User Journey Mapping: A Guide

User journey mapping is the process of visualising the steps a person takes to achieve a goal with a product or service. It captures what they do, think, and feel at specific touchpoints to show where the experience supports their goals and where it creates friction.

It’s never been more important to understand your users. Out of the 4,450 marketing professionals we surveyed in our Tenth State of Marketing report , 85% agreed customer expectations are higher than ever, 69% said it’s getting harder to acquire new customers, and 64% said they’re struggling to keep up with changing behaviours.

Investing time and resources in user journey mapping helps businesses see where people lose momentum or drop off while working towards a particular goal. Teams can then use those insights to refine experiences as behaviours change. This makes it easier to meet evolving expectations and deliver a smoother experience at key moments.

In this guide, we explore user journey mapping — an essential aspect of user experience (UX) design — and show how it benefits your organisation.

• What a user journey map is (and the pieces involved)
• Why journey mapping matters for CX and marketing teams
• Phases of the user journey
• How to map a user journey in 5 steps
• User journey mapping best practices
• User journey mapping challenges and solutions
• How technology can support journey mapping
• Start mapping user journeys today
• FAQs

While the terms “user journey map”, “user flow”, and “customer journey map” are often used interchangeably, they differ in key ways.

A useful journey visualisation focuses on one specific goal and draws on evidence about the user’s experience to X. These five journey mapping steps will take you through defining the journey, building your map, and acting on the insights it reveals.

Choose one type of user and the goal they’re trying to achieve. Note these on your map as the actor and scenario. From there, decide which interaction marks the start of that journey and what counts as its end.

These boundaries will tell you which touchpoints to investigate in the next step. If you’re examining multiple users with different goals, create separate maps so each tells one story.

Collect evidence for the user and goal you chose. The aim is to understand the steps users take between your first and final touchpoint, and gather data about how they act, feel, and think at each stage. Start with the information you already have:

• Website or app analytics can show where people move forward or drop off. Look for steps with high exit rates or repeated attempts.
• Compare how many users start a given task with how many complete it to see where progress slows.
• Review support conversations for recurring questions or complaints, especially around the points where users begin to struggle.

Run interviews, surveys, and focus groups to capture user frustrations, emotions, and expectations. Real-world responses can often explain the “why” behind behaviours better than numbers alone.

Remember to keep factual observations separate from what you infer — a drop-off shows you where to investigate, but it doesn’t explain why someone left. Note any gaps in the evidence so you can check assumptions before adding them to the map as concrete evidence.

Put the relevant journey phases in order. For each, record what the user does and where the interaction happens. Use the evidence you gathered to inform the routes people take from beginning to end, including optional steps if users take different paths to the same goal.

For example, a business owner might first read about marketing automation software in a blog post about effective marketing strategies. Intrigued, they sign up for a free trial. During onboarding, they receive a welcome email with tips on how to maximise trial usage. If they experience any difficulties, they can access customer support through live chat. After finding value in the product, the business owner decides to convert to a paid plan.

Here, the actor is the business owner, and the scenario is choosing marketing automation software. Here’s a quick journey map template showing how the outcome could look:

As you can see from this journey map example, phases don’t have to be linear. Live chat is also marked as a possible route rather than a guaranteed step everyone takes. If those diverging routes become too complicated to keep together, build a separate map for each.

Add what users think and experience at each stage to understand where the journey feels positive, exciting, challenging, or frustrating. Draw on the interview, survey, and conversation data you gathered in step two.

Suppose a bank wants to map the experience of opening a money market account. It interviews recent applicants to learn what they did and how they felt along the way. One applicant describes their journey like this:

• A friend’s recommendation made them curious about the bank. Reading overwhelmingly positive reviews sparked their interest.
• After reading clear comparisons on the bank’s website, they felt confident they could choose an account that would meet their needs.
• They felt uncomfortable when the online application asked about their current financial situation, and they had to dig through T&Cs to understand why that mattered.
• When the form unexpectedly asked for proof of address, they felt frustrated. They had to stop and find a suitable document, and they considered giving up.
• Clear, friendly follow-up emails explained what would happen next. This reassured them while they waited for the account to open.
• They loved the personalised welcome offers during onboarding and felt excited to start using the account.

Add these thoughts and feelings beside the relevant actions and touchpoints. They show where clear information helped the applicant move forward and where an unexpected request almost caused them to abandon the journey.

Review the map for pain points that prevent users from reaching their goal. Prioritise opportunities based on the evidence you have, then decide what to change and how you’ll measure success.

As an example, imagine a user browsing an online jewellery store. They discover the website through a targeted social media ad, explore different categories, and add items to their cart, but they leave without completing the purchase. Later, they receive a follow-up email offering a discount on those items, prompting them to return and finalise their purchase.

The store could mark the abandoned cart as an opportunity and the follow-up email as a response to test. It could then compare how many shoppers return and purchase against the cost of the discount. This would help the store decide whether to continue the offer, adjust it, or try another approach entirely.

Remember that a map reflects what you know at a particular point in time. Revisit it as results and customer behaviour change and adjust your priorities accordingly.

To ensure your user journey mapping process is effective, follow these best practices.

• Use data-driven marketing insights, like customer feedback and analytics from your customer journey software, to inform decisions and highlight areas for improvement
• Involve cross-functional teams (e.g., marketing, design, and product development) to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the user experience
• Focus on user emotions and pain points at each stage of the journey so that you can create solutions that enhance user satisfaction
• Keep the map updated and relevant to ensure that it reflects current user experiences and feedback
• Use templates and tools — including marketing automation software — to streamline the mapping process

Despite its advantages, user journey mapping comes with a few challenges.

Often, businesses might not have sufficient user data to inform accurate mapping. They can overcome this by conducting user interviews and surveys, and using analytics tools to gather qualitative and quantitative insights.

Ask users how they felt through interviews, surveys, or direct feedback. Where you lack evidence, mark the emotion as something to investigate.

User preferences often change, making it necessary to review and update journey maps frequently. Businesses should schedule regular map reviews, especially after new product launches or major updates.

Teams that aren’t connected are ineffective when it comes to strategy execution. By fostering open collaboration and communication and sharing findings from the user journey maps, businesses can take a coordinated approach to improving user experiences.

As technology advances, so does the potential for user journey mapping. Connected data platforms, marketing automation, and AI agents can help teams connect journey data, spot patterns across touchpoints, and act faster on opportunities. Here are three ways technology can act as a journey mapping tool for your next project.

AI agents can help teams analyse user behaviour and identify patterns across touchpoints. For example, Agentforce in Marketing Cloud Intelligence can help teams assess journey performance across ads, email, and web to see which touchpoints need improvement.

Agents can also help teams act on what the map reveals. If trial users often stall after signing up, Agentforce can use their activity to adapt the next email or message they receive, guiding them to the next step.

With advanced marketing analytics tools, companies can glean deeper insights from vast user data. This allows for more effective segmentation and understanding of user journeys across varied demographics and psychographics, ultimately enabling tailored user experiences that resonate with individual users.

As businesses increasingly focus on personalisation, using journey map findings alongside customer profiles can help them tailor experiences to individual needs. Companies can use data from user interactions, including preferences illustrated through marketing automation software, to create unique journeys that foster stronger emotional connections and customer loyalty.