Customer journey mapping: Visualizing the customer experience for better results

A journey is often described as a linear movement from one place to another — from “point A” to “point B.” 

But that framing misses a few important things. For example, all the other places the person could have visited while on their journey, the different routes they could have taken, the interactions they could have had along the way. 

In the exciting and, let’s face it, often confusing world of omnichannel marketing, those moments and details are useful and extremely valuable. In fact, they’re critical to developing a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of our brand ecosystems and how well they're meeting customer expectations.

That’s why customer journey mapping has become so important.

In this post, we’ll explore the customer journey mapping process and how brands can use it to enhance omnichannel experiences, especially when they’re supported by a platform like Contentful.

What is the customer journey?

The customer journey is the path taken by a brand’s prospects and customers, representing how and where they interact with the brand, across all of its channels.

The journey starts from the point at which the customer becomes aware of the brand, and extends past the point of purchase of a product or service, to customer support and retention, which may include steps taken to keep the customer, or to encourage them to recommend the brand to others.  

Customer journey stages

Let’s outline the phases of the entire customer journey.

• Awareness: The first point of brand awareness for (potential) customers, which may happen via social media, paid advertising banner, word-of-mouth, and so on. 

• Consideration: The point at which a customer evaluates a brand and their need for its products or services, potentially in comparison to other brands. 

• Conversion: The point at which the customer converts by making the decision to purchase from a brand.  

• Adoption: Past the point of conversion, the brand should ensure customer satisfaction and continued usage, by offering product or service follow-ups via FAQs, accessible customer service, and so on.

• Retention: The point at which brands consolidate customer loyalty with ongoing support, incentives, and reminders about new or existing products. 

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of the customer journey. It expands the perspective of the single customer journey by setting out the paths through (and beyond) a digital experience across all channels that the brand maintains, and all the touchpoints within those channels. 

In the example map below, the customer journey and related phases are set out along the X-axis. Brand channels are added as rows that span the end-to-end journey, and the customer touchpoints are mapped across those channels.

In other words, a customer journey map is a blueprint for every possible experience that customers can have with a brand as they move through the journey phases outlined above.

And, obviously, no two brands are going to offer the exact same customer journey, so there's no silver-bullet journey map template to point to, but by capturing enough data about the way customers interact and engage, and layering that data onto the map, brands can quickly generate valuable insights which they can use to transform the impact of their content.

Why is mapping the customer journey useful?

Customer journey maps aren’t merely fact-finding exercises in which brands explore the metaphorical geographies of their omnichannel experiences.

The primary goal of journey mapping is to create as objective a snapshot as possible of the customer experience in every part of a brand’s ecosystem, in order to highlight what’s working well, and what’s not.

Generating meaningful insight

By setting out the virtual topography of the customer experience in detail, across all channels, brands can collect data on the ways that different customer types engage with their content — rather than limiting their focus to “the average customer.”

For example, a journey map might reveal that certain ecommerce store customers, while trying to purchase via mobile, end up abandoning their carts because the product information that they saw in a social ad differs from the information they find in the app. Similarly, a journey map might reveal that users of a travel app abandon their bookings when they can’t find the same accommodation options on desktop, and that by simplifying the booking page, the company could increase their website conversions.

In both cases, analytics data added to the map across channels would show a sharp drop-off between the consideration and conversion phases of the journey. Brand teams could combine that data with other research insights to adjust content, experiment with clearer calls-to-action, and refine the overall omnichannel experience.

Customer journey mapping goals

With all that said, here are the key objectives of the journey mapping process:

Visual representation

Omnichannel content experiences are complex, involving an array of touchpoints such as desktops, mobile apps, wearables, and social media. Journey mapping renders this information visually, typically as a timeline, with detail on customer needs and wants included in every phase. This depth of detail helps teams understand the interconnectedness of their content and technology more holistically.

First-person customer perspective

Journey maps enable brands to step into their customers’ shoes. That first-person perspective helps everyone in the content ecosystem — development, marketing, product, sales, and support teams — better understand customer behavior, emotions, preferences, and decision-making processes. They can then leverage that insight to refine the content and experience, increasing customer conversion, retention, and loyalty.

Pain points

By adopting a customer-centric perspective, journey maps help brands identify, quantify, and validate pain points that are affecting the overall experience — many of which might have gone unnoticed otherwise. For example, a map might reveal that knowledge silos are fracturing the brand voice, with different teams relying on separate sources of truth for content they post to web pages or to their app.

Opportunities and solutions

As much as customer journey maps identify and eliminate friction, they also reveal opportunities to build on existing customer experiences and take them beyond baseline expectations. Those opportunities may emerge from known pain points or become apparent as content teams explore and develop their maps, and uncover fresh, actionable information. 

The importance of data

The more detail your customer journey map contains, the more valuable it becomes. That’s why effective mapping should be predicated on collecting as much relevant data as possible from across your omnichannel ecosystem, supported by automated data collection and analytics tools.

To get a bit more specific, you’ll need to focus on gathering customer feedback, behavioral data, personal information, and technical and operational metrics. The depth of the insight you generate will be critical to building context and making meaningful improvements to the customer experience.

For example, a shoe retailer posts about a new product on social media and generates great engagement. While the social media post is popular, there’s a high traffic bounce rate on the website’s product page, which indicates that something clearly isn’t working between the channels. 

A customer journey map could resolve this disconnect by connecting the dots between the touchpoints and their respective data, revealing the location of the pain point and the reason that it occurred. Then the teams involved can use the insight to develop a solution that addresses the problem and boosts click-through and engagement on the product page to drive more shoe sales.

Ongoing mapping

Customer journey mapping shouldn’t be a one-and-done exercise. As you launch new products, services, and campaigns; integrate new technologies; or change workflows, customer experiences will also shift — sometimes subtly, sometimes dramatically. 

Your map should be updated to reflect those changes. Even if you feel you’re already working with a great customer journey map, that map should be a living resource that evolves with your digital presence and with customer and market trends.

How Contentful makes customer journey mapping better

An effective customer journey map can help you identify pain points, but it can’t fix them for you. 

To seize the opportunities that your map reveals, you need a flexible content management system (CMS) capable of implementing changes quickly, accurately, and at scale.

Contentful is designed for exactly that purpose, giving brands the power to turn journey map insight into action. Let’s find out how.

Omnichannel orchestration

As a headless CMS, Contentful renders content code-agnostic and machine-readable anywhere in your ecosystem, creating an ideal environment for omnichannel marketing strategies. When you’ve identified a pain point (and its solution), you can adjust content once and implement the change instantly across every channel — website, app, wearable, store display, and more — without duplicating effort.

Real-time personalization

Journey maps often reveal where a more tailored, personalized experience could make the difference between a bounce and a conversion. With that in mind, Contentful Personalization offers no-code A/B testing capabilities, automated content suggestions, and audience analytics to help you create targeted, personalized experiences fast, and at scale.

Data analytics

Every component in the Contentful stack feeds analytics and performance data back to your teams in real time. Paired with a journey map, that feed can help you spot issues sooner, respond faster to adjust the customer experience, and refine over time through continuous feedback loops. Brands can push those capabilities further with Contentful Analytics, an agentic tool that features customizable dashboards, and native analytics AI that delivers insight in response to user prompts and questions. 

AI automation

Contentful’s cutting-edge AI Actions automation tools reduce the need for tedious, manual content updates. From rewriting copy with relevant keywords to tagging assets with metadata, AI Actions automates and streamlines critical content work at every stage of the content lifecycle, allowing you to act on journey map insights without overloading your development, editorial, or marketing teams.

Wrapping up

Customer journey maps are valuable opportunities to make your omnichannel ecosystem better, but to get the most from them and meaningfully increase customer satisfaction, you need powerful content management technology like Contentful. 

We’ve helped thousands of global businesses transform data and insight into improved experiences for content teams and customers alike across vast omnichannel marketing environments.

If you’re ready to take your content experience to the next level, so are we. You could start by finding out how some of the world's biggest brands use Contentful, exploring the full range of AI Actions demos, or chatting with our sales team to decide on your next step.

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