Improve your user journey

With an increase in business competition available nowadays, customers are becoming more aware and are taking more time before making a purchase. Even though companies know their product well, they often have only a basic understanding of who are their target customers and their needs.

Hence, this is why many companies turn out unhappy with the results they get from their digital campaigns.

From the first contact to purchase and beyond, each experience influences their behavior, shapes their opinions, and determines their loyalty. But how to improve the user journey?

Here are the steps to improve your user journey from the first contact to purchase and loyalty.

First of all, as a digital company, listen to your client.

To understand the product more and to provide solutions that our client needs, we need to listen to him. He’s the only one who really knows well his product.

Learn from your client, act on what you have learned.

A lot of companies listen to their customer, but does nothing with what they hear. As a company, you need to do more than just listen.

Share it throughout your company. Develop new services and a journey. Map the customer’s journey and then use that map to educate the company.

This is easy. Listen, learn and map.

Mapping the customer’s journey to walk in your customer’s shoes.

1- What a user journey map looks like

 A user journey map is a visual representation of the “story” from a customer’s perspective. Like the sample below, it can be in many formats. Infographics, illustrations …

A user journey map reflects the stages of how your customer interacts with you brand and what are the emotions obtained through every step of the user’s journey, coming up with the “pains” and “gain” of this specific customer.

2- Why user journey maps are essential to growth

 The one behind the customer journey map will be able to easily identify and fill the gaps between touchpoints.

Touchpoints are interactions expected by the users. They are defined by specific departments and metrics to measure the interactions.

The journey map of a customer gives you a general idea of a customer’s journey. However, a deeper insight of every customer business touchpoint. For you to better know what works for the customer’s point of view, you will have to map out customer’s expectations and obstacles at each stage.

3- User journey maps show how customers experience your brand

Every user has a path to experience. Our part is to illustrate this experience  into a timeline. When you put these experiences in a timeline, over time, your journey map will show you how the brand appears to the users.

How to map?

Do some research

Start your research with existing maps. Then gather all the data you have about the user journey to start your own map.

List the touchpoints

After gathering data you already have, map out the different touchpoints into a timeline. You should start mapping after your research, or simultaneously.

Next. list everything  you have (such as: emails, landing pages, ads, chats…)

After this step, add the expectations, feelings or emotions that the user might experience at each interaction.

When is the best time to start building this map?

It is better to wait until you collect enough users to map out different experiences. But after all, this depends on your business and your application type.

Conclusion

Improving user journey through the previous steps helps you engage and retain existing customers, increase their loyalty and get more customers.