Mapping the journey your buyers actually take, not the one you assume

4 days ago
3 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Introduction

Every business has a mental model of how customers arrive. They hear about us, they look at the website, they call, we quote, they decide. It is tidy, it is broadly plausible, and when somebody actually asks a dozen customers what happened, it turns out to be missing three or four steps and to have the order wrong.

The steps that are missing are usually where the losses are. A conversation with a neighbour that decided everything. A comparison you were not part of. A period of six weeks doing nothing. A check somebody made that you have never thought about. Mapping what really happens, rather than what you assume, is the only way to see them.

1. Mapping the journey your buyers actually take starts with asking them

The method.

Ten or twelve recent customers, asked what happened from the first time they thought about this. Their sequence is the map, and it is more accurate than anything a workshop will produce. Recent customers answer readily, which makes this the cheapest research available to a small business.

2. Start from before they knew you existed

The boundary.

Journeys begin when a problem appears, not when a website is visited. Starting the map at your own first touchpoint omits the part where you were or were not included. That earlier period is where most of the competitive outcome is decided.

3. Record what they did, not what they felt

The discipline.

Actions are checkable and comparable across people. Emotions are worth capturing separately and they are not the structure of the map. Ask what they did next rather than how they felt about it.

4. Note who else was involved

The part most often missed.

A partner, a colleague, a neighbour, a professional adviser. Most decisions involve somebody you never spoke to, and their role is invisible unless you ask. Asking who else was involved usually produces a name and a role you had not accounted for.

5. Capture the time between steps

The dimension that changes everything.

Days or weeks between each action. Long gaps are where buyers are lost, and a map with no timescale hides the most useful finding it could produce.

6. Look for the steps you had no idea about

The point of the exercise.

A comparison site, an online group, a call to somebody in the trade, a check you never imagined. These appear in almost every set of interviews and they are unmanaged because nobody knew.

7. Compare journeys by how they found you

The segmentation.

Referred customers take a different path from people who searched. Averaging the two produces a map that describes neither and hides the fact that one converts far better.

8. Include the customers you lost

The half that is usually omitted.

People who considered you and went elsewhere took a journey too, and the point at which it diverged is more informative than any successful path.

9. Keep it to one page

The usability requirement.

A map that requires study is not consulted. Stages across, what the buyer does, what they need, and where you are losing them, on a single sheet.

Be careful about mapping from internal assumption dressed up as research. A workshop where the team imagines the customer journey produces a document describing the team's beliefs, and those beliefs are what the exercise was supposed to test.

Conclusion

Build it from what a dozen real customers tell you, because the assumed version is missing steps.

Start from before they knew you existed, record actions rather than feelings, note everybody else who was involved in the decision, capture the elapsed time between steps because that is where buyers are lost, look specifically for steps you did not know about, separate journeys by how people found you, include the customers who went elsewhere, and keep the whole thing to one page.