How to Build a User Journey in 8 Steps
As a content strategist, you have to know your users. You base your strategy on how they think, feel and interact with your brand. A user journey helps you to do just that. But how to start? This is a hands-on guide for people, who never did it before. Just like me.
#1 Get into the Literature and Look at Existing User Journeys
This first point sounds super-boring. But nevertheless, looking at what experts do gives you inspiration and helps you find your very own approach. The book by James Kalbach „Mapping Experience“ in Kombination with this blog article “Why the Marketing Funnel Is dead” really helped me.
A user journey might include:
- Thoughts and actions of the customers,
- The customer and/or the business side of view,
- Essential touchpoints and the interaction with them,
- “Moments of truth” or “relationship breakers”,
- Limited scope, much focus and a clear structure.
Furthermore, it should
- Be graphical (which makes it more powerful than the written word),
- Explain itself,
- Be relevant to the organisation,
- Be backed up by data.
#2 Find a Goal
Content strategy is all about being laser focused goals and keeping things narrow. A holistic view is possible but most of the times it does not make sense in the range of your project or you simply get lost. Possible goals are:
- Understand the purchase process,
- Compare the business and user perspective,
- Understand the feelings of your customers during different stages,
- Find possible pain points (that make the user not buy your product).
#3 Get your Data Straight
Some companies got so much data about their customers: analytics data, social data, survey data … Before you start your journey, go through all that with a „fresh mind“. Think about your user journey and note all insights that help you build it. I found a tool presented by Meghan Casey, the “Discovery Insights Workbook”. It helped me summarise the insights and to get a clearer picture on how the user journey should look like.
Nevertheless: If you do not have enough information about your users: GET OUT THERE AND FIND THEM! To me, user research is one of the essential parts of a content strategy:
#4 Prioritise
As soon as you got your data, start thinking about what’s important and what isn’t for the purpose of your project. Be restrictive and think twice.
#5 Stop Thinking and Take Your Pencils
After dealing with all those different insights my head felt like one of Obelix’ menhirs. I really had to get rid of some weight. So I switched off my computer, got my pencils and some paper and started visualising the old fashioned way.
#6 Check it
… with yourself, your colleagues and the company you are doing it for. Did you forget about something? Did you get something wrong or simply focused on the wrong aspects?
#7 Design it
Take your sketch and digitalise it. I took it as an opportunity to teach myself a design program and got into Inkscape. With these tutorials, I could design my user journey in a few hours.
#8 Criticise
On your own, you never get everything right, especially not when doing it for the first time. A user journey often contains a very small glimpse on a single task of your customers. Be clear about that and explain your approach while presenting.
Now, do you feel ready to build a user journey? What are your steps and approach? Did you do something different? I’d love to hear about it :)
