an opportunity, like a tempting advert that sparks the customer’s interest in the new bike.

Customers happy with their current brand will stay loyal to them, but for customers wanting to switch to a new brand the first step in the journey will be a competitor analysis.

Potential customers read reviews and testimonials, ask friends and family for advice, and compare the pricing of various brands. They may go back and forth a few times before making a final decision.

Once the customer has decided on a product, they then return to a website, find the product, complete the purchase, and wait for their item to arrive.

The customer’s journey doesn’t end when they receive their order. E-merchants need to keep customers engaged to encourage repeat purchases and drive brand loyalty. Loyal customers are the lifeblood of any successful e-commerce business, they leave positive reviews, provide social proof to friends and family, and continue to purchase year after year.

Why map an ecommerce customers' experience?

It’s not enough for an e-commerce store to sell great products. There's an abundance of choices easily available online, and customers are searching for something more. They want an amazing, memorable experience.

The best way for an e-merchant to deliver that is through a highly personalized customer journey. E-merchant’s need to analyze the entire process each customer goes through when buying a product, then work to improve that journey. This means customizing every detail, from the very first time a customer comes across a brand to the day they become an advocate.

An e-commerce customer journey map is the logical way to organize all these complicated data points. E-merchants can visualize the customer journey and clearly see where any problems lie.

Essentially, a customer journey map should help e-merchants do the following:

• Provide a smooth journey that helps customers solve problems and achieve goals
• Remove friction and obstacles in the buying process
• Make the brand experience enjoyable and recommendable

It's impossible to design a map without knowing who it's for. E-merchants need to have a clear picture of their target customer groups before they can build the perfect journey for them.

In order to define a customer persona, e-merchants need to ask themselves the following questions:

• Who's buying from you right now? Find out their age, gender, location, occupation, income level, and interests.
• Who benefits from your product?
• What are their pain points, goals and dreams?

Customer personas shouldn't be vague. Combine common traits into numerous specific personas with memorable characteristics, even a name. Include any objections they might have.

For example, an e-commerce store selling silver fashion jewelry might have the following customer persona:

Katie, a single 26-year-old female who studied advertising, and works in a marketing company, earning £28,000 a year. She lives with housemates in London and buys clothes from Zara and Cos, often shops on her mobile phone. She enjoys meeting friends for drinks and dinner, yoga and goes on 2 holidays a year. She likes affordable but good quality, unique jewelry. Potential obstacles: high prices and a website that isn't mobile-friendly.

Create as many personas as are relevant, then design a separate customer journey map for each persona.

E-merchants need to dig deep into any available data about customer interactions with their e-commerce website and social media pages.

The Google Analytics Behavior Flow Report is a great way to track this. The report shows the flow of traffic through a website that e-merchants can use to find out the common paths, and determine which ones result in more sales.

Are people going directly to checkout after viewing a product, or going back to browse more options?

Hotjar is another powerful tool that shows users colorful, visual heat maps of how visitors interact with a website. E-merchants can track details like mouse hover, clicks, attention, and scroll.

Heat maps essentially tell e-merchants how visitors interact with their site. From this, e-merchants can determine which website elements appeal to visitors, and which are not as useful.

Another key metric is cart abandonment. Find out how many customers make it to check out but leave before completing the purchase. E-merchants can track cart abandonment and automate emails, SMS, and Funnels to bring customers back to complete the purchase.

Similarly, e-merchants can gather data by simply speaking with customers. Conduct surveys and encourage customers to write testimonials or reviews. Read through customer queries and analyze their conversations with support services.

When measuring data, look out for patterns. Where are customers dropping off? Which pages do customers visit most, and in what order? Which pathways lead to the most sales?

E-merchants need to understand these patterns of user behavior before they can optimize an e-commerce customer journey.

A touchpoint is any time a customer or prospect comes into contact with a brand.

E-merchants need to make a list of every possible way a customer could interact with their brand. This list should include everything from seeing a social media ad to a search result, receiving a retargeting email, leaving a review, or speaking with customer support.

Divide the list into three categories - before, during, and after purchase. There will be a lot of crossover between the three categories.

At this stage, e-merchants will start seeing things from the customers' point of view.

We often see e-commerce customer journeys divided into three stages - awareness, consideration, and decision.

However, what about after the purchase? Repeat purchasing, positive customer reviews, and social proof are all essential to e-commerce success.

Because of this, e-merchants should divide a customer journey map into five stages:

Consideration

For each of the five stages, identify the key touch-points and the customer’s emotions, goals, and needs. Then, establish the brand's goal and actions to take at each stage.

Let's examine each stage of the journey in more detail.

In the awareness stage, customers are just finding out who a brand is and what they represent.

They may have discovered the brand passively through an advertisement, social media or blog post, or actively through organic search.

Therefore, at this stage, the goal of an e-merchant is educating, answering questions, and establishing expertise on the relevant subject matter.

E-merchants need to gain the trust of potential customers, generate some interest, and convince them to find out more.

In this stage, a brand has sparked the customers interest. They’re considering a specific product, but they may be weighing up different options and looking at similar products on competitor’s sites.

Potential customers might do research outside of the pre-defined customer journey, and look at things like social media pages and customer reviews. In this stage, e-merchants may have success in winning customers with a retargeting ad.

At this stage, the primary goals for an e-merchant are to position their product as the perfect solution, explain its advantages, justify the price, keep customers interested, and win their trust.

Once the customer has decided to purchase, an e-merchant’s main goal is to remove any friction that might cause them to abandon their cart. Touch-points at this phase include the website checkout as well as social media, email, or telephone support.

Ensure that the checkout process is quick and simple with no blockers to purchase. If customers need to sign up for a membership or fill out unnecessary information at checkout they might give up and go elsewhere.

Customers may also have some final questions before they purchase, and brands that provide attentive customer service and help customers choose the right product stand a better chance of converting a sale.

Up to the last minute, e-merchants should re-emphasize their value proposition, reinforce customer’s decisions, and create a sense of urgency by showing limited availability.

Don't forget about customers after they've made a purchase. Repeat customers are vital for long-term e-commerce growth, so e-merchants need to work hard at retaining newly won customers .

Automatically enroll customers in a multi-channel post-purchase campaign and keep them engaged with regular emails and SMS messages.

E-merchants can ask customers for feedback, answer any questions they have, and send personalized offers relevant to their purchase. Build a community of loyal customers and keep them up to date on product releases, invite them to special sale events, and reward them with VIP deals.;

Social proof is an invaluable asset for e-merchants. Treat customers who go on to become brand advocates like the VIPs that they are.

Keep in touch with VIP customers via email and SMS campaigns. Ask VIP customers to join rewarding affiliate programs, give valuable brand feedback, and post about specific products or events on their social media sites.

Brands can even acquire testimonials from these loyal customers to publish on their website or blog.

Thank VIP customers for spreading brand awareness with exclusive offers and discounts and make sure they know their efforts are valued.

Step 5: Using an ecommerce customer journey map

An e-commerce customer journey map should help e-merchants answer the following questions:

• How do customers discover your product?
• What research do customers do before making a purchase?
• What "moments of truth" lead to sales or abandonment?
• Do customers consider any of your competitors?
• Do customers have a positive experience on your site?
• How could you improve the experience?
• At what stage in the journey are you losing customers?

The map should tell e-commerce store owners where they need to invest more time and resources.

For example, if people are leaving an online store after waiting too long for a response from customer service, invest time and effort into supplying 5-star support.

If visitors aren't reading through product descriptions, try simplifying them.

If potential customers leave because of unexpected shipping costs, reduce them, or make them clear upfront.

Although it may seem like a long and complicated process, mapping out a detailed e-commerce customer journey is absolutely worth it.

As a result, e-merchants will be able to streamline and optimize the customer’s journey to purchase and beyond.

Throughout the process, e-merchants will learn to empathize with website visitors and adopt a more customer-focused mentality. Furthermore, they will know where to invest the most time and money to get results.

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How to Make Sense of the Ecommerce Customer Journey

No one can deny how big the ecommerce market is. Global ecommerce sales are projected to nearly double to $6.5 trillion by 2023. Its share of total retail sales is also growing, particularly in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

So we know the sector is massive, but how complicated is it? Surely it is just a simple matter of finding the product you want, buying it, then waiting for delivery. Or is there far more to the ecommerce customer journey? There are multiple factors, from lead times to customer service, that makes an ecommerce business a good ecommerce business (or not). 

Modern business, especially ecommerce , is about identifying and utilizing the best tools available. And that covers everything from live video conference software to good CRM management systems. 

Smaller businesses need to find such tools without breaking the bank. Fortunately, they can choose from the best free business apps that will provide great service without denting the budget. Having the ability to be agile and to adapt to changes can be a major positive for your business. 

If you look at a successful online retailer such as Larq , you will see a well-constructed site that is easy to navigate and that also offers links to their various social media platforms. This is a good example of how an ecommerce site should look. It shows they have looked at the customer journey and optimized their site to make it a positive one. 

You need to know each stage of that journey, how those stages affect customer experiences and their relationship with you, and how you can improve the journey at every level and customer touchpoint . Let’s look at how the customer journey unfolds and what factors of customer journey mapping that are important for you to understand.

What is the Ecommerce Customer Journey?

That quote about life from Ralph Waldo Emerson can also be applied to ecommerce businesses. While it is easy to think about the destination—that purchase arriving in the customer’s hands—it is also very much about the journey and what happens en route to that final destination. Just as with life’s journey, every stage of the ecommerce journey has its own features and qualities. 

Our customers no longer buy just a product, they buy the whole experience of being a customer, they buy your brand qualities, your mission and values, and more. They buy into the ease of your processes, the information you provide, the convenience, the quality of your aftersales (and presales if needed) customer service. In short, they look at the whole package you offer.

We all do process mapping for our businesses as a matter of course, so we should be doing the same for the customer experience. You need to understand every aspect of how your business operates, from dealing with logistics to ensuring your customers are happy. 

And do not be afraid to use shortcuts. The very reason tools such as templates are offered is to make it easier for you to conduct business. They can save you time and money and it can be easy to find one that suits you. 

It is not only the price of something that matters to them, it is everything that surrounds it, including how they access your site or app (and how easy it is to use), how you communicate with them across different channels, possibly even using companies like Slack , and how quickly you respond to their inquiries. In short, it is about providing an ecommerce customer journey map that meets all of their needs. 

Focus not only on your customers’ journeys, but also on their relationship with you; that’s important whether you are a small business or a large international one. Investing in customer relationship management (CRM) software is highly advised, especially when you have a multichannel or omnichannel business. 

There are also other aspects to consider. Many people now ask ‘ what is affiliate marketing ’, as offered by MaxBounty, and what is its place in online retail? If you use a strategy such as affiliate marketing, then you need to make sure that a customer’s journey is consistent across all the options open to them. Whether they find you via your own channels or through an affiliate.  

5 Stages of the Ecommerce Customer Journey

So we recognize that the customer journey is far more than a simple buying process. We also recognize that we need to know how to develop a successful ecommerce fulfillment strategy that helps us win and retain customers. Knowing the main stages of that journey is essential to both mapping it and ensuring that it is as optimized as possible. 

And when a business operates across many channels (omnichannel or multichannel ), you need to recognize that their journey may differ greatly depending on which channel they are using. 

1. Awareness.

Every journey has a starting point, and in the ecommerce business, that starting point is awareness. This is the stage where the customer discovers your product/service and your brand. This is also where you discover how they found you. Did they find you via a search engine (thus validating your SEO strategy)? Did they see an ad on social media or in a more traditional medium? 

You can not only see where they came from but also what behaviors they are showing once they have ‘arrived’. Do they look at particular landing pages that give you an idea of what products they are interested in? You could also describe this as the first learning stage; the customer is learning about your business and you are learning their preferences and needs. 

2. Consideration. 

In this stage, the customer begins to show real interest in particular products or services and move beyond general browsing. For example, with a cosmetics company such as Bliss World , they may start looking at the vegan skincare range, letting you see that this is their specific interest product-wise. 

From your organization’s perspective, this stage of behavior allows you to analyze what works and what doesn’t. Those analytics can help you reduce bounce rates and encourage further investigation by the customer. 

3. Conversion. 

One of the magic words in ecommerce, but this stage is not always a guaranteed sale. In some cases, this stage can include those customers who have added a product to their cart (or to their wishlist) but have not yet proceeded to actually buying it. In most cases, though, we do consider this to be the stage at which a prospective customer becomes an actual customer who adds to your conversion rate. 

It is at this stage that you as a business have to begin delivering on any promises you may have made to get the customer to this point. Part of that delivery is making sure all your processes, such as marketing, sales, customer service, etc., are aligned and are delivering the same message and quality of service. 

4. Retention. 

Another of those magic words. Having a customer make a single purchase is satisfying, but having them return again and again to buy is even more satisfying. This means they are very happy with most or all aspects of their journey and experience to date. From this point they begin to exhibit brand loyalty and may always look at your site before others. 

The thing for businesses to be aware of at this stage is that providing an excellent experience once is fairly easy, but providing it time and time again is where the challenge lies. 

5. Advocacy. 

This stage is the Holy Grail of the customer journey but do not expect to achieve it with every customer. Most companies fall short at stage four, but those who do manage to retain customers are then hoping that those people become advocates and brand ambassadors with a high lifetime value. At this stage, your best customers are not only buying but interacting at a high level. 

They will interact with you across most if not all of your touchpoints, such as your homepage, any blogs, social media, etc. More importantly (from your marketing perspective), they will be sharing information that you post on their own platforms and will actively advocate and talk about your products/services. That can also include recommending you to people and writing reviews. 

Building an Ecommerce Customer Journey Map

An ecommerce customer journey map is a visualization of all the potential experiences a customer may have with your organization. Such a map also highlights the sequences those experiences are most likely to occur in. It can allow you as a business to identify strengths and weaknesses, and thus make improvements where needed. 

That customer journey may consist of all the stages we previously listed or they may only cover some of them, if customers do not move to later stages. What you need to focus on is that a customer journey map will show you all the possible permutations of what the customer experiences, whether only one or two stages or all five.

How Do You Build Ecommerce Customer Journey Maps?

Being able to map the customer journey offers many benefits, but if you have never undertaken this exercise before, where do you start? What things do you need to consider before starting? 

1. Perspective.

The first important thing to note is that you need your map to be from the customer’s perspective. So, detach yourself from your professional role and start the process as if you were an everyday customer. This can also help you understand the overall customer persona. 

To do so, pick a product or service your company offers. Use various terms on search engines to see what results come up. Read any associated material including reviews, articles, and blogs. Then visit your actual site to view the product there. Take notes on how the various customer touchpoints felt and how the experience of visiting the site unfolded. 

2. Research. 

Put together a focus group that consists of your main demographic targets. Ideally, they will not know what company or brand has formed this group. Pick one of your products or services and ask the focus group to find and buy that item online. Observe and record how they find the item, what paths they take, and what outcomes unfold. 

Once the focus group has finished their exercise, take the results and compare them with your experience from part one. By analyzing the two exercises, you can see if you and your customers think in the same way, and will also have a wider overview of touchpoints and interactions.  

3. Understanding.

You now have a better overview of how customers interact with your business and how the various touchpoints perform. You now need to understand what those various actions mean in terms of engagement strategy. Did any touchpoint perform particularly badly? By analyzing the information you have collected, you can see what action you need to take next. 

Your aim is to have your ecommerce site performing at an optimum level at every touchpoint you (and your customers) have identified. Those touchpoints can range from your own site to your social media platforms to search engine rankings. They can also include independent touchpoints such as review sites. 

4. Goals and pain.

You now have some of the foundations of your customer journey map in place. But it is more than just identifying the touchpoints and engagements you have observed. You also need to understand the goals of the customer and the pain points they experience. It can help greatly if you list some of the insights gained from your observation and data collection:

Goals . What is the customer’s ultimate goal(s)? What is it they want to achieve?

Emotional response . What parts of the process make the customer happy? Or what elements make them unhappy or frustrated? 

Pain points . What things cause issues for the customer and would they like to see improved? 

5. Visualization.

Image source  

You should now have enough (likely a lot) of information that tells you what the customer experiences. The problem is that this information is not easy to digest, so you want to simplify it and create a visual that is easy to look at and understand. How you format it will depend very much on your own specific business model. 

You may decide to create more than one visual, especially when you are a larger company and may have different teams working on different areas. For example, if you have a dedicated social media team, you may decide to create a journey map that particularly pertains to social media touchpoints, pain points, experiences, etc. 

Why is the Customer Journey Important?

Do you really need to make a customer journey map? What benefits does it bring you? Knowing why it is important is as crucial as understanding the whole process itself. There are many reasons why it is not only important, but should be an integral part of your ecommerce business. 

Efficiency . It can help you streamline the customer experience and journey by identifying if there are too many steps or touchpoints between the customer starting their journey and ending it. 

Effectiveness . Does the required journey make sense to your customers? Acknowledging that we all do things differently, from how we search to how we navigate a site, creating a process that has a general effectiveness for most is a major benefit of a customer journey map. 

Understanding . Knowing and understanding your customers, how they think, what they need, what they like and don’t like, is another crucial factor in determining how to create the best possible customer journey. In fact, this is an area where many organizations fail as they focus more on creating the perfect journey for them, rather than their customers. 

Setting goals . A good customer journey map can help you identify and set better and more realistic goals. The combination of a human perspective and the hard data you have collected ensures you are more in touch with what makes your business thrive and grow. It also helps you monitor and tweak in real time as you move forward. 

Planning . Every business has one eye on the future; new products and services, expansion, etc. Having an accurate customer journey map, and understanding it, means that you can more accurately focus on those future events. 

Reducing pain . Pain points are the bane of any online stores and can lose you customers if not identified and remedied. You may be surprised by how many pain points exist once you have completed your journey map. Once you have identified them, you can take action to remove them or to reduce their effects. 

How Ecommerce Stores Can Improve Their Customer Journey

For companies looking closely at their customers’ journeys for the first time, it can sometimes be daunting when flaws and gaps are identified that are having a very real effect on your business. Mapping the customer journey is one thing, but knowing how you can act on the data you have identified and improving the customer journey and experience is another. 

1. Create touchpoints at every stage.

Anywhere a customer interacts with your brand is a touchpoint. Seeing an ad, visiting your site, looking at independent reviews, contacting your business to find store locations, and finally making a purchase. All of these are touchpoints. Going back to the five stages of the customer journey we discussed earlier, you need to have touchpoints for each stage. 

Each touchpoint serves a purpose and plays its part in optimizing the overall customer journey. So each touchpoint you create has to fulfil its specific purpose (ad attracting interest, checkout process quick and uncomplicated, etc.) Ensuring you have multiple touchpoints that fit their respective stages and work properly is essential. 

2. Optimize your website for every device.

It is worth remembering that around half of all internet traffic originates from mobile devices . So if your website performs poorly when accessed from a mobile device, you are in effect alienating half your potential customer base. Optimization is key to offering a good experience to all. 

It can help to look at great websites that are well optimized, such as Skullcandy , so you can see what is needed. The screenshot below shows how well you can view their products from a mobile device, making online shopping easier for customers. 

And there are a few factors to take into consideration when optimizing your site:

Test your site . Knowing your site works well on mobile devices is absolutely crucial. You can do this manually at first simply by accessing your site via several different devices. Look especially at loading times and how the site looks on a small screen. For more in-depth testing, use Google’s free testing tool . 

Web host . Make sure your web host offers the speed and resources required to make your site fast and responsive. A slow and unresponsive home page and website will put customers off. You also want a host that guarantees the minimum of downtime. 

Apps . Consider launching an app to complement your website. They are not as expensive as you think and they can help boost both sales and engagement . 

3. Use proactive customer support.

Don’t wait for problems to happen and for customers to contact you. Anticipate the problems or questions most likely to occur and provide answers and solutions that will keep your customers happy. Offering proactive customer support has a number of benefits. 

Better customer retention rates. Being proactive means you’re more likely to have happy, loyal customers.

Less calls to your support team. By solving problems proactively, customers can see the solutions themselves and thus will make less calls to you, freeing up your team to deal with more complicated queries and also reducing waiting times. 

More first time customers. People talk about the good service they receive and that includes proactive support. When satisfied customers share their experiences, that can lead to new first-time customers. 

Increased productivity. Proactivity means better communication. And that means your team has more time to listen to and help customers who call and to collect more information and data.

Communication. You are probably already using video and messaging collaboration tools for sales teams , so why not ensure you also have great tools to communicate with customers. Chatbots and AI are great ways of proactively helping your customers find information. 

4. Personalization is key.

It is neither a secret nor a surprise that people like a personal touch, and that is true whether in ‘real life’ or in online shopping and ecommerce marketing. That means going beyond using their name (which you can do with website automation or in marketing emails) and also recognizing their particular interests and buying habits. 

Using tactics such as dynamic content marketing, which can customize content according to buying preferences, location, age, gender, etc., means you are offering a personalized approach that can lead to increased sales and better customer retention. Automation and analytics can be the two drivers when it comes to personalizing the customer journey, so use them wisely. 

Smaller businesses may feel they could be overwhelmed by these demands, but with so much technology and automation available on a budget, it is not that difficult to do. There are many mobile apps for small business owners that can help with factors such as communications and social media posting, so see what tools can both help you and save money that may be spent elsewhere. 

5. Gather data as much as possible and be flexible.

Data is not a one off exercise. Collect as much data as possible in the early stages, but keep collecting it always. Collect data not only on customer behavior and the customer lifecycle, but also general info via surveys, polls, etc. on your social media platforms and via email. The data you collect is a hugely important resource and offers you several benefits and potential uses.

And it is, of course, not just about collecting data, but about analyzing it and interpreting it efficiently. Consider using one of the many tools, such as Google Analytics, to help you with this. Identify what metrics, such as KPIs, matter most to you. A good KPI helps show your business is healthy. 

Data is not just a collection of information, it offers tangible benefits that can help your business grow by developing strategies for the future . 

Understand the market . Collecting and analyzing consumer data helps you understand how your ideal customers behave online. It helps define and segment particular demographics, understand better what customers want, and see ways to improve the overall experience throughout the customer lifecycle. 

Expand your database . The more information you have on customers, the bigger, and more efficient, your database is. And with detailed data, you can segment your customers (and potential customers) into groups that make more personalized strategies, such as dynamic content marketing, easier to achieve. 

A larger database allows you to use a variety of strategies. For example, instant messaging can be a great way to boost your ecommerce sales.  

Better marketing . By constantly collecting data, you get better insights into which of your marketing strategies and campaigns have worked well. The more data you have, the easier it is to identify which sorts of campaigns are best, and what platforms reach more of your ideal customer base and generate more leads. 

Those campaigns could be via social media or you could identify what sort of email campaigns best drive sales.  

Customer relationship management is perhaps one of the most important factors for ecommerce businesses to consider and it is worth investing in good CRM software to help with this. You may understand the customer journey, but managing that journey on an ongoing basis is a big task. 

Aim to be consistent and to ensure you provide the same positive customer experience throughout every journey. Your online store has to be as accessible and helpful as any physical store would be. And that applies to every channel, platform, and touchpoint where your customers interact with you. 

Ecommerce businesses range from massive multinational corporations to small solo entrepreneurs. Customers range from occasional purchasers of low value items to regular buyers of high value goods. No matter who you are or who they are, you should be aiming for parity so that every journey and experience is positive.

Pohan Lin is the Senior Global Web Marketing Manager at RingCentral, a global UCaaS, VoIP and video conferencing solutions providers. He has over 18 years variety experience in web marketing, online SaaS business and ecommerce growth. Pohan has a passion for innovation and communicating the impact that technology has in marketing.

Create an e-commerce customer journey map with a free tool

Customer journey mapping in e-commerce is a diagram that illustrates the steps your customers go through in engaging with your online business. It starts when they first become aware of your products, to completing a purchase. It can extend to after-purchase care.

Buying and selling products on the internet is as popular as ever. There are many small and medium sized businesses entering online shopping space thanks to popular e-commerce sites like Shopify or BigCommerce. If they want to build up their market share and not lose out, they need to ensure smooth customer experience.

It all boils down to one thing—

Mapping e-commerce customer journey.

It lets you understand customer's complex interactions with your brand and meet their needs.

This article covers the following topics:

• Why journey mapping for our e-commerce is important?
• Creating an e-commerce journey map with examples
• Online shopping challenges and how to solve them
• Bonus: e-commerce journey template

Why is journey mapping in e-commerce important?

Designing a customer journey map in e-commerce is key to:

• Understand customer interactions across different touchpoints (ads, newsletter, T&Cs, customer support, and many more)
• Identify customer's pain points
• Improve satisfaction scores and increase the number of returnig customers
• Improve existing operations based on concrete data
• Identify potential new target groups
• Strategize how to reach customers in the future

Sounds good?

Let's see where to start!

How to create an e-commerce customer journey map?

At Smaply, we know the ropes of making customer journey map . So even if you have never done this before, we'll guide you through the process. You can even use Smaply's free customer journey mapping software with our tips and tricks to speed the process up.

1. Empathize with customer personas

There is no customer journey map without a customer. So you have to think about who our customer is—or should be to understand their needs and expectations.

The first step is to create a persona that represents this target group in a customer-centric way. Defining a persona in e-commerce can help you answer some important questions:

• What does the user need/want?
• What channels and devices does the persona use in order to research products?
• How price-sensitive is the user?
• What are their concrete expectations about their online shopping experience?
• What products does the persona value?

By answering these questions, you can get a better understanding of your target group. The questions above are just examples. You could also include country specific questions or cultural differences. Just think about which information might be helpful for their e-commerce journey.

Check out the example profile of a persona in a customer journey map for an online shop.

Keep in mind that when you run an online shop, you should also examine potential customers or leads.

2. Define the scope of the e-commerce journey map

When creating a journey map, you can choose between various scales and scopes.

When you start out, we recommend that you use a high-level journey map to visualize the whole experience the user has with your brand. From finding to your e-commerce site, searching for the right product, the check-out process, and up until the product delivery.

Then, you can create a more detailed map to dive deeper into a specific step. For example, you might want to focus on the product search on your website through different category pages or the check-out funnel.

Many e-commerce shops lose customers during the check-out process. It might be useful to investigate this step. Is the process intuitive? Or is it confusing for customers?

3. Analyze experiences, step by step, stage by stage

Now, we have to map down the user’s journey.

Every e-commerce journey map consists of several stages and steps:

Once we’ve defined the stages, think about the different steps and touchpoints customers experience when they are interacting with your online shop. The level of detail of each step depends on the overall scale of the map that we’ve defined above. Ask yourself:

• What are the steps within each stage?
• What are the customers’ goals and pain points at each step of the journey?
• What are your own business goals for each step?
• Where do your current customers drop out of the journey, leave our website?
• Do they get the right information at the right time?

There's one important thing to keep in mind at this point—

The customer journey starts before users get to our website. It starts with a need, a desire for a more or less specific product. Also, the customer's e-commerce journey does't end at the checkout. Nor when users hold the product in their hands.

Customers experience and interact with your brand after completing the online purchase. For example, when contacting support, returning to your shop, or recommending the brand to their social network.

5. Visualizing processes

This is an often neglected step in mapping e-commerce journeys.

You can also focus on the backstage activities happening during the journey. What needs to happen behind the scene, outside of the customers’ view to deliver a smooth experience? Close to a service blueprint, visualizing different levels of processes helps webiste owners better understand who’s involved at what step of an experience and who is responsible for their optimization.

In the below map you can see a strong focus on enabling processes could look like.

For comprehensive and complex journey maps with advanced lane and content types like those above, use a digital customer journey mapping software .

Examples of journey maps in e-commerce

This simple e-commerce journey map illustrates the steps of two different personas and compares their experience. It visualizes:

• Channels they use
• Their emotions
• Involvement (dramatic arc)
• Ideas for improvement
• Backstage lane that provides a rough idea of  the processes that are invisible to the customer

This example of online shopping experience map shows a strong focus on backstage processes. It clearly differentiates between processes that are visible to the customers, and processes that aren’t. Hence, it gets very close to a service blueprint.

What are the challenges of mapping journeys in e-commerce?

Getting lost in all the data.

In e-commerce, it is common to collect loads of data about users, their preferences, purchase history, and needs. It can be extremely useful and help get a better and more holistic understanding of your customers. However, using all this data too early in the process of mapping e-commerce journeys can prevent you from understanding of the big picture.

Quantitative data (e.g., from Google Analytics) is a good resource for sure, but remember to look at qualitative data, too. For example, try to interview some of your customers after the purchase or send them a customer survey to get some qualitative insights.

The good thing about qualitative data is that it helps us find the biggest pain points easily. If there’s a hole in the street and three pedestrians point to it, we don’t need another 10 folks to confirm this, right?

Also, quantitative data will never give you an answer to the “why”:

• Why did users visit your page?
• Why did they buy from your site, and not another?
• Why did they abandon the cart?

Some more questions that could be interesting to dive into are:

• How did they research the product in the first place?
• What online and offline channels did they use?
• How do they evaluate the experience on our website?
• How do our users think your page could be improved?

Consider context and think cross-channel

Many different channels influence the e-commerce journey: website, shopping app, review portals and word of mouth…

Even though a big part of a service is being used in an online context, it does not mean customers don’t have any offline experiences. Consider physical context and direct, personal interaction! Is your online shop accessible to everyone? What do customer reviews tell others about your customer service? This is something you will  learn from Google Analytics!

Empty template for an e-commerce journey map

It’s time to create your own journey map!

Download this set of paper templates , or start creating digital journey maps with Smaply !

Create user-focused journey maps to understand the user experience and innovate your services. Smaply lets you easily create e-commerce journey maps, personas, and ecosystem maps with an in-app template.

Sign up now, it's free!

Antonia Cramer

Antonia keeps her eyes open for questions people interested in service design are looking to answer, and helps us provide resources to support their learning ambitions. With her background in digital communication she has great knowledge on how to create content that is easy to access and understand.

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The Online Shopper Journey Explained: How to Create a Seamless Customer Experience

Customer experience is the key to eCommerce success. It is how you make your customers feel when they interact with your online store, products, and service.

In this article, we will explain what customer experience is, why it matters, and how you can enhance the online shopper journey.

What Is the eCommerce Customer Journey?

The eCommerce customer journey is a series of steps a potential customer takes before eventually purchasing. It starts with becoming aware of the product or service, considering whether it meets their needs, and then buying it.

But the journey doesn't end there. The eCommerce customer journey also includes post-purchase engagement and loyalty, which can lead to repeat purchases and referrals.

So why is the eCommerce customer journey important? Because it helps you understand your customers better, optimize your marketing strategies, and deliver a better customer experience.

By mapping out the eCommerce customer journey, you can identify the touch points where customers interact with your brand, the pain points where they face challenges or frustrations, and the opportunities where you can delight them and encourage them to take action.

The eCommerce customer journey is not linear or uniform. It can vary depending on the product, the customer, and the channel. However, there are some common stages that most customers go through, such as awareness, consideration, decision, and retention.

In this article, we will explain each stage of the eCommerce customer journey and how you can improve yours to increase conversions and retention.

Stages of The eCommerce Customer Journey

To understand and optimize your eCommerce customer journey, you need to know the different stages that customers go through before and after buying from you. In this section, we will explain the five main stages of the eCommerce customer journey and how to improve each one.

This is when potential customers discover your brand and products through various channels, such as social media, search engines, blogs, or word-of-mouth. They are looking for solutions to their problems or needs, and they become aware of your offerings.

At this stage, your goal is to capture their attention and interest and educate them about your value proposition. You can do this by creating engaging content, running targeted ads, optimizing your SEO, and leveraging social proof.

Consideration

This is when potential customers evaluate your products and compare them with other options. They are looking for more information, such as features, benefits, reviews, testimonials, or demos.

They are also considering factors such as price, delivery, warranty, or customer service. At this stage, your goal is to persuade them that your products are the best solution for their needs and that they can trust you as a reliable seller.

You can do this by providing clear and compelling product pages, offering free trials or samples, showcasing customer success stories, and providing live chat or phone support.

This is when potential customers are ready to buy from you. They have narrowed down their choices and decided that your products are the ones they want. They are looking for a smooth and easy checkout process, a secure payment method, and a confirmation of their order.

At this stage, your goal is to remove any friction or hesitation that might prevent them from completing their purchase. You can do this by offering multiple payment options, displaying trust badges, providing free shipping or discounts, and sending order confirmation emails.

This is when existing customers continue to buy from you. They have had a positive experience with your products and service, and they are loyal to your brand. They are looking for more value, such as new products, recommendations, rewards, or referrals.

At this stage, your goal is to increase customer lifetime value and advocacy. You can do this by sending personalized emails, offering loyalty programs or coupons, requesting feedback or reviews, and encouraging referrals or social sharing.

This is when customers become brand advocates and actively recommend your products or services to others. This is the most powerful form of marketing, as it’s based on word-of-mouth and referral traffic.

At this stage, your goal is to amplify customer satisfaction and loyalty. You can do this by rewarding customers for their advocacy, featuring them on your website or social media channels, creating user-generated content campaigns, and asking them to join your online community.

How To Create An Online Shopper Journey Map

An online shopper journey map is a visual representation of how customers interact with your eCommerce store, from the moment they become aware of your brand to the moment they make a purchase and beyond.

It helps you understand their needs, expectations, and emotions at each stage of the journey, and identify the opportunities and challenges they face along the way.

Creating an online shopper journey map can help you improve your customer experience, increase conversions, and build loyalty. Here are the steps to create one:

1. Identify Your Target Audience

Before you can map your customer journey, you need to know who your customers are. You can use buyer personas to segment your target audience based on their demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and goals.

Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers that help you understand their pain points, motivations, and preferences. You can create buyer personas by conducting market research, surveys, interviews, or using analytics tools.

2. Define The Stages Of The Journey

Next, you need to define the stages of the customer journey that your personas go through when they shop online. These stages may vary depending on your business model, product type, and industry.

But, as we’ve already discussed, you need to map out how you’ll work with customers across the five stages of the customer journey.

3. Outline the Touchpoints

A touchpoint is any point of interaction between the customer and your brand, such as a website visit, an email, a social media post, or a phone call.

You need to outline all the touchpoints that occur at each stage of the journey and how they influence the customer's behavior and perception.

You can use analytics tools, customer feedback, or user testing to identify the touchpoints and measure their effectiveness.

4. Gather Customer Insights

To create a realistic and accurate customer journey map, you need to gather insights from your customers' perspectives. You need to understand what they are thinking, feeling, and doing at each touchpoint and stage of the journey.

You can use qualitative and quantitative methods to collect customer insights, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, reviews, ratings, comments, or metrics.

5. Map the Journey

You need to map the customer journey using a visual tool or template that shows the stages of the journey, the touchpoints at each stage, and the customer insights for each touchpoint.

You can use different colors, icons, shapes, or graphs to illustrate the customer journey map and make it easy to understand. You can also add opportunities or pain points that you discover along the way and figure out how you can address them.

6. Add Customer Emotions and Actions

To make your customer journey map more comprehensive and human-centered, you need to add customer emotions and actions at each touchpoint and stage of the journey. Customer emotions are how customers feel about their interactions with your brand, such as happy, frustrated, satisfied, or disappointed.

Customer actions are what customers do as a result of their emotions or needs, such as browsing your website, adding items to their cart, abandoning their cart, or contacting support.

You can use emoticons, words, or scales to indicate customer emotions and actions on your map.

7. Identify Pain Points and Opportunities

One of the main purposes of creating a customer journey map is to identify pain points and opportunities for improvement along the way. Pain points are any issues or challenges that customers face that prevent them from having a positive experience or achieving their goals.

Opportunities are any areas where you can enhance the customer experience or provide more value to customers. You can use symbols, colors, or labels to mark pain points and opportunities on your map.

8. Validate and Iterate

Once you have created your customer journey map, you need to validate it with real data and feedback from your customers. You can use various methods, such as surveys, interviews, or analytics tools, to test your assumptions and verify your findings.

You may discover new insights or gaps in your map that require you to revise or update it. You should also iterate your map regularly to reflect any changes in your business, market, or customer behavior.

9. Use the Journey Map to Drive Improvements

Creating a customer journey map is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end: improving the customer experience and achieving your business goals.

Therefore, you need to use the journey map to drive improvements and actions that will enhance the customer journey and deliver more value to your customers.

To use the journey map effectively, you need to:

Communicate it: Share your journey map with your team, stakeholders, and partners. Explain the purpose, process, and findings of your journey mapping project. Highlight the pain points and opportunities you identified and how they affect the customer experience and your business outcomes. Use storytelling techniques and visual aids to make your journey map engaging and memorable.

Prioritize it: Based on your journey map, prioritize the areas that need improvement or optimization. Consider the impact, feasibility, and urgency of each improvement opportunity. Use a matrix or a scoring system to rank them and decide which ones to focus on first.

Implement it: Based on your priorities, create an action plan that outlines the steps, resources, and timelines for implementing the improvements. Assign roles and responsibilities to your team members and partners. Track and measure the progress and results of your actions using relevant metrics and indicators.

Update it: As you implement your improvements, monitor and evaluate their effects on the customer journey and experience. Collect feedback from your customers and analyze their behavior and satisfaction. Update your journey map accordingly to reflect any changes or new insights. Repeat the process as needed to keep your journey map current and relevant.

Why Is the Customer Journey Necessary For eCommerce Platforms?

The customer journey is necessary for eCommerce platforms because it helps them understand and improve the customer experience, which is crucial for their success and growth.

The customer experience is the sum of all the interactions and emotions that customers have with a brand, from the first contact to the post-purchase stage. It affects customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, advocacy, and ultimately, revenue.

According to a study by PwC, 73% of consumers say that customer experience is an important factor in their purchasing decisions, and 43% would pay more for greater convenience.

Moreover, 65% of consumers say that a positive experience with a brand is more influential than great advertising.

By mapping the customer journey, eCommerce platforms can gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s needs, expectations, and pain points at each stage of the journey.

They can also identify the opportunities and challenges they face along the way, and how they can address them.

By using the customer journey map to drive improvements, eCommerce platforms can enhance the customer experience and deliver more value to their customers.

They can also align their operations and messaging with customer expectations, leading to more efficient and effective communication and marketing.

How Can You Enhance Your Customer's Experience?

Enhancing your customer's experience is not only beneficial for your customers but also for your eCommerce business. A positive customer experience can increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, advocacy, and revenue.

According to a study by Adobe , companies with the strongest omnichannel customer engagement strategies enjoy a 10% year-over-year growth, a 10% increase in average order value, and a 25% increase in close rates.

So how can you enhance your customer's experience and achieve these results? Here are some tips and best practices to follow:

1. Always Ask For Their Feedback

One of the best ways to improve your customer's experience is to ask them for their feedback.

Feedback can help you understand what your customers like and dislike about your eCommerce store, products, and service. It can also help you identify their needs, expectations, and pain points.

You can use various methods to collect feedback from your customers, such as surveys, reviews, ratings, comments, or social media. You can also use tools like GetFeedback to create and manage feedback campaigns across multiple channels.

2. Optimize for Search Engines

Another way to enhance your customer's experience is to optimize your eCommerce store for search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) can help you rank higher on search results pages and drive more organic traffic to your store.

SEO can also improve your site's usability, speed, and relevance, which can positively impact your customer's experience.

You can use various techniques to optimize your eCommerce store for SEO, such as conducting keyword research, creating quality content, optimizing your site structure and navigation, using meta tags and schema markup, improving your site speed and mobile-friendliness, and building backlinks.

3. Have Good Customer Support

Having good customer support is essential for enhancing your customer's experience. Customer support is how you help your customers with their questions, issues, or complaints. Customer support can influence your customer's satisfaction, trust, and loyalty.

You can provide good customer support by offering multiple channels of communication, such as phone, email, chat, or social media. You can also use tools like ProProfs Desk to manage your customer support tickets and queries efficiently and effectively.

4. Personalization Is Necessary

Personalization is another way to enhance your customer's experience. Personalization is how you tailor your eCommerce store, products, and marketing to suit your customer's preferences, behavior, and needs.

Personalization can increase your customer's engagement, relevance, and conversion rates .

You can use various methods to personalize your eCommerce store, such as using customer data and analytics, segmenting your customers into groups or personas, creating personalized recommendations or offers, sending personalized emails or messages, or using dynamic content or landing pages.

5. Analyze Customer Behavior

Analyzing customer behavior is also important for enhancing your customer's experience.

Customer behavior is how your customers interact with your eCommerce store, such as what pages they visit, what products they view or buy, what actions they take, or what feedback they leave.

Analyzing customer behavior can help you understand your customer’s needs, motivations, and pain points. It can also help you identify the opportunities and challenges in your customer journey and optimize your eCommerce store accordingly. You can use various tools to analyze customer behavior, but naturally, we think you should give Woopra a try .

The Bottom Line

To conclude, enhancing your customer’s experience is vital for your eCommerce success.

By following the tips and best practices mentioned above, you can create a positive and memorable customer experience that will increase your customer satisfaction, loyalty, retention, advocacy, and revenue. Start improving your customer’s experience today and see the difference it makes.

Full insight into the customer journey. No SQL required.

Get started with Woopra for free to see who your customers are, what they do and what keeps them coming back.

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Learn / Guides / Customer journey mapping (CJM) guide

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How 5 businesses successfully mapped out the customer journey

Creating a customer journey map puts you in your customers’ shoes to help you understand the user experience—what your users think, feel, and do at each stage of their buying journey.

Last updated

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We’ve put together a list of five brilliant customer journey mapping (CJM) examples to show you how it’s done, so you can learn how to improve the user experience (UX) for your customers. 

Want to know how customers really interact with your product?

Hotjar’s product experience insights tools let you see things through their eyes. 

5 great examples of customer journey mapping 

A good customer journey map identifies buyers’ actions, desires, and experiences at every key touchpoint—from when a customer lands on your webpage all the way to conversion, onboarding, and beyond.

Our list of customer journey examples breaks down the best B2B, B2C, ecommerce, and SaaS journey maps—and shows you how to understand your customers better to build your own.

1. Hotjar’s B2B customer journey map 

At Hotjar (👋), we make product experience (PX) insights tools to help businesses understand how their customers interact with their websites and digital products. And, of course, we’ve done some B2B customer journey mapping of our own to understand what our customers want, by tracking their interactions across key touchpoints. 

The result was the digital customer journey example shown above that maps our customers' experience when they use Hotjar tools for product testing. We visualized the key actions, questions, technical limitations, and opportunities of customers using our tools to get granular data to validate our product ideas and experiments. 

We started by identifying one specific customer journey, then used Google Analytics, Hotjar tools, and data from customer interactions with our brand to understand user actions, thoughts, and feelings. Then, we got UX, dev, engineering, and customer success teams to fill out empathy maps before mapping the journey. 

To increase empathy with our customers, we included two rows dedicated to pain points and happy moments—like the pain of finding patterns in complex customer data, and the ‘a-ha moment' when our users first realize value.  

We made our map flexible enough to be updated as customer needs change and new information becomes available, so we continually validate our assumptions against customers’ real-world experiences.

The benefits of customer journey mapping included helping us visualize customer motivations, drivers, and pain points, align cross-functional teams , eliminate silos, and clarify who owns each part of the buyer journey. 

How B2B companies selling self-serve digital products can create a similar map: 

1. Define the goal and scope of your customer journey map. We recommend starting with a narrow scope and only a few people involved. Focus on a specific problem you can break down into a few steps—like identifying where you’re losing users, and mapping out the pains, desires, and experiences of customers who exit your site.

Ask yourself: 

What do you want to achieve? 

Which customer journey touchpoints do you want to focus on? 

What KPIs do you want to measure? 

Where can you get the data you need? 

Which teams need to be involved?   

2. Use Google Analytics and Hotjar's Observe tools to collect user insights about online interactions:

Create Hotjar Heatmaps on key product pages to see where users are clicking and which parts of your page aren’t engaging users or working as intended. Then, improve UX and optimize the placement of on-page elements to boost conversions. 

Use Session Recordings to see how users scroll, click, and move around your site across an entire session. Focus on spotting bugs and blockers that cause them to bounce. 

3. Add qualitative user data from service chat logs, emails, or by asking customer support teams. 

4. Get key product and customer service teams to fill in an empathy map detailing what your buyers do, say, see, hear, think, and feel. Feel free to steal our free template below!

5. Map the journey with Post-its and pens before digitizing it and sharing it across the company. 

2. Rail Europe’s B2C journey map 

B2C ecommerce travel provider Rail Europe gives customers an easy way to book rail tickets online. Their on-site user interface (UI) is strong, but the company wanted to go deeper to understand the customer journey across all touchpoints. 

Mapping the customer journey produced a full spectrum customer experience map that illustrates the buyer's journey before, during, and after a purchase. It reminded their team that the buyer journey starts long before a customer lands on the website to book a ticket—and continues after the trip, through touchpoints like post-trip refunds, sharing recommendations, or publishing photos on social media. 

Rail Europe’s customer journey map also shows the transition between stages or channels to accurately visualize what is often a non-linear journey . For example, in the initial research, planning, and shopping phases, customers often move back and forth between comparison pages, checking timetables, and website chat and planning features.  

Mapping the journey like this helps Rail Europe understand different customers’ channel preferences, see which touchpoints aren’t working as they should, and which aspects of the user experience need more attention from design teams, marketing, and customer support. They visualized actions, thoughts, feelings, and experiences and rated the customer satisfaction of each stage, as well as the relevance and helpfulness of Rail Europe, to home in on areas for improvement.

The map doubles down on customer empathy by identifying travelers’ overall concerns and frustrations while on the trip, even those unrelated to their rail journey—the overall travel experience is still connected with the company brand in customers’ minds. 

This stand-alone map can be understood across teams without supporting materials, and there’s a focus on actionable insights—like the need to address customer frustrations over snail mail ticket delivery. 

Ecommerce website analysis like this is valuable for any company selling experiential products or services, like concert tickets, vacations, or tours. If that’s you, follow Rail Europe’s example and conduct customer journey map research by surveying current and potential customers to uncover exactly what they’re hoping for, thinking, and feeling as they engage with your brand.

Tips to map out the ecommerce customer journey:

1. Ask yourself: 

How can we access users who aren’t yet customers? 

What happens before the customer gets to our web page? How do they do research for a trip? What kinds of search keywords do they use online?  

Is the buyer journey non-linear? If not, how can we represent this? 

2. If your buyer journey has multiple touchpoints, group them into categories like 'research and planning', 'shopping', 'booking', etc. 

3. Match survey insights to touchpoints and map out the journey visually, adding qualitative insights about what the customer is thinking, feeling, and doing at each stage. 

💡 Pro tip: use Hotjar Surveys to collect real-time suggestions about your website or app from users to make data-driven decisions and validate assumptions that inform and elevate your customer journey map. 

Hotjar’s no-code UI makes it easy to create drag-and-drop surveys  

3. Rewind’s SaaS customer journey map 

Rewind makes backup & restoration software for SaaS platforms. Their team decided to map out the B2B SaaS customer journey when revenue fell short of expectations after the acquisition of a similar product. It also became clear that marketing efforts weren’t attracting the ideal customer.

Like many SaaS companies, Rewind relied on sales calls and customer relationship management (CRM) data to understand their users. But they were missing key insights about what happens before the customer lands on their website. 

To map the journey, the Rewind team defined their ideal customer profile (ICP) before conducting customer interviews to deeply understand buyer motivations and the decision-making process. They also used Google Analytics, Hubspot , and PX insights tools to understand users’ online behavior and how they were interacting with marketing materials. 

This showed them a short, high-intent, back-and-forth customer journey that happens almost exclusively online—since Rewind is installed in SaaS platforms, a lot of traffic is referred from their app marketplaces. 

The map showed event triggers and the customer’s thoughts and feelings as they moved through becoming aware of their problem (loss of important data), understanding the need for a solution, and doing online research—before arriving at Rewind.  

By mapping the full journey, the Rewind team discovered that customers often use professional forums or communities as part of solution research, and discovered a new buyer motivation and market segment: data compliance. 

According to Content Lift Founder Ryan Paul Gibson , who helped Rewind conduct customer interviews, the company also realized “potential buyers don’t want to speak with sales or ‘get a demo'. They want to research the product themselves and evaluate it. They also don’t want to enter a credit card to test it; they want to try it first and pay if it’s a good fit.” 

Rewind updated their go-to-market strategy, personas, product positioning , and marketing to complete these missing steps in the customer journey map.

The result? A two-fold increase in product installations, and better internal alignment on their ICP—which has improved their efficiency and helped them maximize resources. 

To create a great SaaS customer journey map: 

Set your research objectives

Create a list of topics that align with your ideal buyer journey. For example, in Rewind’s case, they were customers’ reasons for buying, details about their company and role, and what caused them to start searching for a solution. 

Create questions to ask customers during interviews, but leave flexibility for discussion.

Run in-depth customer interviews to capture the exact order of events in the buyer journey and make sure you understand every customer action and touchpoint—from users identifying a problem to making a purchase.

Bucket interview insights into user priorities, pains, and anxieties—what happened to trigger a search; which research channels the customer uses; how they evaluate solutions.

4. Spotify’s B2C customer journey map 

When music streaming app Spotify mapped the user journey, their team focused on tracking touchpoints for one specific feature: sharing playlists via third-party apps.  

Their map zeroes in on clearly defined user personas and identifies key areas of customer engagement with a focus on users’ emotions and thoughts at each stage.

The team’s journey mapping research revealed a key customer pain point—fear of being judged for their music taste—that can hold users back from sharing music. They also identified an awareness gap to address: some users didn’t know the feature existed. 

By mapping the user journey, Spotify improved their UI and in-app flows to streamline the customer experience and make every touchpoint relevant to how real customers use the product.  

Mapping user flows is key for digital B2C brands with a product that lives and dies by good usability—and a business model that relies on customer loyalty. 

To map the user journey before improving or launching a feature:  

Conduct market research based on direct and indirect competitors to understand how people use similar features, and what they expect from yours. 

In user interviews , focus on the specific feature or stage of the journey. Why aren’t customers using it as you’d like? What are the barriers to product adoption? Dig deep into what motivates users to complete a specific action—and what blocks them.  

Using interview data, create a buyer persona and include their key needs and motivations. What can you do to bring this feature to their attention and boost adoption? 

Create a customer journey map combining stages in the user’s interaction with the feature, and break down the actions they take and the thoughts and emotions they have at each stage. 

Use these insights to remove friction and improve user flows, validating your design with real users. 

Pro tip : use Hotjar's Observe tools to study Session Recordings and Heatmaps and get insights into the product experience of real or test users at every point in the customer journey.

Heatmaps show you an intuitive aggregated view of which parts of your site are attracting attention and which aren’t to help you make changes that improve UX

5. Emirates Airline’s multi-channel customer journey map 

To reflect their customers’ multi-channel journey, flag carrier Emirates created a CJM that covers reservations, check-in, and onboarding experiences. 

As well as digital channels, the map includes call center interactions, which provide context for interactive voice response (IRV) technology and human service agents. It also sheds light on customer desires, broken down into categories like ‘comfort’, ‘safety’, ‘confidence’, and ‘freedom & control’, shown in the corners of the map.

With a global brand like Emirates, customers expect the same experience at all touchpoints, in all countries. This exercise helped the Emirates team understand customers’ main interactions and expectations to better coordinate service touchpoints and provide a consistent, high-quality experience across each one.  

For example, they set up a single, virtual contact center platform to increase efficiency and ensure consistent interactions across every channel. It’s not just the customer who benefits: the Emirates team now better understands exactly how to meet user needs across several channels and countries.

This map is ideal for businesses whose customer journey combines online and offline touchpoints, especially companies looking to differentiate themselves through the quality of their service. 

How to implement a multi-channel customer journey map: 

Define your key goals for producing the map.

Conduct thorough market research and customer interviews to reduce your assumptions and understand every single interaction and channel customers experience.

Interview customer experience and support staff members at all touchpoints and in all regions.

Use analytics tools and product experience insights software to understand how buyers interact with your digital marketing, website, and chat functions across channels and locations.  

Use AI to analyze customer call recordings for tone and sentiment.

Pro tip: use Hotjar Feedback widgets to get in-context insights about what users really think about your app or website. You can filter feedback by region or channel to better understand your global customer touchpoints.

Hotjar's non-invasive Feedback widgets allow customers to give their opinions of your website or product as they experience it.

You’ve reached your destination: a truly valuable customer journey map  

Customers interact with your brand over a variety of channels and touchpoints, and their journeys aren’t always linear. But understanding their journey is key to improving your product and boosting customer acquisition, adoption, and retention. 

Follow these customer journey mapping examples to experience key touchpoints from your users’ point of view and grasp their pains, needs, and frustrations so you can build a journey your customers will love.

Want to know how customers really interact with your brand?

Frequently asked questions about customer journey mapping, what are the stages of the customer's journey.

Buyer journeys can typically be broken down into three steps or stages: 

Awareness of a problem or pain

Consideration (researching and evaluating solutions)

Making a decision

What does a strong customer journey map look like?

A good customer journey map includes all the touchpoints where a customer interacts with your brand. It should include the various stages of the marketing and sales cycle, customer touchpoints across your product and website, and map out customers’ actions, thoughts, and feelings at each stage, as well as KPIs.

For example, Rail Europe’s customer journey map tracks all the stages of research, planning, and shopping, through to booking, travel, and post-travel. At each stage, it maps out customer questions, concerns, and feelings, as well as the helpfulness and relevance of Rail Europe.

What are the stages of customer journey mapping?

Customer journey map stages are: 

Collecting data and conducting customer interviews or surveys 

Mapping the customer journey in a workshop

Extracting insights and producing a report

CJM tools: features and how to choose

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How to Create an Ecommerce Customer Journey Map and Optimize for Sales

March 10, 2022

Elise Dopson

“I saw an ad for running shoes on Instagram, so I visited the store’s product page, read a review, and bought them.” — your (ideal) customer

As much as we’d like to think the steps someone takes to purchase from your store are always this simple, the reality is: they’re often far from it! Consumers switch between devices, channels, and platforms in the weeks leading up to a purchase.

And this information—their journey—can be crucial for you as you scale your brand.

A customer journey map shows the activities shoppers undergo prior to purchasing a product online (and can even extend to post-purchase activity). By understanding the pathway to purchase through your ecommerce site, you can better craft the right messaging to reach target customers , at the right time.

Below we’ll share how to create your own customer journey map, with tips on how to spot drop-off points and fix them.

The result? A positive customer experience that makes someone’s decision to purchase faster, easier, and friction-free.

This guide will cover:

What is a customer journey map?

The benefits of customer journey mapping, how to build a customer journey map.

A customer journey map is a visual representation of how people purchase products. You might see it called the “buyer journey” or “user journey map” as well.

In the case of ecommerce brands, a customer journey map shows:

• When a customer first became aware of a problem
• The options they considered when searching for a solution
• Why they decided to purchase your product

Take a look at this customer journey map example below by Nielsen Norman Group , which shows the touchpoints a customer has prior to buying a new car.

So-called “Emotional Eric” goes from seeing a TV commercial about a car company, through to downloading the mobile app, visiting a dealership, and driving away with a new vehicle. The map displays Eric’s thoughts, feelings, and considerations at each point in the journey, giving the dealership’s marketers greater insight into what Eric needs to see before converting.

There are up to 24 million ecommerce websites in the world—many of which sell comparable products to those in your own inventory. Customers have more choices than ever. But what made existing customers—those who’ve given you their hard-earned cash—choose you?

Understanding the customer’s thoughts, feelings, and objections at each touchpoint gives you greater insight to improve your online store’s conversion rate.

Using the example of Emotional Eric, the dealership selling the car can use the customer journey map to:

• Personalize messaging . Purchase decisions depend largely on the content someone sees throughout their journey. Greater insight into thoughts, motivations, and customer pain points helps the dealership’s marketers produce materials that cater to Eric’s needs—from dedicated landing pages to social media posts.
• Understand channel performance. Your ecommerce brand may spend equal amounts of time on Instagram and Facebook. But a customer journey map could reveal TV commercials and Facebook advertising are the two channels that drive the most awareness with new customers. It makes sense to maximize ROI and double down on those channels instead.
• Prioritize user experience changes. If we come to learn Eric is disappointed by the quality of images in the mobile app, uploading new images can become a priority for the dealership. It’s a leak in their customer journey map that needs to be plugged to prevent other prospective customers from abandoning a purchase.

Not convinced on the power of journey mapping? High-performing teams are 1.6 times more likely to use customer journey management.

Though these personalization tactics aren’t just marketing checkboxes to tick. It’s a purchase motivator for the 65% of people who’d become a long-term customer of a store that provides a positive experience throughout the entire customer journey.

“Customer journey mapping heavily relies upon how the information is relayed to its target audience. The message should be clear and concise so that even a layperson has no trouble understanding the message.” — Albert Vaisman , founder of Soxy

When creating your own ecommerce customer journey map, you can focus on components of the journey (instead of taking on absolutely everything).

Though, as seen below, the highest performers are three times more likely to use customer journey orchestration, and two times more likely to analyze customer interactions over three or more channels over time. There’s a connection between how detailed you map your customer journey and the results you’ll reap!

This can guide your investment in the process.

#cta-visual-pb#<cta-title>Create a high-converting shopping experience that meets customers where they’re at<cta-title>Your perfect store is waiting for you to build it. Start building with Shogun today

Ready to uncover the steps a customer takes before purchasing your product? Here’s a step-by-step journey mapping process to create one for your ecommerce business.

1. Segment your audience

It’s impossible to lump all customers in one bucket. Different customers have different preferences, and use cases differ from product to product.

People who buy your toothpaste bundle won’t be solving the same problems as customers purchasing a teeth whitening kit.

“Some ecommerce brands don’t research enough, or the research they carry out is weak. You can’t start making a journey map through guessing.” — Ai Hiura , CMO and chief editor at FAVERIE

When building your customer journey map, don’t paint all customers with the same brush. Segment your audience by the traits they share, such as:

• Demographics. The beauty of ecommerce is selling products to anyone, anywhere. But scaling a global brand comes with its own challenges—like cultural differences. The shopping habits of European consumers differ from American consumers. You’ll want to consider segmenting out customers based on geographic location.
• Job to be done. The JTBD framework expresses the goal someone wants to achieve when purchasing a product. If you’re selling sneakers with your ecommerce website, for example, this can range from “look fashionable” to “support my feet when running.” You’ll want to identify your customer’s “jobs to be done” for various, finer segments of your audience.
• Product price. Customers purchasing expensive items have longer customer journeys than with cheaper items. The same applies to subscriptions. The higher the commitment, the longer the purchase journey. You can segment your audience by average order value ranges as you create your map.

2. Uncover common touchpoints

Once you’ve isolated your customer personas with segmentation, it’s time to conduct research.

Our goal at this point is to uncover the touchpoints a potential customer has prior to purchasing. Here’s how you can find them.

Collect customer data

There’s no better way to understand your customers than talking to them.

Aaron Masterson, founder of Local Furniture Outlet , says, “While it may be tempting to believe that we know more about our customers than we do, doing additional research that provides valuable data through interviews and analytics is the best way to approach building a customer journey map.

“Since customer journey maps are all about customers, it would be a mistake not to involve them when building one. Without putting customers at the center of focus, it is not possible to completely represent their experiences.”

Find the touchpoints previous customers had with your brand via order confirmation emails. Follow-up their purchase with an invite to complete a customer feedback survey —or, for more in-depth data, voice of the customer interviews.

Key questions to ask in these conversations include:

• What was happening in your life when you first decided you wanted to solve a problem?
• Did you consider any other options before purchasing this product? If so, why did you choose ours?
• What factors, if any, almost stopped you from purchasing this product?

You can use a market research repository like Userzoom or Aurelius to store all feedback—or a classic spreadsheet. Common themes will begin to appear over time, unveiling the touchpoints for your customer journey map.

#cta-paragraph-pb# Read more on creating buyer profiles: How—And Why—You Should Use Buyer Profiles and Quizzes for Your Store

Analyze your website activity and drop off points

While customer interviews are a great source of data, you’re not going to get the full picture of how people engage with your brand pre-purchase through interviews alone.

People forget about steps they’ve taken, thoughts they had, or content they engaged with. Customers also have a different point of view—even if they did take the same path to purchase.

Lift the lid on how potential customers engage with your website through:

• On-site surveys. Expand your data by surveying people in the middle of the customer journey—not just those who’ve completed it. Understand the frame of mind of a website visitor on your product page by asking, “What problem are you looking to solve?”
• Heatmaps. Software like Hotjar and Mouseflow shows “hot” parts of your website—places a visitor pays the most attention to. If you’re selling coolers through your online store, for example, you might find that people spend time reading whether items inside the box can withstand desert temperatures on a specific site page about this. That’s useful data for your customer journey map (maybe you can surface this info in your ads top-of-funnel, for example).  
• Visitor recordings. Get granular with website activity by watching how people engage with your store. Pay close attention to the order in which they view different pages. Do they go from blog post to landing page to pricing page? Or the opposite direction?
• Google Analytics . Use the Shopping Behavior Analysis report to discover drop-off points or how many shoppers fall out of the customer journey. It becomes more clear where you need to focus your efforts (maybe you learn your new goal is to increase sessions with “add to cart” if drop off here is particularly noticeable, for example—or that you need to focus on cart abandonment).

Albert Vaisman explains how they get their starting point mapped at Soxy: “I use direct traffic data when building a customer journey map. This measure provides me insight into how the target audience perceives my brand.

“I use direct traffic in my web analytics tool to observe the number of visitors who manually typed in my company’s URL. Then I compare this metric to other traffic sources. [I can also look at] my website’s bounce rate, optimizing accordingly.”

Mine your social media data

Social media is a hive of activity. Your ecommerce brand can listen in on conversations—even if your brand name isn’t explicitly mentioned—to understand the customer journey for products in your industry.

Adrienne Barnes, founder of Best Buyer Persona , is currently working with her client on this process. For shoe retailer Kuru Footwear , “We’re really trying to understand what was going on when a customer was encouraged to start looking for these shoes in particular.

“We’re trying to figure out when, in a buyer journey, do people go from being aware that they have a problem, to being solution or product aware?”

Using the orthopedic shoe example, Adrienne says the prospective customer is likely thinking, “I know that my feet hurt. I need something that’ll stop my feet from hurting. What are the things that I can do?” At this point, they start looking at shoes, insoles, surgery, or chiropractic care. You can see that on social media.”

“Delving into the social media data of the people who follow your brand can supply you with their age, gender, languages, and locations. You can also identify your audience’s interests, which can help you optimize your content strategy to address your target audience’s needs at every stage of the customer journey.” — Shaunak Amin , co-founder and CEO of SnackMagic

Collect team feedback

“A customer journey map is an organization-wide undertaking because the customer interacts with basically every part of a business,” says Stephen Light, CMO and co-owner of Nolah Mattress.

“Maps simply won’t be as effective as they could be without input from those actually delivering the customer’s experience.”

Merge the data you’ve got at this point from customers with your internal team feedback. Consult the following people to corroborate your existing data:

• Sales teams
• Stakeholders
• Customer support agents
• Social media managers

Chances are, they’ll have direct experience talking with your customers—valuable data you should add to your buyer journey map.

Validate your research

Not all data you collect throughout this process is 100% accurate.

“If you don’t talk to your customers and you’re not validating the things you see in your data, you could be putting the steps in the wrong place or making assumptions that aren’t true,” says Adrienne Barnes.

“We really put a microscope on the moment they decided to change or purchase a new product. That helps me identify: was it on social media? Was it within a Facebook group? An ad? I like to ask via interviews and verify via digital intelligence.”

As Adrienne says:

“People tell me, ‘I first heard about the product because I saw an ad on Instagram.’ I can go and look through analytics and internal data to see whether we’re actually doing that—including the conversions we’ve had and what [value props] we’re talking to within the ad.”

3. Organize customer touchpoints

At this point, you have more data than you know what to do with. It’s both a blessing and a curse.

Start making sense of your data by organizing touchpoints into different silos.

There’s no “best practice” for labelling these categories, though it makes sense to model your customer journey map on the marketing funnel.

Let’s put this into practice for building a customer journey map for an ecommerce business. For example, shoppers purchasing blue light-blocking glasses have the following touchpoints at each stage:

Next, you’ll add context around the thoughts and feelings the customer experiences at each stage in the buyer’s journey. This includes:

• Questions they’re asking
• Pain points they’re experiencing
• Actions they’re planning to take

Then, refine every interaction you have with your customer—including site content/copy, messaging, and your marketing strategy—to address each point at the right time . Each is an opportunity to personalize your approach and close the deal.

For example, if we learn that those shopping for blue light glasses need to see proof that they work (because they’ve tried solutions that don’t), you’re going to want to include this prominently across your ecommerce site:

• Endorsements from optometrists (social proof)
• References to scientific studies that prove the validity of blue-light glasses
• Case studies from previous customers whose eyes have stopped hurting because of the glasses

Consider as well that user-generated content could be a great way to address something like the consideration or comparison phases of the journey.

If we realize that in the consideration stage the customer wants to try on the glasses, maybe your eyewear brand needs to invest in a virtual try-on interaction on the site to help alleviate questions the customer has around the size of the glasses (something that’s difficult to judge online vs. in-store).

Warby Parker takes this approach with its mobile app . Shoppers can overlay eyewear onto a livestream of their face—much like a Snapchat filter—to see which suits them.

Finally, as customers reach the decision stage, they need one final vote of confidence before hitting “confirm order.”

If they’re struggling to overcome an expensive pair of blue light-blocking glasses, for example:

• Promote a free at-home trial or risk-free order
• Cross-sell lower priced items
• Show the shelf-life of your glasses (i.e. a $299 pair of your glasses every two years is cheaper than replacing $199 glasses yearly)

4. Identify points of friction

The goal of a customer journey map is to uncover the thoughts and feelings your target customer has prior to purchasing your product.

But not everyone will make it through the entire funnel. Customers fall out of the buying journey for several reasons—some of which are outside of your control; others you have the power to prevent.

Use the data collected earlier, including Google Analytics’ Shopping Behavior Analysis report, to uncover points at which customers stop engaging with your brand. This might be:

• When they switch devices
• When they exit your website
• When they read a specific piece of content

Once you isolate where customers are dropping off, you can make tweaks to your site and marketing materials to fix!

5. Improve your map’s conversion rate

Found the gaps in your customer journey? Next, plug the leaks and improve your conversion rate .

You’ll get customers from homepage to products, to purchase, and into post-purchase flows with as little friction as possible when you put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

For example, a consumer in the consideration stage falls out of the buying journey because they switched devices and couldn’t remember the name of the site they viewed. The potential fix might be a pop-up modal encouraging your website visitors to opt into SMS or email marketing (so the drop-off isn’t permanent!).

Similarly, you might find that customers fall out of the purchase journey because they haven’t found a solution to their problem. In this case, understand the customer’s perspective and:

• Run A/B tests on the site pages with the highest number of drop-offs to test your hypotheses of what needs to be added to this content to convert based on your new learnings.
• Cross-sell different items better positioned to the customer’s motivation you discovered with your customer journey map research
• Showcase social proof from customers suffering with the same issue your visitor has

Is your ecommerce website customer-centric?

As we’ve covered, in its simplest form, a customer journey map shows the touchpoints a shopper takes when purchasing items online, and you can even carry it into post-purchase.

Remember that while we can do our best to organize these touchpoints, your ecommerce customer journey map may never be entirely accurate—and that’s ok! As Adrienne Barnes says, “We like to think of a customer journey map as a linear process, but in reality, it’s pretty convoluted and messy.

“Have an awareness that the customer isn’t always going to follow your streamlined idea of a buyer journey. They have a whole life that purchasing your product is a minuscule piece of.”

Overall, work to uncover the touchpoints customers have for your ecommerce brand and craft the messaging your shoppers need. You’ll position your products in the right place, at the right time, to the right people—a winning formula for sales.

#cta-visual-fe#<cta-title>Create a high-converting shopping experience that meets customers where they’re at<cta-title>Your perfect store is waiting for you to build it. Start building with Shogun today

Elise Dopson is a freelance writer for B2B commerce and martech companies. When she's not writing, you'll find her in the Peak Freelance community or on Twitter.

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How to Create a Customer Journey Map? Template, Examples

Appinio Research · 01.11.2023 · 32min read

Are your customers truly at the heart of your business strategy? Understanding their experiences and interactions is key to success. In this guide, we'll navigate the intricate landscape of customer journey mapping, equipping you with the tools and insights needed to create exceptional customer experiences. From deciphering customer touchpoints to harnessing the power of emotions, we'll dive deep into every aspect of crafting an effective customer journey map. Let's explore how to transform your customer relationships and elevate your brand.

What is a Customer Journey Map?

A customer journey map is a powerful tool used by businesses to gain a holistic understanding of their customers' experiences throughout their interactions with the brand. It is a visual representation that illustrates the entire journey, from the initial awareness stage to post-purchase engagement.

Components of a Customer Journey Map

• Stages:  A typical customer journey is divided into stages, including awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase phases. These stages represent the key milestones in a customer's interaction with your brand.
• Customer Actions:  Within each stage, customer actions are documented. These actions can include visiting your website, researching products, making a purchase, seeking customer support, and providing feedback.
• Touchpoints:  Customer touchpoints are the points of contact where interactions occur. These can be digital, such as website visits and social media interactions, or physical, like in-store visits and phone calls.
• Emotions and Pain Points:  Effective journey maps also incorporate the emotional aspects of the customer experience. They highlight where customers may feel frustration, delight, confusion, or satisfaction.
• Moments of Truth:  These are pivotal moments in the journey that significantly influence a customer's perception of your brand. Moments of truth can be positive, such as exceptional customer service, or negative, like unresolved issues.

Importance of Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is more than just a visual representation; it is a strategic tool with significant business implications. Here's why it's essential:

• Enhanced Customer Experience:  By understanding the customer journey, businesses can identify pain points and areas for improvement, leading to a smoother and more enjoyable experience for customers.
• Improved Customer Retention:  Identifying moments of truth and addressing pain points can foster customer loyalty and increase retention rates.
• Higher Conversion Rates:  A well-optimized customer journey can boost conversion rates at critical stages, such as during the consideration and purchase phases.
• Data-Driven Insights:  Customer journey maps are grounded in data and feedback, providing actionable insights that guide decision-making and strategic planning.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration:  The process of creating a customer journey map encourages collaboration among different departments within a company, ensuring a unified focus on the customer.
• Competitive Advantage:  A thorough understanding of the customer journey can differentiate your brand from competitors by delivering a superior and personalized experience.

In summary, customer journey mapping is a vital tool for businesses looking to deliver exceptional customer experiences, enhance brand loyalty, and remain competitive in today's market. It provides valuable insights that drive strategic decision-making and continuous improvement efforts.

How to Prepare for Customer Journey Mapping?

Once you've recognized the importance of customer journey mapping, it's time to prepare for the process ahead. Proper preparation lays the foundation for a successful journey mapping endeavor.

1. Define Your Goals and Objectives

Before diving into customer journey mapping, you must be clear about what you aim to achieve. Your goals and objectives should drive the entire process. Consider these questions:

• What specific insights do you hope to gain from the journey mapping process?
• Are you looking to improve specific touchpoints, reduce customer churn, or enhance the overall customer experience?
• How will you measure the success of your journey mapping efforts?

By defining your goals upfront, you can focus your efforts and ensure that the resulting map aligns with your business objectives.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

Understanding your audience is at the core of effective customer journey mapping. Your customers are unique, and their experiences may vary widely. To create a customer journey map that resonates, you must define your target audience . Consider factors such as:

• Demographics :  Who are your typical customers in terms of age, gender, location, and income?
• Behavior:  What actions do they take when interacting with your brand?
• Preferences:  What are their communication preferences and channels of choice?

The more detailed your understanding of your audience, the more accurate and actionable your customer journey map will be.

3. Gather Relevant Data and Information

Data is the lifeblood of customer journey mapping. To create a comprehensive map, you need to gather as much relevant data as possible. Sources of data may include:

• Customer Surveys:   Collect customer feedback to understand their pain points, preferences, and expectations.
• Customer Support Tickets:  Analyze support tickets to identify common issues and areas for improvement.
• Website Analytics:  Dive into website data to see how customers navigate and interact with your online presence.
• Sales Data:  Examine sales data to gain insights into the customer buying process.

Effective data collection is essential for a successful customer journey mapping initiative, and Appinio can be your trusted ally in this endeavor. Appinio empowers you to gather valuable customer insights swiftly and efficiently. With access to a diverse pool of respondents, you can tailor your surveys to target specific audience segments, ensuring that you capture a comprehensive range of perspectives.

Harness the power of data-driven decision-making with Appinio, and transform your customer journey mapping into a dynamic and responsive strategy. Dive into the world of insights – book a demo today!

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The depth and quality of your data collection will significantly impact the accuracy of your customer journey map. Remember to maintain data privacy and security throughout this process.

4. Assemble Your Team

Customer journey mapping is not a solo venture. It requires a cross-functional team with diverse perspectives and expertise. Assemble a team that may include members from:

• Marketing:  Marketers can provide insights into customer segmentation and messaging strategies.
• Sales:  Sales teams can shed light on the buying process and customer interactions.
• Customer Support:  Customer support representatives can share knowledge about common customer issues and pain points.
• Product Development :  Product teams can contribute insights into product-related touchpoints and improvements.

Collaboration across these functions ensures a holistic view of the customer journey. Remember that each team member brings a unique perspective that can lead to valuable insights.

With your preparations complete, you're now ready to embark on the journey mapping process.

What is the Customer Journey?

Now that you've laid the groundwork for your customer journey mapping project, it's time to delve into the core concepts that will enable you to create a comprehensive and effective customer journey map.

Customer Touchpoints

Customer touchpoints are the various interactions and moments of contact that customers have with your brand throughout their journey. These touchpoints can occur across multiple channels, both online and offline.

To effectively map the customer journey, it's essential to identify and analyze these touchpoints:

• Website Visits:  Consider how customers navigate your website, which pages they visit, and where they drop off.
• Social Media Engagement:  Examine how customers interact with your brand on social media platforms and the sentiment of their interactions.
• Email Communication:  Evaluate the effectiveness of your email campaigns and the responses they generate.
• In-Person Interactions:  If you have physical locations or provide face-to-face services, assess the customer experience during in-person interactions.

By mapping customer touchpoints, you gain insights into the various channels customers use to engage with your brand. This insight is invaluable for improving the overall customer experience.

Customer Emotions and Pain Points

Understanding customer emotions and identifying pain points are central to creating a customer journey map that resonates with your audience. Emotions play a significant role in shaping the customer experience, so consider the following:

• Emotional Highs and Lows:  At which touchpoints do customers experience high levels of satisfaction, delight, or frustration?
• Moments of Confusion:  Identify areas where customers might feel lost or encounter difficulties.
• Customer Feedback:  Analyze customer feedback, reviews, and surveys to uncover recurring emotional themes.

By acknowledging and addressing these emotional aspects of the journey, you can take steps to enhance the overall experience and create more positive interactions.

Customer Needs and Expectations

To create a customer journey map that genuinely aligns with your audience, you must pinpoint your customers' specific needs and expectations at each stage of their journey.

Consider the following questions:

• Desired Outcomes:  What are customers trying to achieve at each stage of their journey?
• Expectations:  What do customers expect from your brand at different touchpoints?
• Information Needs:  What kind of information are customers seeking, and where do they expect to find it?

Understanding customer needs and expectations allows you to tailor your map to meet those requirements effectively. It also helps you identify opportunities for proactive engagement and value delivery.

As you move forward with customer journey mapping, keep these three fundamental elements in mind. They will serve as the building blocks for creating a detailed and actionable map that will help you enhance the overall customer experience.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map?

Now that you've gained a solid understanding of the customer journey and its key components, it's time to roll up your sleeves and start crafting your customer journey map. We will guide you through the critical steps involved in the creation process.

1. Select the Right Template or Format

Choosing the appropriate template or format for your customer journey map is the first crucial step. The choice depends on factors such as the complexity of your customer journey and the level of detail you wish to include. Common formats include:

• Visual Diagrams:  These are graphical representations of the journey, often resembling flowcharts. They provide a visual overview of the customer's path.
• Spreadsheets:  Spreadsheets can be used to create detailed, data-driven customer journey maps. They allow you to input specific metrics, timelines, and customer actions.
• Specialized Software:  Various software tools are available specifically designed for customer journey mapping. These tools often come with pre-built templates and features for collaboration.

Consider your team's familiarity with the chosen format and ensure it aligns with your objectives. The chosen format should facilitate the clear communication of insights.

2. Map the Customer Stages

To create an effective customer journey map, you need to identify and define the stages your customers go through when interacting with your brand. These stages typically include:

• Awareness:  The initial stage where customers become aware of your brand or product.
• Consideration:  Customers evaluate your offerings, comparing them with alternatives.
• Purchase:  The stage where customers make a buying decision and complete a transaction.
• Post-Purchase Experience:  After the purchase, customers assess their experience with your product or service.

Understanding these stages helps you structure your map and align it with the customer's journey from discovery to satisfaction.

3. Document Customer Actions

At each stage of the customer journey, document the specific actions customers take.

• Visiting your website:  Track the pages they view and interactions they make.
• Engaging on social media:  Note the types of engagement, such as likes, comments, or shares.
• Making a purchase:  Record the product or service bought and the transaction details.
• Providing feedback:  Document instances where customers offer feedback, whether positive or negative.

By documenting these actions, you create a roadmap illustrating how customers engage with your brand throughout their journey.

4. Identify Key Touchpoints

Key touchpoints are the critical moments of interaction between your brand and the customer. These touchpoints significantly influence the customer's perception of your brand. Examples of critical touchpoints might include:

• Homepage visit:  The first impression customers have of your website.
• Customer support interaction:  How effectively and empathetically your support team handles inquiries.
• Checkout process:  The ease and efficiency of the purchasing process.
• Product delivery or service fulfillment:  The customer's experience after making a purchase.

Identifying these touchpoints allows you to prioritize them when making improvements to the customer journey.

5. Incorporate Customer Emotions and Pain Points

As mentioned earlier, emotions and pain points are integral to understanding the customer journey fully. When creating your map, consider:

• Emotional Impact:  Include icons or indicators that represent the emotional highs and lows experienced by customers at different stages and touchpoints.
• Pain Points:  Highlight areas where customers might feel frustration, confusion, or dissatisfaction.

By visualizing these emotional aspects, your map becomes more empathetic and actionable.

6. Highlight Key Moments of Truth

Moments of truth are pivotal points in the customer journey that significantly impact the overall experience. These moments can be both positive and negative. Examples of moments of truth include:

• Resolution of a customer issue:  How effectively a problem is resolved can create a lasting impression.
• Personalized recommendations:  Providing tailored suggestions can enhance the buying experience.
• Timely communication:  Prompt responses to inquiries or order updates can boost customer satisfaction.

Identifying and emphasizing these key moments on your map helps ensure they are addressed and optimized.

With these steps, you're well on your way to creating a detailed and insightful customer journey map that will serve as a valuable tool for enhancing the customer experience.

Customer Journey Map Template

Creating a customer journey map begins with a well-structured template that serves as the foundation for your visualization. While every map should be customized to fit your specific business and industry , here's a basic template to get you started. You can adapt and expand upon it as needed.

1. Customer Persona

• Name:  Give your customer persona a fictional name to humanize the journey.
• Demographics:  Include details such as age, gender, location, and occupation.
• Goals:  Outline the main objectives and needs of this persona in their interactions with your brand.

2. Stages of the Journey

• Awareness:  Describe how the customer becomes aware of your brand or product.
• Consideration:  Detail the process of the customer evaluating your offerings.
• Purchase:  Explain the steps leading to a successful transaction.
• Post-Purchase:  Highlight the experiences and interactions that occur after the purchase is made.

3. Customer Actions

• List the actions:  Within each stage, enumerate the specific actions the customer takes. This could include visiting your website, subscribing to your newsletter, or contacting customer support.
• Timeline:  Create a timeline for each action to show the sequence of interactions.

4. Touchpoints

• Identify touchpoints:  For each action, identify where the interaction takes place. It could be your website, social media, email, phone, or in-person.
• Channels:  Specify the channels used, such as website, mobile app, social platforms, or physical locations.

5. Emotions and Pain Points

• Emotions:  Capture the emotional state of the customer at each touchpoint, whether it's frustration, delight, or satisfaction.
• Pain Points:  Document areas where the customer might encounter difficulties or experience frustration.

6. Moments of Truth

• Highlight moments:  Identify the pivotal moments that significantly impact the customer's perception of your brand, both positive and negative.
• Importance:  Indicate the level of significance or influence each moment holds.

7. Opportunities for Improvement

• Actionable insights:  Based on the journey map, list potential improvements and opportunities to enhance the customer experience.
• Responsible Parties:  Assign responsibility for each improvement to relevant departments or team members.

8. Monitoring and Measurement

• Key Metrics:  Define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you measure the success of your journey map.
• Frequency:  Specify how often you will revisit the map and update it based on new data and insights.

Remember that this template is a starting point. You can customize it to align with your specific industry, customer segments, and objectives. As you gather data, engage with customers, and analyze feedback, your customer journey map will evolve and become a dynamic tool for improving the overall customer experience.

How to Interpret the Customer Journey Map?

With your customer journey map in hand, it's time to roll up your sleeves and extract valuable insights. Let's explore how you can analyze and interpret your map effectively.

1. Identify Opportunities for Improvement

Your customer journey map is a treasure trove of insights waiting to be uncovered. Start by closely examining the map and identifying areas where improvements can be made. These opportunities might include:

• Pain Points:  Pinpoint where customers encounter frustration, delays, or roadblocks. These are prime areas for improvement.
• Communication Gaps:  Identify instances where customers may not receive clear or timely information.
• Missing Touchpoints:  Check for stages in the journey where there might be gaps in engagement or opportunities to connect with customers.

By identifying these opportunities, you set the stage for enhancing the overall customer experience and increasing customer satisfaction.

2. Address Pain Points and Friction

Once you've identified pain points in the customer journey, it's essential to take action to address them. Consider implementing the following strategies:

• Streamlining Processes:  Simplify and optimize processes to reduce friction and make interactions smoother.
• Improving Communication:  Enhance communication channels to ensure customers receive timely and relevant information.
• Offering Solutions:  Develop solutions that directly address the specific pain points identified in the map.

Addressing pain points and friction not only improves the customer experience but also contributes to customer loyalty and retention.

3. Leverage Positive Touchpoints

Your customer journey map is not just about identifying issues—it's also about recognizing what's working well. Leverage the positive touchpoints to your advantage by:

• Replicating Success:  Identify elements of these positive interactions that can be applied to other stages or touchpoints in the journey.
• Enhancing Personalization:  Use insights from positive touchpoints to tailor your messaging and offerings to individual customer preferences.
• Fostering Engagement:  Encourage more frequent and positive interactions by amplifying the aspects customers enjoy.

By amplifying positive touchpoints, you can create a consistently delightful customer journey that strengthens brand loyalty.

4. Align with Customer Needs and Expectations

Your customer journey map should be a reflection of your customer's needs and expectations. To ensure alignment, take the following steps:

• Regularly Review and Update:  Keep your map current by revisiting it periodically to account for changes in customer behavior and market trends.
• Customer Feedback Integration:  Continuously gather and incorporate customer feedback to adjust your map as necessary.
• Measure Performance:  Use key performance indicators (KPIs) such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score (NPS), and Conversion Rates to evaluate how well your map aligns with customer needs and expectations.

Alignment with customer needs and expectations is the cornerstone of a successful customer journey map. It ensures that your efforts are customer-centric and result in a more satisfying experience.

With your insights gained and improvements identified, it's time to move on to the next step: implementing changes based on the customer journey map.

How to Implement Changes Based on the Customer Journey Map?

After thoroughly analyzing and interpreting your customer journey map, it's time to put your insights into action. Implementing changes based on your map is critical to enhancing the customer experience and achieving your goals.

• Cross-Functional Collaboration:  Collaborate across departments, including marketing, sales, customer support, and product development. Effective communication and teamwork are essential for successful implementation.
• Prioritize Actionable Insights:  Not all insights from your map may be equally actionable or impactful. Prioritize changes that align with your objectives and have the potential to make the most significant difference in the customer journey.
• Develop an Action Plan:  Create a detailed action plan that outlines the specific changes, responsibilities, timelines, and resources needed for implementation. This plan will serve as your roadmap for executing improvements.
• Test and Iterate:  Before making broad changes, consider conducting pilot tests or small-scale implementations to assess their effectiveness. Continuously gather feedback and refine your approach based on results.
• Monitor and Measure Impact:  Implement key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the impact of your changes. Monitor metrics such as Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), Net Promoter Score ( NPS ), and Conversion Rates to gauge success.
• Feedback Loop:  Maintain an open feedback loop with customers to gather their thoughts and reactions to the implemented changes. Customer feedback is invaluable for fine-tuning your efforts.
• Documentation:  Keep detailed records of all changes made based on your customer journey map. This documentation helps track progress and serves as a reference for future initiatives.

Examples of Effective Customer Journey Maps

To gain a deeper understanding of how customer journey mapping can be applied in real-world scenarios, let's explore some examples of companies that have successfully leveraged this strategy to enhance their customer experiences.

Example 1: Airbnb

Airbnb, the global vacation rental platform, excels at using customer journey mapping to create a seamless user experience. Their journey map spans from the moment a traveler starts searching for accommodation to the post-stay phase. Airbnb identified vital touchpoints, including website navigation, host communication, the booking process, and the stay itself.

How Airbnb Uses Journey Mapping:

• Personalization:  Airbnb tailors its website content based on user preferences and search history, ensuring a personalized experience.
• Clear Communication:  Hosts and guests can communicate through the platform, streamlining interactions and reducing friction.
• Post-Stay Engagement:  After a stay, Airbnb encourages guests to leave reviews, fostering trust and transparency.

By mapping the entire journey and optimizing each touchpoint, Airbnb has become a customer-centric platform known for its user-friendly experience.

Example 2: Disney

Disney, a pioneer in the realm of customer experience, utilizes customer journey mapping extensively to create magical moments for visitors at their theme parks and resorts. Their journey map covers everything from planning a trip to the actual park experience and beyond.

How Disney Uses Journey Mapping:

• Pre-Visit Engagement:  Disney engages customers even before they arrive by providing tools like the "My Disney Experience" app for planning and reservations.
• In-Park Experience:  The company uses RFID technology for seamless entry, mobile food ordering, and interactive experiences within the park.
• Post-Visit Connection:  Disney continues to engage with customers through personalized emails, offers, and surveys to gather feedback.

Disney's commitment to understanding and optimizing every stage of the customer journey contributes to its reputation as a world-class destination for families.

Example 3: Amazon

Amazon, the e-commerce giant , relies on customer journey mapping to enhance the online shopping experience. Their journey map encompasses the entire shopping process, from product discovery to delivery and customer support.

How Amazon Uses Journey Mapping:

• User-Friendly Interface:  Amazon's website and mobile app are designed for ease of use, allowing customers to browse and purchase products effortlessly.
• Recommendation Engine:  The company employs advanced algorithms to suggest products based on a customer's browsing and purchasing history.
• Efficient Fulfillment:  Amazon's streamlined logistics and delivery services ensure prompt and reliable product deliveries.

Amazon's commitment to creating a frictionless shopping journey has made it a trusted and customer-centric e-commerce leader.

These examples showcase how diverse industries, from hospitality to entertainment and e-commerce, utilize customer journey mapping to create exceptional experiences. By examining their approaches, you can draw inspiration and adapt similar strategies to cater to your unique customer base and industry demands.

Remember, successful customer journey mapping is an ongoing process, so continue to refine and optimize based on customer feedback and evolving trends.

Continuous Customer Journey Optimization

Creating a customer journey map is not a one-and-done task; it's an ongoing process. To ensure your map remains relevant and effective in improving the customer experience, consider the following practices for continuous optimization:

• Regularly Update the Customer Journey Map:  As your business evolves and customer preferences change, revisit and update your customer journey map accordingly. New touchpoints may emerge, and existing ones may evolve.
• Gather Customer Feedback and Data:  Continue to collect feedback from your customers through surveys, reviews, and other channels. Use this data to refine your map and stay aligned with customer needs and expectations.
• Adapting to Changing Customer Behaviors and Trends:  Keep a close eye on emerging trends, technologies, and shifts in customer behaviors. Be agile and ready to adjust your customer journey map to stay competitive and customer-focused.
• Benchmark Against Competitors:  Analyze the customer journeys of your competitors to identify areas where you can differentiate and excel. Learn from both their successes and their mistakes.
• Employee Training and Awareness:  Ensure your team members across various departments are well-trained and aware of the customer journey map. Encourage a customer-centric culture within your organization.
• Regularly Review and Revise Metrics:  Assess the KPIs you use to measure the effectiveness of your customer journey map. Make sure they remain relevant and align with your evolving goals.
• Experiment and Innovate:  Don't be afraid to experiment with new strategies, technologies, or approaches to enhance the customer journey. Innovation can lead to breakthrough improvements.

By continuously optimizing your customer journey map and staying attuned to your customers' evolving needs, you'll be better equipped to provide exceptional experiences that drive loyalty and business growth. Remember that customer journey optimization is an ongoing journey in itself.

Conclusion for Customer Journey Maps

Customer journey mapping is your compass to providing remarkable experiences for your customers. Following the steps outlined in this guide, you can now create effective maps, identify opportunities, and continuously optimize the journey. Remember, it's all about putting your customers first and making their interaction with your brand a journey they'll cherish. As you embark on your journey mapping endeavors, remember that the customer experience is ever-evolving. Stay agile, gather feedback, and adapt to changing customer behaviors and expectations. By doing so, you'll not only meet but exceed your customers' needs, fostering loyalty and driving your business toward long-term success.

How to Create a Customer Journey Map in Minutes?

Unlock the full potential of customer journey mapping with Appinio , the real-time market research platform that empowers businesses to harness real-time consumer insights for smarter, data-driven decisions. In just minutes, you can conduct your market research effortlessly, making it an integral part of your daily decision-making process.

• Instant Insights:  Move from questions to actionable insights in a matter of minutes, ensuring you have the most up-to-date information to shape your customer journey map.
• User-Friendly:  No need for a PhD in research – our intuitive platform is designed for anyone to use, making it accessible to every member of your team.
• Global Reach:  With access to over 90 countries and the ability to define the right target group from 1200+ characteristics, Appinio enables you to reach your desired audience wherever they are.

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How to design a customer journey map (A step-by-step guide)

A customer journey map is a visual representation of how a user interacts with your product. Learn how to create a customer journey map in this practical step-by-step guide.

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Successful UX design is rooted in empathy. The best designers are able to step into their users’ shoes and imagine what they think, feel, and experience as they interact with a product or service. 

One of the most effective ways to foster user empathy and consider different perspectives is to create customer journey maps—otherwise known as customer journey maps.

If you’re new to journey mapping, look no further than this guide. We’ll explain:

• What is a customer journey map?

Why create customer journey maps?

When to create customer journey maps, what are the elements of a customer journey map, how to create a customer journey map (step-by-step).

If you want to skip straight to the how-to guide, just use the clickable menu to jump ahead. Otherwise, let’s begin with a definition. 

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What is a customer journey map? 

A customer journey map (otherwise known as a user journey map) is a visual representation of how a user or customer interacts with your product. It maps out the steps they go through to complete a specific task or to achieve a particular goal—for example, purchasing a product from an e-commerce website or creating a profile on a dating app. 

Where does their journey begin? What’s their first point of interaction with the product? What actions and steps do they take to reach their end goal? How do they feel at each stage? 

You can answer all of those questions with a user journey map.

A user journey map template from Miro . 

Creating customer journey maps helps to:

• Centre the end user and foster empathy. Creating a user/customer journey map requires you to step into the end user’s shoes and experience the product from their perspective. This reminds you to consider the user at all times and fosters empathy.
• Expose pain-points in the user experience. By viewing the product from the user’s perspective, you quickly become aware of pain-points or stumbling blocks within the user experience. Based on this insight, you can improve the product accordingly.
• Uncover design opportunities. User journey maps don’t just highlight pain-points; they can also inspire new ideas and opportunities. As you walk in your end user’s shoes, you might think “Ah! An [X] feature would be great here!”
• Get all key stakeholders aligned. User journey maps are both visual and concise, making them an effective communication tool. Anybody can look at a user journey map and instantly understand how the user interacts with the product. This helps to create a shared understanding of the user experience, building alignment among multiple stakeholders. 

Ultimately, user journey maps are a great way to focus on the end user and understand how they experience your product. This helps you to create better user experiences that meet your users’ needs. 

User journey maps can be useful at different stages of the product design process. 

Perhaps you’ve got a fully-fledged product that you want to review and optimise, or completely redesign. You can create journey maps to visualise how your users currently interact with the product, helping you to identify pain-points and inform the next iteration of the product. 

You can also create user journey maps at the ideation stage. Before developing new ideas, you might want to visualise them in action, mapping out potential user journeys to test their validity. 

And, once you’ve created user journey maps, you can use them to guide you in the creation of wireframes and prototypes . Based on the steps mapped out in the user journey, you can see what touchpoints need to be included in the product and where. 

No two user journey maps are the same—you can adapt the structure and content of your maps to suit your needs. But, as a rule, user journey maps should include the following: 

• A user persona. Each user journey map represents the perspective of just one user persona. Ideally, you’ll base your journey maps on UX personas that have been created using real user research data.
• A specific scenario. This describes the goal or task the journey map is conveying—in other words, the scenario in which the user finds themselves. For example, finding a language exchange partner on an app or returning a pair of shoes to an e-commerce company.
• User expectations. The goal of a user journey map is to see things from your end user’s perspective, so it’s useful to define what their expectations are as they complete the task you’re depicting.
• High-level stages or phases. You’ll divide the user journey into all the broad, high-level stages a user goes through. Imagine you’re creating a user journey map for the task of booking a hotel via your website. The stages in the user’s journey might be: Discover (the user discovers your website), Research (the user browses different hotel options), Compare (the user weighs up different options), Purchase (the user books a hotel).
• Touchpoints. Within each high-level phase, you’ll note down all the touchpoints the user comes across and interacts with. For example: the website homepage, a customer service agent, the checkout page.
• Actions. For each stage, you’ll also map out the individual actions the user takes. This includes things like applying filters, filling out user details, and submitting payment information.
• Thoughts. What is the user thinking at each stage? What questions do they have? For example: “I wonder if I can get a student discount” or “Why can’t I filter by location?”
• Emotions. How does the user feel at each stage? What emotions do they go through? This includes things like frustration, confusion, uncertainty, excitement, and joy.
• Pain-points. A brief note on any hurdles and points of friction the user encounters at each stage.
• Opportunities. Based on everything you’ve captured in your user journey map so far, what opportunities for improvement have you uncovered? How can you act upon your insights and who is responsible for leading those changes? The “opportunities” section turns your user journey map into something actionable. 

Here’s how to create a user journey map in 6 steps:

• Choose a user journey map template (or create your own)
• Define your persona and scenario
• Outline key stages, touchpoints, and actions 
• Fill in the user’s thoughts, emotions, and pain-points
• Identify opportunities 
• Define action points and next steps

Let’s take a closer look.

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1. Choose a user journey map template (or create your own)

The easiest way to create a user journey map is to fill in a ready-made template. Tools like Miro , Lucidchart , and Canva all offer user/customer journey map templates that you can fill in directly or customise to make your own. 

Here’s an example of a user journey map template from Canva:

2. Define your persona and scenario

Each user journey map you create should represent a specific user journey from the perspective of a specific user persona. So: determine which UX persona will feature in your journey map, and what scenario they’re in. In other words, what goal or task are they trying to complete?

Add details of your persona and scenario at the top of your user journey map. 

3. Outline key stages, actions, and touchpoints

Now it’s time to flesh out the user journey itself. First, consider the user scenario you’re conveying and think about how you can divide it into high-level phases. 

Within each phase, identify the actions the user takes and the touchpoints they interact with. 

Take, for example, the scenario of signing up for a dating app. You might divide the process into the following key phases: Awareness, Consideration, Decision, Service, and Advocacy . 

Within the Awareness phase, possible user actions might be: Hears about the dating app from friends, Sees an Instagram advert for the app, Looks for blog articles and reviews online. 

4. Fill in the user’s thoughts, emotions, and pain-points

Next, step even further into your user’s shoes to imagine what they may be thinking and feeling at each stage, as well as what pain-points might get in their way. 

To continue with our dating app example, the user’s thoughts during the Awareness phase might be: “ I’ve never used online dating before but maybe I should give this app a try…”

As they’re new to online dating, they may be feeling both interested and hesitant. 

While looking for blog articles and reviews, the user struggles to find anything helpful or credible. This can be added to your user journey map under “pain-points”. 

5. Identify opportunities

Now it’s time to turn your user pain-points into opportunities. In our dating app example, we identified that the user wanted to learn more about the app before signing up but couldn’t find any useful articles or reviews online.

How could you turn this into an opportunity? You might start to feature more dating app success stories on the company blog. 

Frame your opportunities as action points and state who will be responsible for implementing them.  

Here we’ve started to fill out the user journey map template for our dating app scenario:

Repeat the process for each phase in the user journey until your map is complete.

6. Define action points and next steps 

User journey maps are great for building empathy and getting you to see things from your user’s perspective. They’re also an excellent tool for communicating with stakeholders and creating a shared understanding around how different users experience your product. 

Once your user journey map is complete, be sure to share it with all key stakeholders and talk them through the most relevant insights. 

And, most importantly, turn those insights into clear action points. Which opportunities will you tap into and who will be involved? How will your user journey maps inform the evolution of your product? What are your next steps? 

Customer journey maps in UX: the takeaway

That’s a wrap for user journey maps! With a user journey map template and our step-by-step guide, you can easily create your own maps and use them to inspire and inform your product design process. 

For more how-to guides, check out:

• The Ultimate Guide to Storyboarding in UX
• How to Design Effective User Surveys for UX Research
• How to Conduct User Interviews

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Online shopping & in-store customer journey map & personas templates

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• [Blog article] Customer journey mapping in e-commerce
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• [Blog article] How to create a journey map for a company website visitor
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• [Blog article] Journey mapping in marketing: how to drive a better CX
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Online Shopping Customer Journey Map

Assemble a trendy shopping customer journey map and more by customizing this online shopping customer journey map template.

• Design style modern
• Colors dark
• Size Letter (11 x 8.5 in)
• File type PNG, PDF, PowerPoint

Design a modern online customer journey map and more with this customizable Online Shopping Customer Journey Map Template. The template features a bright color scheme, shapes, and a classic font that are simple to modify. Put your own spin on the customer journey map by editing the bright color scheme. You can easily customize a new bright color scheme, or you can apply one of Venngage's pre-generated bright color palettes. Consider utilizing shapes to help direct the reader's focus and maintain a good flow of content. Venngage has a large variety of shapes available to help you enhance the Online Shopping Customer Journey Map Template. When it comes to the text, make sure the data is easy to comprehend by incorporating a classic font. It'll also make your customer journey map look professional, and there are loads of classic fonts you can use on Venngage. Not sure if it's the right customer journey map for you? Check out the Venngage library for more trendy customer journey map templates!

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Online Shopping Customer Journey Map Template

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