Creative tips and tricks

How to Create the Perfect Customer Journey Map (+Template)

Jul 20, 2022

Creating a customer journey map is essential to attracting and maintaining customers. Here's our guide to the customer journey map and why they matter.

If you've offered things online for a long time it's likely that you've seen potential customers stay for a while on your website and add products to their shopping cart only to leave just in time.

Why would something like this happen? How come some sales are not linear in nature?

In order to answer these questions it is essential to know your buyer's persona and figure the ideal buyer's path with a manner that accurately reflects the real-life behavior of your customer.

In this article, we'll explain what customer journey maps are and explain how they can be used as a journey map template to visually sketch out the purchasing process for your product or service (e.g. an online course).

What is a customer journey map?

A map of the customer's journey is a visual representation of how your prospective customers interact with your brand, from the moment of encounter to the actual purchase.

Since every customer experience is a procedure, the map involves lots of steps, which might appear to be a bit absurd at times. One of the most important things to do is to describe your customer's touchpoints by referring to real experiences of customers and not your own personal experience.

Why Customer Journey Maps matter

The most common view of online sales when someone comes across your website , or sees your ad, is fascinated by your website and eventually buys from your site.

The majority of the time however, this isn't the scenario. The customer experience they undergo makes a huge amount of distinction. A few of them may speak to your team of customer service or contact you on social media and some others might come across your site in search of something completely different (e.g. the solution to their issue in your blog).

A good map of the customer's journey makes note of each interaction of your business and helps you predict the customer experience.

What information should be included on your map of the customer's journey

There are a variety of maps of customer journeys on the internet, however the most effective source of information on the subject is through books. Consider picking up The Journey Mapping Playbook written by Jerry Angrave.

In the book In the book. Angrave describes a customer journey map as "the story of what your customers do, think and experience when doing deal with you in such a way which helps drive change."

Most customer journey map templates are different but, in general, they try to connect with similar ideas:

  • User actions
  • Brands' Touchpoints
  • Emotions
  • Pain points
  • Solutions

All these are then mapped to various points of your funnel to convert customers:

  • Awareness
  • Take into consideration
  • The Decision
  • Service/Loyalty

  User actions  

The most important part of your customer journey mapping is trying to predict what will be the most likely (or visitor) actions at every stage of buying including looking through adverts on the web to sharing the positive experience with family and friends.

  Tips: Make sure to think of all ways customers might achieve certain goals.  

  Brand touchpoints  

Outline the place where the users' action is taking place. Are potential customers gazing at ad banners? Are they visiting your landing page? Are they reading your email newsletter?

A complete listing of all brand-related touchpoints can help you steer your customers to the right path.

  Emotions  

In contrast to our expectations the majority of brand interactions do not bring positive emotion (e.g. repeatedly ending up on the error page). This is why aligning the user's emotions to actions and points of contact will help maintain brand reputation.

  Punctuain points  

Check out the root causes of the negative feelings your customers experience, from having to go through multiple procedures to register and then their credit card not being acceptedor sending mail to their address not being allowed.

  Solutions  

Pain points are issues that can be turned into to-dos and potential solutions by implementing efficient user flow to improving customer support.

How do you make the most successful customer journey maps

Although it may seem like collecting feedback from customers and sketching out a map of the journey customers take is easy -- very few companies do it right.

"Most user journey mappings are seriously flawed," say Mark S.Rosenbaum, Mauricio Losada Otalora and German Contreras Ramirez, the authors of the article " How to create real-world customer journey maps" released in Business Horizons.

  They assume all customers from a specific organization have the same organizational touchpoints and consider these touchpoints to be equally significant.  

The most important aspect of making a customer-centric map is to conduct extensive research into how customers interact with your business and keeping track of customer feelings every step of the way.

It is also important to profile all your brand personas and know their goals clearly. It is impossible to predict the condition of your clients, but having done the investigation, you are able to recreate the process yourself and spot areas that could be improved.

The top customer journey map templates

In order to create a powerful customer journey map, it doesn't require sophisticated software, or even elaborate templates.

Simply create a table that has the head column of user actions, brand touchpoints, emotions, pain points and solutions as well as a row of consciousness, consideration, and service or loyalty. Fill out each resulting cell with the most precise information is possible.

If you are thinking of maps of customer journeys as well as brand personas then look no further than the book CX That Sings: An Introduction to Customer Journey Maps written by Jennifer Clinehens.

Ms. Clinehens's work includes access to online tools, printable templates, as well as an accompanying course on customer mapping their journey.

     How to use your journey maps for customers    

The use of a customer journey mapping is crucial to ensure you are able to maintain the best quality of customer service throughout the buying process. The thing that makes a customer journey maps stand out is the way it visualizes details and shining light at every touchpoint with the customer.

Relying on diagrams of customer journeys becomes more crucial if you're planning the creation of an online class and you want to ensure that you have as many students as you can.

For the first time, choose an online store that offers courses an enjoyable experience for the user.

Begin today , for absolutely free and discover how easy creating your own course can be.