User Journey Mapping

A Practical Guide to Understanding Your Users Better

Once upon a time, I saw user behavior I could not explain…

At one of my previous roles, a direct-to-consumer platform, we encountered a problem: conversion rates would consistently dip more than usual every Friday evening. Which to a point made sense:

• People would start their weekend

• Enjoy time with friends and family

• etc.

However the drop had been more extreme recently. On the surface, nothing in our analytics dashboards seemed to justify the drop. Campaigns were running as planned, web traffic remained consistent, and no outages were reported. But something was clearly off. At that moment you want to uncover the root cause, so we decided to take a step back and walk through the user journey ourselves. That’s when one insight emerged. Our delivery information was only shown at the very end of the checkout process (something in the UX changed we found out later..). Customers looking to buy beer for a spontaneous weekend BBQ realized, too late, that their order wouldn't arrive on time. The result? Cart abandonment.

So once we figured out a simple “order by x, delivered by x” that was swapped out for another USP element went missing and caused a negative dip later in the journey, we had a simple solution. Updating the interface to clarify delivery times upfront. With that we resolved a seemingly invisible problem. The dip vanished. Now of course this did not solve the issue of delivery needing to be faster, but it took out a higher level of frustration, from first going through the order process to then face negative news at the end.

This small win is a great example of what user journey mapping can do. It helps you see experiences from your users’ perspectives. It often helps surface overlooked friction points that can significantly impact business performance. This blog is here to take a bit of the unclarity away around that topic of user journey mapping.

So let’s first start with a clear understanding of what it is, explore why it matters, dive into the theory behind it, and then give you some tools to start creating journey maps.

Imagine this being your customer running through his journey..

The Basics of User Journey Mapping

User journey mapping is a framework you use to visualize how people interact with your product or service over time. It captures the steps users take to achieve a specific goal, like buying a product, signing up for a newsletter, or resolving a customer service issue, and how they feel along the way. These maps are more than just diagrams, it helps you show where you as a company need to be showing a bit more empathy to call it that..

At the very core, user journey mapping consists of a few foundational elements.

1. You start with a persona: a fictional character based on real data that represents a specific segment of your audience. This helps humanize the journey and keep it grounded in actual user behavior.

2. Next is the scenario, which defines what the user is trying to achieve. For example, “ordering craft beer for the weekend” or “finding a gift for a colleague.”

3. From there, the journey is broken down into stages. These typically reflect phases like awareness, consideration, purchase, and post-purchase—but they can be customized and split into nitty gritty specific steps to your business context (at GrandVision we mapped this for every single screen on an apointment booking tool for instance, …lot of steps). Within each stage, you’ll identify touchpoints (where the user interacts with your brand), emotions (how the user feels), and potential pain points.

Different types of journey maps serve different purposes. A current-state map reflects what the experience looks like today, while a future-state map envisions an ideal future experience. There are also day-in-the-life maps, which broaden the lens to capture everything a user does in a given day, providing richer context beyond just your product. Beneath all of this is behavioral science. Users rarely act in rational, linear ways. Their decisions are influenced by mental shortcuts (heuristics), emotional triggers, and friction caused by uncertainty or cognitive overload. Journey maps help decode these influences by combining data with storytelling.

How to Start Mapping Your First User Journey

Creating your first user journey map can seem like quite the challenge, but the process becomes intuitive once you understand the purpose of each step. The goal isn’t to create a perfect visual of course, it’s to better understand your users and find areas for improvement.

Here's a practical step-by-step checklist:

1. Define the scope: What is the specific user process or experience you're mapping?

2. Create a persona: Use qualitative and quantitative data to describe one specific user.

3. Outline the key stages: Break the journey into logical steps (e.g., Awareness, Consideration, Purchase, Post-Purchase).

4. Identify user goals per stage: What does the user want to achieve at each step?

5. List key touchpoints: Where and how does the user interact with your brand?

6. Map the user’s emotions: Are they confused, excited, reassured, frustrated?

7. Highlight pain points: Where do users get stuck, drop off, or feel friction?

8. Spot opportunities: What could be improved to create a smoother, more valuable experience?

To bring it all together, here’s what a simplified version of a journey map might look like:

	Awareness	Consideration	Purchase	Post-Purchase
⚙️ Steps High level steps your user needs to run through.	Discover craft beer delivery	Compare brands and delivery time	Complete transaction	Receive order and follow-up
⚙️ Steps Detailed actions your user has to perform.	Instagram ad Google search	Product page FAQ	Cart Checkout page	Order confirmation email
👍 Feelings What your user is feeling, thinking, experiencing at the moment.	Curious	Interested		Excited
	Skeptical	Unsure	Anxious
😩 Pain points Problems your user runs into.	Doesn't know if site is legit	Delivery date not clearly shown	High delivery cost at last step	No order tracking info
💡 Opportunities Possible improvements, pain killers, enhancements to the user's experience.	Add trust markers and reviews	Show estimated delivery early	Upfront cost calculator on product	Add real-time tracking link

Doesn’t matter if you're using a digital whiteboard like Miro or a spreadsheet, or just some paper (which might get lost though), mapping the journey visually help your teams align. The process also benefits a lot from diverse perspectives. I would say it is very crucial actually to bring in people from different departments, like design, marketing, customer service, product, heck even finance (also they can be your customer). You want to have people that are less prone to being product- or process-blind.

Remember, your first map doesn't have to be perfect. It's a working document. The goal is clarity, not complexity.

How Does This Work in The Real-World?

Let’s return to the beer example. Once we identified that customers were leaving due to unclear delivery messaging, we created two distinct journey maps: one for first-time buyers and another for returning customers. We quickly saw that new customers were more sensitive to trust signals like delivery speed, number of reviews and payment methods, while loyal customers were more concerned with convenience and feeling valued (which is often a hard thing to convey, being honest here). These insights informed both UX and marketing decisions. We revised content on product pages to highlight delivery options clearly and introduced a loyalty email sequence that rewarded returning users with early access to limited releases, and volume discounts.

B2B and B2C companies can both benefit from journey mapping, though the nature of the journeys differs. B2B paths are often longer and involve multiple decision-makers, requiring more emphasis on information flow, stakeholder engagement, and post-sale onboarding. B2C journeys, by contrast, can be more emotional and impulsive, especially in industries like fashion, food, or entertainment.

Smaller businesses may not have the same volume of data as large enterprises, but they have the advantage of speed and a shorter flow from less internal product and priority confusion. They can use direct customer feedback to iterate their journey maps more quickly. Larger companies might need more alignment, but they often have more data sources to work with.

Collecting the Right Data

Probably the most made mistake in journey mapping is relying solely on assumptions (as they say: “assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups”). To be meaningful, journey maps need to be grounded in real user behavior. That means collecting both qualitative and quantitative data.

   “Assumptions are the mother of all fuck-ups”  

Qualitative data comes from sources like user interviews, support conversations, and usability testing. These help uncover motivations, frustrations, and expectations, things that numbers alone can't explain. Interview users about how they discovered your product, what made them hesitate, and what nearly caused them to drop off. Or even have them run through the entire flow while speaking their thoughts and experiences out loud.

Quantitative data comes from analytics platforms. Look at funnel data, drop-off rates, time spent on page, or conversion metrics. This helps pinpoint where things go wrong. For instance, if 40% of users drop off at the shipping step, you know exactly where to focus. Unless, 80% already dropped of in shopping cart ;)

Combining these methods helps you to create a complete picture. Numbers show you where problems exist; words and behavior tell you why.

From Mapping to Action

Journey mapping‘s value lies in what you do with it. Once the journey is visualized, the next step is to extract actionable insights.

Look for patterns.
- Where are users consistently frustrated?
- Are there emotional lows during the process?
- Are users bouncing after encountering a specific form or piece of content?

These pain points become your roadmap for improvement.

From here, prioritize fixes based on impact and feasibility. Some improvements, like rewording confusing copy or changing button placements, are low-effort but high-impact. Others, like redesigning a payment flow or changing your delivery logic, may require more resources.

It’s important to define success metrics at this stage. What does success look like?
- Faster task completion?
- Increased conversion?
- Higher NPS scores?

Choose one or two KPIs per stage of the journey and measure changes over time. Also over time that journey map should evolve. As your product or audience changes, revisit and revise the map. Treat it as a living document, not a one-off project.

Making It Stick in Your Business

For journey maps to drive real value, they need to be embedded in your team's workflow. Include them in product planning discussions. Bring them into sprint retrospectives. Reference them during creative reviews. The key to buy-in is storytelling. Don’t just show a chart, but tell the story of a specific user. Use quotes from interviews. Describe the moment of frustration or delight. This humanizes the process and reminds everyone why the map exists: to improve people’s lives (ok that sounds a bit to aspirational perhaps, but at least add some joy and/or satisfaction to their lives).

Set a recurring time (e.g., quarterly) to update your maps. If you're adding a new feature, consider how it affects the user journey. If you're targeting a new segment, create a new persona and map their path.

Also, ensure resources are allocated to act on the insights. A map that highlights problems but isn’t followed by change is just decoration.

Recap

User journey mapping is a transformative tool, not just because of its format, but because of the clarity and empathy it brings. It helps you move beyond assumptions, aligning your team around real user needs and opportunities. By stepping into your customer’s shoes, you reveal gaps between intention and reality. And from that understanding, you can build better, smarter, more human experiences.

Ready to start? Copy and paste the below the free user journey mapping template table into Photoshop, Miro, Powerpoint, whatever, start simple and map one key flow this week. Then share it with your team, gather feedback, and make one small change. That’s how real improvements begin.

⚙️ Steps High level steps your user needs to run through.
⚙️ Steps Detailed actions your user has to perform.
👍 Feelings What your user is feeling, thinking, experiencing at the moment.
😩 Pain points Problems your user runs into.
💡 Opportunities Possible improvements, pain killers, enhancements to the user's experience.