What is a customer journey?

What the customer journey is

The customer journey is everything a person does and thinks between realising they have a need and becoming, and staying, your customer. It includes things you control, such as your website and emails, and things you do not, such as a friend’s opinion or a review site.

Marketers often draw it as a marketing funnel: awareness at the top, then consideration, decision and loyalty. The funnel is a useful way to sort your activity. It is not an accurate picture of how people behave, as the next section shows.

For a business owner the journey is a planning tool. It answers three questions: where do people meet us, what do they need to know at each point, and where do we lose them?

The stages and what buyers need at each

Each stage maps to different content and channels. Search and social often meet people in awareness. Reviews, case studies and comparison pages work in consideration. A fast, clear site and a simple booking or checkout work at decision. Email and good service work after the sale.

• Trigger: something prompts the need, such as a breakdown, a deadline, a diagnosis or a new job. The business that is already known has an edge here.
• Awareness: the person learns what options exist. They need plain explanations of the problem and the category, not a sales pitch.
• Consideration: they compare options. They need proof, pricing guidance, comparisons and answers to objections.
• Decision: they pick one and act. They need a clear next step, low friction and reassurance on risk.
• Use and loyalty: they experience the service. They need good onboarding, support and a reason to return or recommend.

The non-linear reality: the messy middle

In 2020, Google’s consumer insights team and The Behavioural Architects published research on what they call the messy middle. They simulated 310,000 purchase scenarios with real in-market shoppers across five sectors and analysed Google Search trends from 2004 to 2020.

They found that between the trigger and the purchase, people switch between two mental modes. In exploration they widen their options by gathering information. In evaluation they narrow by weighing those options. They loop between the two as often as they need, and the loop can include new triggers.

The research also named six biases that shape choices in this middle: category heuristics, the power of now, social proof, scarcity, authority and the power of free. In one experiment, a fictional insurer that applied advantages across all six won 87 percent of shopper preference. That figure comes from a controlled test with a made-up brand, so read it as proof that the biases matter, not as a result you should expect.

The takeaway is that you cannot push people through stages in order. Be present and persuasive in both modes: easy to find when they explore, and easy to justify choosing when they evaluate.

How to map the journey

Nielsen Norman Group describes a journey map as having a lens, which is the persona and scenario, a mapped experience of phases, actions, thoughts and emotions, and outputs such as pain points and opportunities. It stresses that journey maps should always support a known business goal.

Follow its approach in small form. First pick one persona from your ideal customer profile and one scenario, such as a homeowner choosing a roofer. Then gather what you already know and add five to eight interviews with recent customers. NN/g advises using qualitative research to build the story and quantitative data to support it.

Next lay the story on a timeline. For each phase, write what the customer did, what they were thinking and feeling, where they were (the touchpoint) and what went wrong. Finish by marking the biggest pain points and the owner who will fix each.

• Columns: trigger, awareness, consideration, decision, after the sale.
• Rows: customer actions, questions in their mind, touchpoints and channels, emotions, your current gap, the fix.
• Evidence: tag each cell with the interview, search data or analytics behind it.

A journey for a service business

Services are often chosen under stress, by a person who is unsure what they need. Take a household needing a roof repair after a storm. The trigger is a leak. The person searches for local roofers, asks neighbours and checks reviews, which is exploration. They then call two or three and compare quotes, which is evaluation. A missed call or a vague quote loses them.

The map shows where to act. Make the phone number and a quote form obvious. Publish a page on what repairs cost and how quotes work. Collect reviews that mention speed and communication. Follow up the quote with a call and a short email, since many customers compare for days.

A journey for an online store

Online shoppers loop even more. Someone sees a product on social media, searches for reviews, adds it to a basket, leaves, sees a reminder and returns days later via an email. Google’s research suggests that the time spent between trigger and purchase can include many cycles of exploring and evaluating.

Map it as a set of questions: is this the right type of product, which brand, is it worth the price, can I trust the shop, what if it does not fit? Answer each with a page element: a clear category guide, comparison tables, reviews, delivery and returns information in plain view, and a basket reminder email. Our e-commerce service builds these elements into the store itself.

Using the map to place content and ads

Turn the map into a content plan. For each question a customer asks, assign a page, a video, a review or an ad that answers it, and a channel that will meet them there. Questions at awareness suit guides and social. Questions at consideration suit comparisons, case studies and reviews. Questions at decision suit clear offers, guarantees you can actually keep and simple forms.

Use it for ads, too. A search ad on a comparison phrase meets someone evaluating. A retargeting ad meets someone who left. An ad that shows the first benefit to a cold audience meets someone who is not yet looking. Our guide to what digital marketing is lists channels, and the marketing strategy guide explains how to choose among them.

How to measure the journey, and when it goes wrong

Measure each step with a simple rate: visitors who view a key page, those who start an enquiry, those who finish. Use Google Analytics to see which channels bring people and where they leave. Ask new customers how they found you and what else they considered. The two sources together reveal paths your analytics cannot see.

Maps go wrong when they are invented in a meeting room, when they cover the whole company instead of one scenario, or when they are made once and filed. NN/g advises sharing the map and referring to it in meetings so it stays alive. Update it when your service, your channels or your customers change.