Customer journey mapping means writing down the steps a customer takes, from the moment they first have a problem to the purchase and beyond. Once you have that route on paper, you can see exactly where people hesitate, drop off or get stuck.
For a small business, it doesn't have to be a big project. An afternoon's work, a few conversations with customers and your website figures will get you a long way. In this article you'll learn how to approach it, what the stages are and what to do with the result.
What exactly is a customer journey?
The customer journey is the whole path someone travels before and after they become a customer. Along the way, they come across your business in different places: in Google, on Instagram, on your website, on the phone or in your shop. Each of those contact moments is called a touchpoint.
The key insight: a customer experiences those moments as one whole. A beautiful website doesn't help much if the quote only arrives after a week. And a quick reply doesn't help much if nobody finds your website. By mapping the customer journey, you look through your customer's eyes, not from the point of view of your own departments or tools.
The stages of the customer journey
There are many models, but for most small businesses these five stages work well:
- Awareness: the customer notices they need something. They're still searching broadly, for example 'washing machine making noise'.
- Consideration: they compare providers. They read reviews, look at prices and check out a few websites.
- Decision: they choose and get in touch, book or order.
- Use: they experience your service or product. This is where satisfaction or frustration arises.
- Loyalty: they come back, leave a review or recommend you to others.
The customer has different questions at each stage. During awareness they want explanation, during consideration they want proof and at the decision stage they want it to be easy. Your marketing and your website need a fitting answer for every stage.
Customer journey mapping in six steps
You don't need expensive software. A large sheet of paper, sticky notes or a simple spreadsheet is enough. Follow these steps:
- Pick one type of customer. A journey for everyone at once becomes vague. Start with your most important group. If you're not sure who that is yet, first read how to define your target audience.
- Write down that customer's goal. Not your goal, theirs, for example 'a working washing machine within a week'.
- Lay out the stages side by side and note for each stage what the customer does, thinks and feels.
- Fill in the touchpoints for each stage: where do they come across you, and through which channel?
- Mark the pain points: moments of doubt, waiting or confusion.
- Choose one improvement per pain point and agree who will pick it up and when.
Be as concrete as possible. 'The customer looks for information' says little. 'The customer searches on their phone for the price, can't find it and calls a competitor' gives you something to work on straight away.
Where do you get the information?
A customer journey that only exists in your head is often wrong. You know your own business too well. So use real sources:
- Conversations with customers: ask five recent customers how they found you, what they compared and why they chose you.
- Questions that come in: what do people keep asking by email, phone or WhatsApp? Those are gaps in your information.
- Website figures: in Google Analytics you can see which pages people arrive on and where they leave.
- Search queries: Google Search Console shows which words people use to find you.
- Reviews, both yours and your competitors': they spell out exactly what customers care about.
Not yet tracking which steps lead to an enquiry? Then conversion tracking is a good first step. Without those numbers, your customer journey stays largely guesswork.
An example: a repair company's customer journey
Say you repair household appliances. On a Sunday evening a customer notices their dishwasher is leaking. Their customer journey might look like this:
- Awareness: they search on their phone for 'dishwasher leaking from bottom'. They read an explanation and realise they need help.
- Consideration: they search for 'dishwasher repair' plus their town. They look at three companies and pay attention to reviews, call-out charges and how quickly someone can come.
- Decision: they fill in a form. Pain point: the form asks for ten fields and they don't know the model number.
- Use: the engineer comes, but the customer didn't know what time. Pain point: no confirmation with a time slot.
- Loyalty: the repair works, but nobody asks for a review.
This simple example already gives three improvements: a shorter form, an automatic confirmation with a time slot and a review request afterwards. None of the three is big, but together they make the customer journey a lot smoother.
Common mistakes when mapping a customer journey
- Trying to do too much at once: one customer type and one product is enough for a first version.
- Only looking online: the phone call, quote, delivery and invoice are part of the customer journey too.
- Drawing the ideal path instead of the real one. Customers jump back and forth, drop off and come back weeks later.
- Doing nothing with the result. A nice map on the wall achieves nothing if you don't choose actions.
- Doing it once and forgetting about it. Your business and your customers change, so look at it again every year.
What do you do with your customer journey map?
The map is only valuable if you use it. List the pain points and sort them by impact and effort. Start with the quick improvements that affect lots of customers. They're often on your website: a missing price, a form that's too long, a page that works badly on mobile.
The customer journey also helps with your marketing choices. You can see which stage gets too little attention. Many businesses only invest in the decision stage with ads, while customers already make a choice during awareness. Use the map as the basis for your marketing plan, so you know which message and which channel to use at each stage.
Help with your customer journey and online marketing
At Violexa, every project starts by looking at the route your customer takes. For Rijschool Benz in Den Helder, for example, that led to a trial lesson you can request in 30 seconds and a price check against other driving schools, because that's exactly where learners hesitate. You can see more examples in our work.
Want help improving the steps your customers take online? Through online marketing we help with SEO, Google Ads and social media, from €599 excl. VAT (€725 incl. VAT) per month, with no minimum term.
Curious where your customers drop off? Book a free quickscan. In 30 minutes, online or on site, we walk through your customer journey together. Afterwards you get brief written advice with a price indication, with no obligation.
Frequently asked questions
How do you map a customer journey?
Pick one type of customer, write down their goal and lay out the stages from awareness to loyalty side by side. For each stage, note what the customer does, where they come across you and where they hesitate. Use customer conversations and website figures as your sources, not just your own assumptions.
What is the difference between a customer journey and a klantreis?
There's no difference. Klantreis is simply the Dutch term for customer journey. Both describe the route someone takes from first need to purchase and beyond.
What are touchpoints in a customer journey?
Touchpoints are all the moments when a customer comes into contact with your business. Think of a search result in Google, a social media post, your website, a phone call, the quote and the invoice. Each touchpoint can influence the customer's choice for better or worse.
How often should you update your customer journey?
Look at it again at least once a year. Also do it when you launch a new product, renew your website or notice enquiries dropping. Customer behaviour changes, so your map needs to change with it.
