When you know how people are interacting with your product, you can make data-driven decisions that help you improve over time. A product journey map can make this process much easier.
Why does this matter?
Well, for starters, people are likely to stick with a product if it gets better, which translates to happier customers, a better retention rate, and more opportunities to win over people who are discovering your brand for the first time.
Regardless of your industry or what you sell, I bet these benefits align with your long-term business strategy.
Today, we are going to cover everything you need to know about product journey maps, including the definition, benefits, and steps you need to take to start building a product map for your business.
On that note, let’s get started!
What Is a Product Journey Map?
Put plainly, a product journey map is a visual representation that shows exactly how customers interact with your product. It’s the best way to understand how people naturally use what you’re selling.
A good map will let you see and understand how individuals, specific segments, and your entire customer base prefer to interact with your product.
You can use this data to make decisions that benefit each group.
For example, if you manage a social listening tool and see that over 70% of people are only using 50% of the features, that could mean it’s time to invest in an onboarding program so customers can get more from their purchase.
Alternatively, this could indicate that a tiered plan where you offer fewer features for a lower price can help you retain more customers.
The bottom line is there are countless ways you can use a product map to create a better customer experience.
How Is This Different From a Customer Journey Map?
At a glance, this might sound similar to a customer journey map, but they actually have a distinct difference.
Customer maps are focused on the entire experience, from the brand awareness phase all the way to post-purchase support, which is great when you need to see the big picture. But it’s not always enough.
On the other hand, product journey maps focus specifically on customer’s experience with your product, such as how they use it, potential roadblocks, and their overall satisfaction. A hyperfocus on this specific area is necessary if you want to make meaningful improvements.
Below, you’ll see a visual that shows a full customer journey. A product journey map begins at ‘product usage’ and ends at ‘technical support.’
Benefits of Building a Product Journey Map
Now, let’s look at some specific benefits you can look forward to if you decide to create a map for your business. These are all bound to help you reach your goals while creating a memorable, positive experience for your customers.
- Improve Product Development: When you understand how users interact with your product, you can add new features and improve on the system you’ve already built, which is essential for fine-tuning what you’ve built.
- Identify Pain Points and Growth Opportunities: Journey maps are an excellent way to figure out where customers are struggling, whether it’s with feature complexity, onboarding, or something else, so you can start making improvements. Product design, onboarding, and support can all be drastically improved with a product journey map.
- Boost Customer Satisfaction and Retention: Happy customers are loyal customers. If you smooth out the rough edges of your product, you can increase retention rates and reduce the risk of customers switching to competitors. This is worth mentioning because businesses spend 20-40%, sometimes more, acquiring and nurturing new leads compared to keeping existing customers happy.
Align Your Team: A product journey map helps bring all of your teams together by giving them a shared understanding of the customer experience and goals to work toward.
6 Ways to Start Building a Product Journey Map
It’s clear that there are tons of reasons to build a product journey map. But you’re probably wondering, “How do I build one?” Well, here’s a step-by-step process that any business owner or marketer can follow if they want to develop an actionable journey map for their products.
1. Get Your Teams Together
The very first thing you should do when building your product map is get all of the teams on the same page. You’ll want to find people from sales, marketing, product development, and customer success since they all have unique perspectives and feedback they can share.
I suggest getting a few people from each team and joining a meeting – whether in-office or virtually – to discuss the map and what you hope to achieve.
Then, give everyone a chance to share their thoughts and suggestions. You’ll likely get some very valuable information, so it’s a good idea to take notes. For example, your customer success team can help you understand customer roadblocks, while your sales team can help you understand common objections. You’ll need all of this data if you want to build a solid product journey map.
We highly recommend starting with this step because it keeps everyone in the loop, which will reduce misunderstandings and confusion while helping everyone work toward a common goal.
2. Define Your Target Audience
Once you’ve gathered insights and data from your teams, it’s time to truly define your target audience with a customer persona sheet.
If your sales team already has marketing personas, this is a great starting point. But you’ll want to take that document and expand on it so you can get a better understanding of how people feel about your product and what issues they may encounter once they start using it.
Depending on what you sell, there’s a good chance you’ll have more than one target audience. So, don’t hesitate to create multiple personas so you can improve your product(s) based on what each audience segment might need.
3. Analyze Customer Feedback
Now that your team is all on the same page and you’ve established customer personas, it’s time to build an even more complete picture of your audience.
At this phase, there are a couple of different things you can do.
I suggest starting by reviewing your on-site analytics. This information will help you see how people organically engage with your content. When you combine this data with existing customer behavior and a lead scoring tool like Breadcrumbs, you can figure out what type of people are most likely to benefit from your product and become long-term customers.
It’s also a good idea to look beyond actions and see what people have to say. Support tickets, customer surveys, and even social media comments can help you figure out what people want and expect from your brand.
You can use all of this data to understand your audience, which means it’s easier to address their goals and needs on your product journey map.
4. Map Out Touchpoints
The next step is to start mapping all the different touchpoints that come with using your product. These are all things your customers will likely do from the moment they complete their purchase until they’re regular users.
Here are a few key points you should consider during this phase of planning:
- The initial login – You’ll need to make sure your login process is smooth and user-friendly so people start their experience on the right foot.
- Onboarding – Do you have a program in place to help customers get comfortable with your product? If so, pay close attention to your onboarding system, how often people use it, and where they drop off.
- Using core features – All products have a set of core features. It’s crucial that new users can easily find and make use of these features. You’ll also want to make sure your design is intuitive and accessible, regardless of where people decide to engage with your product.
- Help and support – If a customer has a question or concern, you’ll want to make sure people can easily access a knowledge database or customer support channel.
- Customizable settings – Adding customizable settings and tracking how users interact with them can help make your product more accessible. For instance, if 85% of people change the same setting, you may consider turning it on by default.
There are plenty of other touchpoints out there, but these five encompass a big part of the product journey for most people. If you can understand what’s happening with these different elements, you’ll have a big advantage over most of your competition.
5. Build Your Product Journey Map
Now, you have what you need to start building your product journey map. Visualization is crucial here because it turns everything you’ve collected into something tangible that everyone on your team can see and understand.
Essentially, your map should show the story of how people use your product. Highlight where you’re doing well, where you can improve, and areas that need further investigation. Honestly, everyone’s map will probably look a little different based on their goals, what they offer, and their customers’ needs.
With this in mind, remember that there is no “one size fits all” to this step.
However, there are a few key elements you’ll want to include:
- User interactions at each stage
- Customer emotions and thoughts
- Pain points, whether known by unknown
- Opportunities where your team can improve
- Data points, like conversions or usage, to measure progress over time
Creating a readable, engaging map that everyone can understand will help you make it to the final step.
6. Identify Key Moments and Opportunities
Finally, it’s time to get everyone together again to look at what you’ve built so you all can identify insights and opportunities. This is where you’ll start making adjustments based on what you’ve learned.
If, for example, you realize that nearly 70% of people never open the onboarding wizard, it’s a sign that you need to make it more visible and accessible. Taking this step will ensure people have a great experience with your product from the day they start using it.
It’s also important to find where people are dropping off on their journey. With the right data set, you can figure out exactly where problems are cropping up and stop them before they affect the next customer.
But it doesn’t have to be all bad news! You can also figure out where things are going well. If your team has a glowing customer support satisfaction score, you can rest easy knowing your customers are taken care of at this stage of their journey.
There are a ton of opportunities and moments worth analyzing here. You’ll want to look at the data you collected and see what you can uncover!
Tips to Remember When Building a Product Journey Map
Before I wrap this up, I want to go over a quick list of tips that you should keep in mind if you want to make the most of your product journey map. These strategies have helped us, and I’m confident they will help you, too.
- Keep the Customer at the Center: Always consider your customer’s perspective when mapping out the product journey. Their experience is the foundation of the map.
- Update the Map Regularly: Your product and market will evolve over time. Make sure your product journey map evolves with it to reflect new customer needs and behaviors.
- Use the Map Across Departments: Always make sure that the product journey map impacts decision-making across sales, marketing, and customer success teams. This alignment is vital for long-term growth.
- Focus on Both Positive and Negative Experiences: Don’t just focus on where things go wrong. Celebrate and amplify the positive experiences customers have with your product.
- Validate the Map with Actual Customer Feedback: Test the accuracy of your journey map and changes by validating it with new customer feedback. If people aren’t responding to the changes you’ve made, don’t be afraid to keep experimenting by A/B testing and periodic surveys.
Start Your Product Journey Today
There’s no question that product journey mapping is a powerful strategy that can revolutionize the way you develop, market, and support your product. By focusing on the customer’s experience, you can identify areas for improvement, enhance satisfaction, and boost retention.
Not only can a product journey map align teams and improve collaboration, but it can also lead to a more customer-centric product that drives growth and profitability.
As you begin your journey, remember that tools like Breadcrumbs can offer valuable insights into customer behavior, which can help you build a map that accurately reflects the user experience. Start today, and watch how this strategy can improve your products and help you take your business to the next level.
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