user journey map tool

Collaborative customer journey mapping tools

Gain a deep understanding of customer needs and business priorities

Ready-made customer journey map templates.

Design transformative customer journeys with templates for persona building, touchpoint maps, service blueprints, and more. Help your team quickly visualize, collaborate, and iterate on your customer experience, bringing in data and research to make the best-informed decisions.

Create a shared understanding, faster

Build highly visual and accurate maps that bring a customer’s humanity and experience to life with dynamically populated input, feedback, and data from various sources, like Amplitude, Looker, Blossom, Loom, and UserTesting. Record interactive walkthroughs with Talktrack so everyone can engage on their own time, with all the context on the board.

Easy to share and change

Give your team easy access to customer journey maps so they can leave feedback, ask questions, and make immediate changes as needed. Keep customer-centricity top of mind by embedding it everywhere your teams work (like Confluence) and it’ll always be synced to the latest version, or export your customer journey map as an image or PDF file for presentations.

Why people love Miro for customer journey mapping

Uncover possibilities.

Miro’s infinite canvas gives you the ability to collaborate across product teams and cross-functional stakeholders on customer journeys. It serves as a team hub for mapping and research, where you can plot your customer’s paths, visualize their journey, and gather insights all in one tool.

Empathy made easy

Make sure all voices are heard and tap into your team’s collective imagination to identify customer pain points, cultivate empathy, wireframe solutions, and ship innovative products — all with Miro’s customer journey map tools.

Be the voice of the customer

Map your user journey step-by-step and truly understand the people using your product. Bring your team with you in this process and share your customer journey map across your organization. Become the customer advocate and ensure you add value to your product.

Quickly get started

Miro’s customer journey map tool helps accelerate your team’s processes by clearly visualizing journeys, touchpoints, personas, and more. Save time by crafting your customer journey map using one of our pre-made frameworks, or build one from scratch with our many editing tools.

Deliver better results

Make better-informed decisions by getting instant feedback and craft experiences that people will remember. Tag team members, receive comments, and gain more insights with Miro’s collaborative customer journey mapping tool.

Share it with everyone

Share your insights and be proactive by running customer workshops inside your organization. Use Miro’s collaborative features, such as the timer and voting, to help lead interactive sessions and engage your team. Offer the space and tools needed for blue-sky thinking.

Related pages

Research and design.

Strategic planning

Product management

Content and data visualization

Research synthesis

Related templates

Customer Journey Map Template

Customer Touchpoint Map Template

Empathy Map Template

Customer Journey Map

Service Blueprint Template

Customer Journey Map Workshop

Customer Experience Template by Essense

5E Service Blueprint

Experience Mapping Template

How to create a customer journey map with miro.

1. Define personas

Determine which specific customer segments or personas you want to focus on. Collect data and insights about their needs, behaviors, and preferences.

2. Identify touchpoints

Identify key stages of the customer journey listing the touchpoints. Detail the specific actions, emotions, and pain points customers experience at each stage.

3. Add context and insights

Integrate data from customer surveys, interviews, analytics, and other sources to enrich your understanding of customer behaviors and preferences.

4. Share and find opportunities

Identify opportunities to improve the customer experience. When ready, share with stakeholders for feedback and collaboratively draft an action plan to implement the findings.

5. Iterate and update

Embed the map where teams and stakeholders can easily find it. Regularly review and evolve the customer journey map as you gain more data, insights, and feedback.

Customer journey mapping tools FAQs

What makes a good customer journey?

To create a good customer journey map, make sure you add all the stages your user goes through by mapping every customer touchpoint and the phases they belong to. After you map out your customer journey, to know more about who they are, you can create a storyboard or dig deeper with an empathy map. Miro’s customer journey mapping software makes it easy to add other artifacts and maps to your board, so you can have a great overview of your customer journey and what influences your customer's experiences. It can get messy, and it’s ok! Once you have all the information you need in one shared space, it’s easier to craft your customer journey or create a new user journey map.

What are the components of a customer journey map?

In Miro’s customer journey mapping tool, you have the flexibility to add as many components as you’d like. In our template, we use the following: actions, touchpoints, customer thoughts, customer feelings, process ownership, and opportunities. Each component belongs to a customer journey stage and is added to the board. Some folks also add user research data and other tools, such as empathy maps or timelines.

Can I download or share my customer journey map?

Yes, you can download your customer journey map as an image or PDF file or share your board link with others. Embed the map everywhere your teams work, like Confluence or Notion and it'll always be synced to the latest version. The customer journey map can be treated as a living document, evolving according to your product evolution and need.

The ultimate list of templates for understanding your customers

What is a customer journey map, 3 steps to go from customer interviews to a customer journey map, the difference between a service blueprint and a journey map, get on board in seconds, plans and pricing.

Learn / Guides / Customer journey mapping (CJM) guide

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The 9 best customer journey mapping tools to grow your business

Customer journey mapping (CJM) software is a digital tool that collects and presents quantitative and qualitative data about how users interact with your product or website so you can better understand your buyer personas and ensure a delightful user experience (UX).

The more complicated the journey, the more data you’ll need to map it out. The right mix of CJM tools gives you data from multiple customer touchpoints and channels so you can collect as much information as possible to map your journey in detail.

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Customers will interact differently with your site or app depending on what part of the journey they’re in. Since journey maps include everything from awareness—when a customer first sees your ad on Facebook—to onboarding and using your product, the data you rely on to guide your map will vary at each stage.

This article walks you through three types of customer journey mapping software, so you understand how each fits into your different workflow stages and can choose the tool(s) that work best for your business:

Traditional website and behavior analytics tools  

Voice-of-the-customer tools for user feedback

Tools to visualize your customer journey map

Website and behavior analytics tools for customer journey mapping

Analytics tools give you insight into who your customers are and how they behave on your website.

Traditional website analytics tools give you quantitative data , including traffic and demographic metrics like bounces and bounce rate , new and returning users , and goal conversion rates .

Behavior analytics tools give you qualitative insight into how users actually experience your website and how they behave during their customer journey. These tools help you pinpoint where users spend time on individual pages, which buttons they click (or don’t), and where they exit from the funnel, so you can improve the user experience.

While traditional analytics tools tell you about the customer’s journey to your website, behavior analytics tools show where their attention goes after they’ve arrived.

Quantitative and qualitative analytics tools work together to help you identify usability issues in your customer journey and highlight opportunities to improve the customer experience .

Here are three popular analytics tools used by marketing and UX professionals to help you kickstart your customer journey mapping process:

Hotjar (hi there! 👋) helps you gain insights into customer behavior with tools like Funnels , Heatmaps , Recordings , Surveys , and a Feedback widget , giving you invaluable data on how users experience your site throughout their journey.

Hotjar Funnels shows you the path of the journey, while Heatmaps and Recordings show you how users behave along the way—where they click and scroll, where they get stuck, and the actions they take as they navigate from page to page. Hotjar’s tools also offer built-in automations—like AI for Surveys —and team collaboration features, including Highlights , which makes insight sharing quick and painless.

Hotjar reveals what numbers don’t. Funnels helped me identify where in the customer journey people drop off. Recorded user sessions let me understand what people see when they arrive on our website—what they click and what they don’t click. Heatmaps helped me identify where they spend most of their time and assess if they should be spending time there or not.

Furthermore, Hotjar Dashboards gives you key user behavior metrics, helping you prioritize how you build and fix your website to provide a better customer journey, which ultimately helps you increase conversions and improve customer satisfaction .

Hotjar complements tools like Google Analytics , giving you a full picture of customer engagement and behavior on your website.

Discover how visitors experience your site

Use Hotjar to gather data and insights into the customer journey so you can make the right changes at the right time for your visitors.

2. Google Analytics 4

Google Analytics 4 is a web analytics tool that tracks and measures website traffic metrics, like bounce and exit rates, goal conversions, sources of traffic, and user demographics.

GA tells you how much traffic your website gets, where it comes from, and which channels convert best. You can also see what your most popular landing pages are and where people are exiting from your website.

💡 Pro tip: traditional analytics and behavior analytics tools work best as a team. 🤜🤛 Combining Hotjar and Google Analytics helps you to paint a more complete picture of your customers’ journey through your site—check out Hotjar’s GA4 integration to unlock the full potential of both tools.

Heap is a no-code product analytics tool that gives you customer data on how people use your product, tracking every stage of the customer journey.

This tool comes in handy when you’re looking for customer pain points with your product and you need data to help you make decisions aimed at increasing customer retention and reducing churn . Heap helps you understand which customer segments your users come from, giving you more granular insight into the customer journey.

Voice of the customer tools for user feedback

Voice-of-the-customer (VoC) tools help you understand your customer needs by capturing what they really think about your business or product , in their own words. 

Learning what your customers have to say about their experience helps you get raw, authentic feedback about how they perceive your brand and product at every stage of the journey, giving you deeper insight into customer emotions and motivations that drive their decision-making.

Here are three customer feedback tools to help you understand your users:

Hotjar (hello again! 👋) gives you insights into customer behavior with feedback tools like surveys , user interviews , and a visual feedback widget.

The Hotjar Heatmaps and Recordings tools show you the what and how of user behavior; Surveys and Feedback help you understand the why . 

Embed a survey or feedback widget on any page to ask customers what they think about your product experience, giving them the opportunity to share their unique perspectives. Use Hotjar’s Microsoft Teams and Slack integrations to receive survey response notifications in real time, so you and your team members are immediately notified of issues and can react promptly.

💡 Pro tip: the way you ask a question determines what kind of answer you’ll get. Open-ended questions will give you more qualitative data (and can be answered in detail), while closed-ended questions (think ‘yes/no’ questions) can help you create charts based on quantitative user research data.

Before you set up an on-site survey, know what information you want to get from your visitors—and how you’re going to use it—so you can ask questions that’ll get you the data you need.

One of our primary goals as a UX team is to understand the customer’s journey and what they’re doing on the website. Surveys give us the ability to reach out to people in context—we can just pop a survey on a page we want insights on.

2. Clarabridge

Clarabridge is an AI-powered feedback text analytics tool that collects what people say about your brand or business from every possible source and analyzes how they feel about you.

This tool is the way to go if you want to know how people really feel about your brand and business, and what the general user sentiment is. Use Clarabridge when people are already talking about your company: either on your website (through chats and surveys) or off your site (like on social media platforms).

3. InMoment

InMoment is an experience-intelligence (IX), AI-powered feedback tool that helps you get more detailed feedback from users.

For example, if you ask your users about their experience and they say ‘Good’, InMoment prompts them further: ‘What was good?’ It also offers social monitoring that gathers meaningful feedback on what your customers are saying about you online.

Tools to visualize your customer journey

Classic customer journey mapping tools are visual flowchart builders: the digital version of sticky notes, only these can be saved in the cloud, shared with your team, and turned into a remote-friendly collaborative workspace.

Once you’ve collected data about your users from user feedback and analytics tools you’ll have enough information to map out the user journey.

When you have a flowchart mapped out, it’ll be easier to:

Identify all customer touchpoints

See which pathways can be simplified

Find opportunities to increase engagement and build customer loyalty

Visualize which touchpoints belong to each part of the funnel

Create clearer CTAs and paths so users can navigate to the next step

Make an impact map to clarify and prioritize product decisions

Here are four tools to create visual and intuitive maps using customer journey software:

Miro is an online whiteboard workspace that’s great for remote teams who want to brainstorm and put their thoughts onto a shared digital whiteboard. The software lets you create a board from scratch—so you can still use your sticky note strategy, just digitally—or use one of their pre-made templates.

U se Hotjar with Miro to bring heatmaps, survey responses, and other analytics data to life. This helps ensure you and your team make data-driven decisions while visualizing your journey. Use this tool the same way you’d use a whiteboard for prototyping, wireframing, diagramming, or roadmapping.

2. UXPressia

UXPressia’s main functionality is to create customer journey maps. If you need a little more than a whiteboard, UXPressia helps you create consistently good-looking CJMs for your customer personas. 

This tool has a beautiful and intuitive interface, perfect for those who want to build maps that impress. You can easily visualize customer touchpoints and customize the maps to your own brand.

UXPressia is great for when you need a clean design and a tool that lets multiple stakeholders map data across different departments—very useful for real-time collaboration. This tool is also a good option if you're looking for a customer journey map template to help you get started.

Smaply is a mapping tool for complex customer journeys, helping you understand channel usage and backstage processes. It lets you create a repository of customer insights, including images, PDF files, and even audio files to link all your data together and get a full overview of the customer journey. Plus, it integrates with project management tools like Jira (which in turn integrates with Hotjar ).

Use this tool when you have a complex customer journey and you want to keep everything in one, easy-to-navigate place.

Gliffy is a fast and easy-to-use collaborative tool that lets you draw out large diagrams. You can drag and drop shapes from their library and leave feedback comments, and it also integrates with Google Drive. It stores past map versions and tracks changes, so you can always go back to previous iterations.

Gliffy is a great option when you don’t need a fancy customer journey mapping tool, but something simple yet versatile to get your ideas ‘on paper’.

How to choose the right customer journey mapping tool

The right customer journey mapping tool depends on the complexity of your journey, your level of understanding of the journey, how steep the tool’s learning curve is, the structure of your team, and why you’re mapping the customer journey in the first place—that is, what you want to learn from it.

The most important part isn’t really the tool you pick, it’s how you use it and what you do with the insights you get.

In the next chapter, we’ll dig deeper into why you need customer journey mapping tools and how specific features can help you accomplish your customer experience management goals.

FAQs about customer journey mapping tools

What is a customer journey map.

A customer journey map—sometimes called a user journey map or service blueprint —is a visual representation of how customers interact with and experience your website, products, or business across multiple touchpoints.

What are customer journey mapping tools?

Customer journey mapping tools are digital tools that collect and present quantitative and qualitative data about how users interact with your product or website.

Customer journey tools—also known as user journey mapping tools—tell you where your visitors come from, how they behave on your website, and what they think about their experience.

What are the best customer journey mapping tools?

The right mix of CJM tools gives you data from multiple customer touchpoints and channels so you can collect as much information as possible to map your journey in detail. Use one or a combination of these tools to create a customer journey that delights your buyers:

Google Analytics 4

Clarabridge

CJM tips and how-tos

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How to create an effective user journey map

No matter what you’re working on, the key to customer satisfaction and business growth is understanding your users. A user journey map helps you uncover pain points, explore the touchpoints from their perspective, and learn how to improve your product.

Imagine you just launched a new ecommerce platform. Shoppers fill their carts with products, but they abandon their carts before checkout. With a user journey map, you can pinpoint where the customer experience is going wrong, and how to enable more successful checkouts.

Read on to find out:

• What is a user journey map, and how it captures user flows and customer touchpoints
• Benefits of user journey mapping to refine UX design and reach business goals
• How to make user journey maps in five steps, using FigJam’s user journey map template

What is a user journey map?

Think about the path a user takes to explore your product or website. How would you design the best way to get there? User journey maps (or user experience maps) help team members and stakeholders align on user needs throughout the design process, starting with user research. As you trace users' steps through your user flows, notice: Where do users get lost, backtrack, or drop off?

User journey maps help you flag pain points and churn, so your team can see where the user experience may be confusing or frustrating for your audience. Then you can use your map to identify key customer touchpoints and find opportunities for optimization.

How to read a user journey map

Most user journey maps are flowcharts or grids showing the user experience from end to end. Consider this real-life journey map example of a freelancing app from Figma's design community. The journey starts with a buyer persona needing freelance services, and a freelancer looking for a gig. Ideally, the journey ends with service delivery and payment—but customer pain points could interrupt the flow.

Start your user journey map with FigJam

5 key user journey map phases.

Take a look at another Figma community user journey template , which uses a simple grid. Columns capture the five key stages of the user journey: awareness, consideration, decision, purchase, and retention (see below). Rows show customer experiences across these stages—their thoughts, feelings, and pain points. These experiences are rated as good, neutral, and bad.

To see how this works, consider a practical example. Suppose a new pet parent wants to learn how to train their puppy and discovers your dog-training app. Here's how you might map out the five key user journey stages:

• Awareness. The user sees a puppy-training video on social media with a link to your product website. They're intrigued—a positive experience.
• Consideration. The user visits your product website to preview your app. If they can't find a video preview easily, this could be a neutral or negative experience.
• Decision. The user clicks on a link to the app store and reads reviews of your app and compares it to others. They might think your app reviews are good, but your price is high—a negative or neutral experience.
• Purchase. The user buys your app and completes the onboarding process. If this process is smooth, it's a positive experience. If not, the customer experience could turn negative at this point.
• Retention. The user receives follow-up emails featuring premium puppy-training services or special offers. Depending on their perception of these emails, the experience can range from good (helpful support) to bad (too much spam).

2 types of user journey maps—and when to use them

User journey maps are helpful across the product design and development process, especially at two crucial moments: during product development and for UX troubleshooting. These scenarios call for different user journey maps: current-state and future-state.

Current-state user journey maps

A current-state user journey map shows existing customer interactions with your product. It gives you a snapshot of what's happening, and pinpoints how to enhance the user experience.

Take the puppy training app, for example. A current-state customer journey map might reveal that users are abandoning their shopping carts before making in-app purchases. Look at it from your customers' point of view: Maybe they aren't convinced their credit cards will be secure or the shipping address workflow takes too long. These pain points show where you might tweak functionality to boost user experience and build customer loyalty.

Future-state user journey maps

A future-state user journey map is like a vision board : it shows the ideal customer journey, supported by exceptional customer experiences. Sketch out your best guesses about user behavior on an ideal journey, then put them to the test with usability testing. Once you've identified your north star, you can explore new product or site features that will optimize user experience.

How to make a user journey map in 5 steps

To start user journey mapping, follow this step-by-step guide.

Step 1: Define user personas and goals.

Gather user research and data like demographics, psychographics, and shopping behavior to create detailed customer personas representing your target audience.  In your dog-training app example, one key demographic may be parents. What’s their goal? It isn't necessarily "hire a puppy trainer"—it could be "teach kids how to interact with a puppy."

Step 2: Identify customer touch points.

Locate the points along the user journey where the user encounters or interacts with your product. In the dog training app example, touchpoints might include social media videos, app website, app store category search (e.g., pets), app reviews, app store checkout, in-app onboarding, and app customer support.

Step 3: Visualize journey phases.

Create a visual representation of user journey phases across key touchpoints with user flow diagrams , flowcharts , or storyboards .

Step 4: Capture user actions and responses.

For each journey stage, capture the user story: at this juncture, what are they doing, thinking, and feeling ? This could be simple, such as: "Potential customer feels frustrated when the product image takes too long to load."

Step 5: Validate and iterate.

Finally, show your map to real users. Get honest feedback about what works and what doesn’t with user testing , website metrics , or surveys . To use the dog-training app example, you might ask users: Are they interested in subscribing to premium how-to video content by a professional dog trainer? Apply user feedback to refine your map and ensure it reflects customer needs.

Jumpstart your user journey map with FigJam

Lead your team's user journey mapping effort with FigJam, the online collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming, designing, and idea-sharing. Choose a user journey map template from Figma's design community as your guide. With Figma's drag-and-drop design features, you can quickly produce your own professional, presentation-ready user journey map.

Pro tip: Use a service blueprint template to capture behind-the-scenes processes that support the user journey, bridging the gap between user experience and service delivery.

Ready to improve UX with user journey mapping?

Customer journey mapping software

Lucidchart is a visual workspace that combines diagramming, data visualization, and collaboration to accelerate understanding and drive innovation.

Grasp the customer experience with our customer journey mapping tool

Create in-depth diagrams that capture the customer experience

Understanding your customer’s expectations, objectives, and interactions with your company is essential for creating a flawless customer experience. By mapping the customer journey from your consumer’s perspective, you can gain insight into the individual interactions that make up their experience from beginning to end. With customizable templates and extensive formatting options, our customer journey software lets you easily visualize and share your findings, helping you target specific personas, increase customer engagement, and ultimately increase your organization’s revenue.

Build a streamlined site with our user story software

As a UX designer, a user journey map can help you visualize your customer’s experience as they interact with your site or app. Our intuitive user story mapping tools let you easily outline how individual personas navigate and ultimately reach your site’s point of sale, allowing you to cater to your audience’s motivations and eliminate pain points. Lucidchart’s easy-to-use interface makes it simple to build and refine your user story map as your organization and customer experience evolve.

Collaborate with other departments and stakeholders

Ensure that your customer journey map is as comprehensive as possible. Lucidchart helps you collaborate with the stakeholders and teams responsible for each touchpoint in the customer journey. Using real-time collaboration and in-editor commenting and chatting, your team can keep your map up to date without worrying about version control or wasted time. No matter where or when your team is working, your customer journey map will reflect all of your latest updates.

Share, publish, and implement your customer journey map

Our dynamic sharing options and powerful integrations make it easy to distribute your diagram amongst stakeholders and decision makers. Easily invite others to view and edit your diagram via email or embed your diagram in collaborative platforms like Jira, Salesforce, or Slack. Once the final version of your customer journey map is complete, publish and share your diagram company-wide to keep your organization on the same page as you implement action items and revise your customer journey.

How to create a customer journey map

Define clear objectives for the map.

Identify the purpose of your customer journey map, the experience it is based on, and its audience. Your map can be based on an actual, hypothetical, or future customer experience.

Conduct customer persona research to understand your customer's goals

Collect info on your customer, including variables they're likely to experience during their journey with your company. List related touchpoints, actions, channels, motivations, pain points, and ownership.

Start mapping the user journey to include touchpoints

With your customer's info collected, add elements to your customer journey map that address the touchpoints and objectives specific to your customer.

Identify gaps along the customer journey and refine

Identify potential pain points in the customer journey. Lucidchart makes it easy to visualize and refine the journey to ensure the customer has an efficient and satisfying experience.

Present and share

Share your user journey map with stakeholders to implement appropriate solutions. Keep your map accessible to easily test, update, and improve it every six months or so.

Frequently asked questions about creating a customer journey map online

You can create a customer journey map from scratch by dragging and dropping basic shapes, or you can customize a customer journey map from our template gallery.

Read the blog post linked below for tips to create and keep your customer journey map organized.

Yes! We have an assortment to choose from, depending on your customer journey map’s objective. Type "customer journey" in the template gallery search bar to browse through templates.

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Customer Journey Map Template

Basic Customer Journey Map Template

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Customer Experience Map Template

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Onboarding Customer Journey Map Template

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Create customer journey maps the way you want

Smaply 3.0 comes with a simple customer journey mapping tool for you to build maps via drag-and-drop. Visualize different types of data that you need for your business CX strategy. The journey mapping software to create user journey maps, employee journey maps or citizen experience – everything is possible.

Collaborate with your team, online & offline

Collaboration on customer journeys is the key to great experiences. With Smaply, you can work together to create your customer journey maps online and in real-time. Conduct co-creative workshops or work asynchronously – the user journey tool is stable even when your internet connection is flickering. Invite your team, customer or users to collaborate and create journey maps online, and assign them just the journey editor rights they needs.

Link customer journey maps and create structured hierarchies

Your customer journey insights used to be fragmented and all over the place? With Smaply's journey mapping software you can easily connect your customer journeys in a hierarchy! Finally have a customer journey management tool serve as a real customer journey platform.

Evaluate touchpoints and prioritize pain points

Create a CX portfolio and prioritize projects according to how much impact the innovation of a pain point or wow-moment has. A customer journey tool for both visualization and management – covering all phases of the experience innovation process, connecting all people who should have a say. ‍

A tool made from experience, for experience management

Smaply 3.0 has been built to meet the real needs of customer-centric work. You asked for a customer journey management tool with user journey mapping capabilities – so here we go.

“Having Smaply as a partner in my journey was so valuable to my practice as a service designer. It really relieved me of so much cognitive overhead as I knew where the high-fidelity doing was going to live. Also, compared to other tools, it does all the important things better and remains consistent. An awesome tool for UX, Product Managers and Service Designers.”

“Smaply acts like a platform that is intuitive and super easy to use. This greatly facilitates cross-team collaboration with internal teams and external agencies. Smaply’s outstanding customer service has been key to PwC’s adoption of CX practices and tools.”

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Online Customer Journey Mapping Tool

Get a holistic view of your organization's customer journeys and journey mapping initiatives. Standardize your maps and tailor them to different audiences and perspectives.

Simple and intuitive

Free templates

Professional-looking design

UXPressia is a game-changer. Our journey mapping processes used to involve a mix of documents in different formats and different storage solutions. With UXPressia, we solved this problem. It became one digital environment for all our maps and personas.

Bring all journey mapping initiatives under one virtual roof

• Store and manage all journey maps in a common virtual space, making them accessible to teammates, stakeholders, and clients.
• Achieve a shared understanding of customer journeys and their roles in the organization.
• Make your mapping initiatives easier to grasp with a journey map hierarchy in place.

Standardize your journey maps

Create map templates to match the organization’s needs. Ensure all journey maps have a consistent layout and design and are recognizable to everyone.

In UXPressia’s journey mapping tool, you can choose from 20 sections with different content types:

•  Touchpoints

Set up a team library of custom icons, illustrations, files, journey stage titles, and touchpoints to reuse across maps and save your time.

Collaborate in real-time or asynchronously

• Collaborate with colleagues, stakeholders, and people outside the team.
• Have real life-like discussions, express your opinion, and prioritize ideas and decisions.
• Turn insights and ideas into tasks and assign them to the team.

100+ map templates for your customer journey

Our customer journey mapping tool has an extensive template library for different industries and popular use cases. Find a customer journey map template that fits your project and customize it in the CJM tool.

Look at the same customer journey through different lenses

• Give the audience the level of detail they need by hiding personas and specific customer journey map parts with the Views functionality.

• Compare the experiences of different personas on one map to spot their differences and similarities and make better business and product decisions.

• Get a quick overview of data related to a particular persona or touchpoint using the filtering feature.

Discover other UXPressia tools

Create an interlinked ecosystem of journeys, personas, and tasks.

• Link together macro and micro journeys that impact each other.
• Add more depth by visualizing complex processes in the process and channels section.
• Bridge the gap between customer journey mapping and implementation stages.

Want to know how our journey mapping software can help you with customer experience initiatives?

Power journey maps with real‑time data

• Connect your customer or user journey map with business KPIs or web analytics data.
• Integrate design prototypes, audios, videos, forms, presentations, and other content into your customer journey maps.

Present your work to other people

Save time by doing your presentation right in the journey mapping tool to make necessary edits as you go. All updates you make in the map content will show on the fly across all devices.

Export maps to different formats

Make customer journey maps online, save them into other formats to pass them on to other software or store them on your device — export maps as PDF, PNG, CSV files, or PPTX presentation slides.

Download scalable PDFs to print maps out and hang them on a wall.

Download export examples: PNG, PDF, CSV, and PPTX.

Get your team on board with journey map creation

UXPressia is more than customer journey software. We help our users get started with mapping and give them an opportunity learn expert tips from experienced mappers from all over the world.

Experts rely on us

UXPressia's tools allow me to concentrate on understanding the user experience so I can map solutions to it each step of the way. Your customer service is great. I feel like I have a partner wanting my business to succeed.

I needed a web-based journey mapping and persona development tool that was effortless. UXPressia is all that much more. The work flow is super easy. The customer service is solid. And it is helping me get my job done effectively.

UXPressia is a flexible user-friendly intuitive solution that provides a clear understanding of a customer's journey. The tool does an outstanding job of highlighting specific parts of the journey that can be improved upon to enhance the overall customer experience. The use of templates and customizable branding makes exporting Customer Journey Maps and Personas easy for executive presentations.

UXPressia is a fantastic tool for mapping the customer's journey. I dare say not only that but also the creation of personas and impact maps. So wonderful. I needed a tool in which I could create a custom map of the customer's journey, and I found all this in UXPressia.

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Set the standard for your maps with our customer journey tool, frequently asked questions.

Everything you wanted to know about UXPressia’s user journey mapping tool.

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10 Best Customer Journey Mapping Software Tools in 2024

Senior Content Marketing Manager

May 13, 2024

Understanding your team’s needs and customer expectations is critical to running a successful business. One way to achieve this understanding is by mapping out their journey, from their first interaction to their final purchase, and yes, there are tools to automate this process and make it way easier!

This article will explore customer journey mapping tools and outline our top 10 of the crop, each with unique features and benefits. Keep reading to find the perfect software to enhance your customer engagement efforts.

What are Customer Journey Mapping Tools?

2. custellence, 4. lucidchart, 5. visual paradigm, 6. uxpressia, 9. flowmapp, 10. microsoft visio, what to look for in customer journey mapping tools.

A customer journey mapping tool is a software application or platform that helps businesses create visual representations of customer touchpoints and experiences. Customer journey mapping involves understanding and documenting a customer’s various interactions with a business, from their initial awareness and engagement to the final purchase or onboarding and post-purchase experience.

The best customer journey mapping tool typically provides user-friendly interfaces that let businesses create visual diagrams on digital Whiteboards or Mind Maps of the customer journey. These journey maps often include different stages or phases of the customer’s experience and other aspects such as awareness, consideration, decision-making, purchase, and post-purchase.

Within each stage, the user journey map tool allows the user to define and outline specific touchpoints, interactions, channels, and emotions the customer may experience.

Mastering the customer journey mapping process helps you make sense of customer data, gain insights and identify areas for improving your average customer’s experience.

10 Best Customer Journey Mapping Software to Use in 2024

Are you tired of hearing about the essence of mapping your customer journey but unsure where to start? Fear not, as we are about to give you “the tea” on the best customer journey mapping software for you to get started.

Our top 10 picks for customer journey mapping tools include the following:

ClickUp is an excellent customer journey mapping tool that lets you create the best visual workflow representations with its whiteboard feature and mind map maker. These features help you outline and view the various touchpoints of your customer lifecycle, from awareness to conversion, repeat purchases, churn, and more.

ClickUp also offers multiple customer journey map templates , so you don’t have to create yours from scratch. Create detailed workflows and approval processes with Mind Maps so you can easily create dependencies for each step.

ClickUp key features

• ClickUp’s Whiteboard : ClickUp has a whiteboard feature that allows individuals and teams to visualize ideas, improve communication and create unique CRM workflows to improve customer journeys
• Mind Map Maker : ClickUp’s Mind Mapping feature helps create dynamic visual outlines and flowcharts for ideas, projects, or existing tasks
• Customizable templates : ClickUp provides templates for multiple use cases, including creating project roadmaps and customer journey maps – so you have a base to start from
• Custom views : Choose between 15+ different views for task management, journey mapping, diagramming, or through custom Gantt charts

ClickUp limitations

• ClickUp has a ton of customizations, so it can be a little difficult to learn it all right away

ClickUp pricing

• Free Forever
• Unlimited: $7/month per user 
• Business: $12/month per user
• Enterprise: Custom pricing available–if you need software to handle your business, contact Sales to help set you up when you are ready

ClickUp customer ratings

• G2 : 4.7/5 (6,700+ reviews)
• Capterra : 4.7/5 (3,600+ reviews)

Custellence is a customer journey mapping tool that helps teams and organizations understand and improve customer experiences. With its simple drag-and-drop functionality and real-time collaboration features, Custellance lets users create customer journey maps in minutes, get buy-in from stakeholders, increase customer engagement, and drive customer-centered change.

Custellence best features

• Unique image collection
• Flexible journey map structure
• Curated icons
• Broad color palette
• Multiple templates for a quick start
• Enables export to PNG, CSV, or PDF versions
• Commenting feature for seamless collaboration
• Ability to choose your preferred code system

Custellence limitations

• Text updates sometimes take a while
• No free offer to create customer journey maps from templates

Custellence pricing

• Standard : $0 
• Professional : $30/month per user
• Enterprise : Custom pricing

Custellence ratings & reviews

• G2: 4.2/5 (5+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.3/5 (10+ reviews)

Smaply is one of this list’s top customer journey mapping tools because it helps create visually appealing journey maps and facilitates customer feedback tools for real-time online collaboration.

On Smaply, teams can collaborate on different maps, exchange customer feedback and visualize customer experience insights.

Smaply best features

• Online and offline collaboration features with an intuitive interface
• Drag and drop editor for detailed journey maps
• GDPR compliant
• High data security
• No credit card required

Smaply limitations

• Not enough persona templates
• No rewind button

Smaply pricing

• Free: 0 eur/month per user
• Basic: 19 eur/month per user
• Pro: 29 eur/month per user
• Enterprise: Contact Smaply for pricing

Smaply ratings & reviews

• G2: 4.6/5 (10+ reviews)
• Capterra : 4.4/5 (15+ reviews)

Lucidchart is an intelligent diagramming software that can create customer journey and stakeholder maps. It allows teams to efficiently and collaboratively build visual presentations of complex processes , systems, and ideas.

With Lucidchart, you can easily create journey maps to understand how customers find, buy and use your products – and improve them to capture more revenue.

Lucidchart best features

• Data linking
• Auto-visualization
• Integration options like Google Workspace, Atlassian, Slack, and more.
• Visualization filters to highlight specific customer journeys
• Automatic cloud documentation to save and share customer personas

Lucidchart limitations

• Sometimes lags when working on large, complex diagrams with multiple elements
• Steep learning curve, unlike many alternatives
• Low-resolution exports
• Some users’ pain points are with the limited brand icons, images, and shapes to illustrate user journey maps
• Importing external graphics is complicated and sometimes impossible

Lucidchart pricing

• Individual: $7.95/ month per user
• Team: $9/month per user
• Enterprise: Contact Lucidchart for pricing

Lucidchart ratings & reviews

• G2 : 4.6/5 (2300+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (1900+ reviews)

Check out these Lucidchart alternatives!

Visual Paradigm is a suite of agile project tools for boosting productivity. The platform offers visual modeling and diagramming features that can be used to build journey maps and gain insight into customer emotions as they interact with your brand.

Visual Paradigm has several diagram types for conducting user research and building more precise visual representations of customer behaviors and journey maps.

Visual Paradigm best features

• Customer experience design tool
• Process map designer to highlight customer touchpoints
• Online diagram tool for detailed customer and stakeholder maps
• Report generation for customer journeys
• Textual analysis
• Mind mapping tool for customer journey maps
• Project publisher
• Infographics and diagram maker
• Drag-and-drop diagram editor for simple journey mapping

Visual Paradigm limitations

• Diagram connections can be complicated for some when building customer journey maps
• Some users found the app’s shortcuts sometimes don’t work
• Lacks some of the collaborative features users are looking for

Visual Paradigm pricing

• Modeler: $6/month per user
• Standard: $19/month per user
• Professional: $35/month per user
• Enterprise: $89/month per user

Visual Paradigm ratings & reviews

• G2: 4.5/5 (2+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.2/5 (15+ reviews

UXPressia is a visual collaboration software for creating not just customer journey maps but user personas and impact maps as well. The software enables real-time collaboration and offers customer experience courses to help individuals and teams perform better.

UXPressia best features

• High-quality exports with custom branding
• 70+ customer journey maps, personas, and impact map templates
• Interactive online courses
• Online persona creator to highlight pain points
• Experience graph
• Integrated web analytics to detail the customer experience
• File attachments
• Presentation mode to display journey maps online

UXPressia limitations

• Some users felt constrained by limited features and unintuitive workflow
• No Jira or Confluence integration can make it difficult for users with that software in their workflow
• Steep learning curve for some users creating customer journey maps

UXPressia pricing

• Starter : $16/month per user
• Pro : $36/month per user
• Enterprise : Contact UXPressia for pricing

UXPressia ratings & reviews

• G2: 4.4/5 (10+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (70+ reviews)

Sketch enables users to create different designs for their projects. With its robust features, like copy and paste, image editing and adjustments, library management, and more, Sketch can build journey maps across customer touchpoints.

Recently, the journey map company introduced an experimental feature menu for users to try unreleased features and share feedback before launch.

Sketch best features

• Available on multiple platforms – MacOS and web
• Advanced vector editing with its mapping tool
• Reusable design templates
• Intuitive prototyping
• Shared libraries
• Solo design or real-time collaboration
• Customizable toolbars

Sketch limitations

• Mapping tool is not available on iPad, which makes it tough for on-the-go Mac users
• It takes time to learn the full of the journey mapping capabilities
• Doesn’t work on Windows devices

Sketch pricing

• Standard: $12/month per editor
• Business: $20/month per editor

Sketch ratings & reviews

• G2 : 4.5/5 (1,100+ reviews)
• Capterra : 4.6/5 (750+ reviews)

Figma is a collaborative interface design software famous for its prototyping capabilities. With Figma, individuals and teams can create designs from scratch, including customer journey maps that can be used to visualize and improve customer satisfaction.

This customer experience and journey mapping tool stands out in this list because it offers a whiteboarding function for freehand wireframing and designing. Figma is targeted at user interface/experience (UI/UX) design rather than customer journey mapping, unlike many other tools on this list.

Figma best features

• Modern pen tool
• Plugins for automating tasks and improving workflows
• Flexible styles
• Accessible libraries
• Unlimited viewers
• Easy export to share the customer experience with your team

Figma limitations

• Not available offline, which can be difficult if you’re traveling where there’s spotty wifi
• It can be difficult to find resources in the community section
• Some users felt there weren’t enough image manipulation options—especially when creating customer journey maps

Figma pricing

• Figma professional : $12/month per editor
• Figma organization : $45/month per editor

Figma ratings & reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (800+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.7/5 (600+ reviews)

One of the leading UX tools for web design workflows , FlowMapp allows individuals and teams to create and iterate sitemaps. It also offers features that track the status and comments/ongoing conversations about each design.

FlowMapp’s design functionalities come in handy for customer experience management, journey mapping, and the creation of customer personas.

FlowMapp best features

• Intuitive sitemaps for visualizing team workflows
• Flowchart diagrams for user journey and website planning
• User flow diagrams for planning a better customer journey and improved user experiences
• Ability to share, transfer, or archive projects or customer experience logs
• Drag and drop interface

FlowMapp limitations

• Inflexible nodes and templates compared to alternatives
• No separate input field specifically for search engine results page (SERP) information
• Some users struggled to navigate between projects
• Not enough integrations for some journey mapping tool users

FlowMapp pricing

• Pro : $18/month per user
• Team : $54/month for up to five team members
• Agency : $180/month for an unlimited number of team members

FlowMapp ratings & reviews

• G2: 4.7/5 (80+ reviews)
• Capterra: Unavailable

Microsoft Visio uses stencils, premade templates, starter diagrams, and flowcharts to help customer journey managers and individuals looking to create easy-to-understand visuals.

With Visio, you can create, edit, and collaborate in Microsoft Teams and other Microsoft products.

Microsoft Visio best features

• Built-in templates for flowchart creation
• Organization chart
• Export and import functionality
• Highly customizable diagrams and graphics

Microsoft Visio limitation

• Difficulty with linking elements and sharing large files
• Limited collaboration options
• Does not integrate well with various wireframe programs
• Incompatible with tools outside the Microsoft Suite

Microsoft Visio pricing

• Visio plan 1: $5/month per user
• Visio plan 2: $15/month per user

Microsoft Visio ratings & reviews

• G2: 4.2/5 (600+ reviews)
• Capterra: 4.5/5 (3000+ reviews)

Customer journey mapping software is indispensable for businesses that want to enhance their customer experiences. When selecting a customer journey mapping software, it is crucial to consider the following:

• Multi-channel journey mapping : Your customer journey mapping software should support multi-channel mapping, allowing you to capture and analyze interactions across different channels, including websites, mobile apps, social media, physical stores, call centers, and more.
• Data integration and automation : Look for software that seamlessly integrates with other data sources, such as CRM and project management systems, marketing automation platforms, or analytics tools. This integration lets you gather real-time data and automate the mapping process, saving time and improving the accuracy of the information.
• Collaboration and sharing features : The software should facilitate collaboration among team members, allowing them to work simultaneously, leave comments, and track changes.
• Analytics and metrics tracking : Look for customer journey maps with built-in analytics and metrics tracking capabilities to measure the effectiveness of your customer journey initiatives. It should allow you to set and track key performance indicators (KPIs) related to customer experience and other relevant metrics.
• Scalability and flexibility : You want journey mapping tools that can manage large datasets, support complex customer journeys, and adapt to changing business needs. Look for customizable features that allow you to tailor the software to match your specific requirements, ensuring flexibility and long-term usability.
• Customer support and training : Evaluate the level of customer support and training the software vendor provides. That includes assets like comprehensive documentation , tutorials, and training resources to assist users in maximizing the software’s potential. 

A customer journey mapping tool with the right blend of these features will help you gain valuable customer insights, improve user satisfaction, and drive sustainable business growth.

ClickUp—Your Best Customer Journey Mapping Software

ClickUp is the best customer experience management and journey mapping software out there. It’s like having a super-smart assistant who knows your customer’s ins and outs.

Say goodbye to the headache of manually organizing customer data, and hello to a tool that makes your customer analytics process so much easier.

Try ClickUp’s customer journey map template today .

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User Journey Map Tools

In this part of the guide we are going to introduce you to some user journey map tools you can use to visualize your findings in an appealing way..

Last update 03.07.2023

Creating a user journey map is an ultimate way of empathizing with your customers and looking at the product from their point of view. However, these maps contain so much data, it may seem hard to visualize and put it all together. That’s what user journey map tools are for!  

We’ve conducted an ultimate list of the best user journey map tools out there and analyzed their features, pros, cons and pricing so you don’t have to! But first let’s dive a bit deeper into their types and purpose.

Why do you need user journey mapping tools?

There are various ways to create a customer journey map and a lot of different tools you can use to do so. In fact, you can even do it by only using pen, paper and sticky notes, if you wish. However, there’s a reason why online customer journey mapping tools are so popular and loved by researchers. 

They save tons of time and help to present your findings in a clear, readable and visually appealing way. This is extremely important when it comes to user journey mapping as this process will require you to collaborate and present your findings to other teams, such as design, marketing, sales etc.

Modern user journey mapping tools make collaboration easy and help you to create beautiful and informative maps in no time! But how to choose the right tool? Let’s take a look at some of the most common tool types.

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Types of user journey map tools

Depending on how you’re planning to approach the process of creating a user journey map, there are 3 main types of tools you can use : 

Prototyping tools

• Dedicated user journey mapping tools

User journey map testing tools

We’ll discuss and explain each of the categories below.

As a designer or researcher, you’re already familiar with those. And this is the greatest benefit of using prototyping tools to create a user journey map. You don’t need to look for anything, learn how to deal with new features or adapt to unfamiliar interfaces. 

You can just create a user journey map with the help of your favorite prototyping tools which you are probably already using pretty frequently. Most of them already have user journey map templates built in so you’ll just need to customize them to fit your project. 

These are some of the most popular prototyping tools out there that give you access to such templates with links to them:

• Figma ( get the Figma template )
• Sketch ( get the Sketch template )
• InVision ( get the InVision template )

User journey mapping tools

These are dedicated user journey mapping and whiteboard tools, created specifically for that matter. They contain everything you need to put together a customer journey map and present it in a clear and concise way.

If you’re worried that building a journey map in Figma or even on paper would be too complicated and time-consuming, these tools are here to save the day and make it as easy as possible. 

A popular online collaborative whiteboard platform that has all the capacities to help you create a stunning user journey map. Miro offers a wide range of templates, with customer journey map template being one of them.

• Great and intuitive UI
• Many templates to choose from
• Easy collaboration with other team members
• Limited editing options for different tools

Free plan is available. Paid subscriptions start at $8/month, billed annually. 

LucidChart is an intelligent diagramming application that eases the process of data visualization. They offer a customer journey mapping software that many recognized companies use for their projects. 

• Dedicated user journey map tool
• Great collaboration features
• Mobile apps available
• Confusing UI for the first-time users

A free plan is available. Paid subscriptions start at $7,95.

UXPressia is a professional tool for creating customer journey maps, personas and impact maps. They help teams to host all customer experience assets in one place, ease collaboration, foster CX and digital transformation. 

• Dedicated customer journey map tool
• A lot of customizing and sharing opportunities
• Integrated web analytics
• Limited editing options
• The UI may seem complicated for a beginner

Free plan is available. Paid subscriptions start at $16/user/month.

A tool that offers various UX tools for web design, allowing you to map out user flows , create sitemaps and flowcharts. Additionally, you can create personas on the platform, integrate them with your map. 

• Intuitive UI
• Easy sharing
• Great customer support
• There’s no way to export just a piece of a large flow map

Free plan is available. They offer a 50% discount for new users, but normally their paid plans start at $18/month.

Smaply is a user jouney map tool that helps to centralize and coordinate customer experience insights.

• A dedicated software
• Detailed user journey maps
• Offers a tool to help you create personas
• Free plan available
• Quite old-fashioned UX, not so easy to interact with

They offer a free plan with no credit card required, which allows you to create up to 3 journey maps. Paid subscription starts at 199EUR/year.

This last group of tools is not exactly for creating a user journey map itself, but rather doing user research before the project, as well as testing the map and evaluating it after. Check out our user journey map page to find out more about the process of creating a journey map.

The tools listed below are essentially online usability testing tools. They are quick, remote and perfectly suitable for many types of testing as well as user research activities. 

UXtweak is an all-in-one research platform that provides powerful tools for improving the usability of your digital products from prototypes to production. It’s a perfect tool to empathize with your users, get to know them better and conduct usability tests that help to evaluate the flow of your user journey map.

• Usability testing (mobile and website)
• Prototype testing
• Preference testing
• First click testing
• Card sorting
• Tree testing
• Session recording
• A free plan available
• A wide range of features
• 155+M user panel to recruit testers from
• Deep analytics and user-friendly UI 
• Mobile testing only supported on IOS 

A free plan is available for small projects. Paid subscriptions start at $80/month (billed annually)

Another great user testing platform you can use to evaluate your user journey map and find out if it’s accurate. However, UserZoom is a usability testing platform targeted mostly at big enterprises, so it may seem pricey for those on a budget.

• Click testing 
• Usability testing
• Live interviews 
• QX score (analytics tools)
• Live intercept 
• One of the few tools that performs benchmarking
• UserZoom offers help with recruiting
• The UI may be hard to understand at first

Upon request, starting at $15K/year.

Free trial/ Freemium – No

Lookback is a great tool for gathering user insights and conducting 1:1 interviews. 

• Remote ethnography
• 1:1 interviews 
• Usability testing 
• Remote card sorting 
• Tree testing 
• Diary studies 
• Reasonable prices 
• Live broadcasts available
• No user panel available
• Bad customer support according to the reviews

Plans – $229/month (billed annually)

Free Trial/Freemium – Yes, there is a 60-day trial period available.

Check out our full list of best usability testing tools .

User Journey Map

User journey map examples, topics: user journey map.

• 01. User Journey Map
• 02. User Journey Map Tools
• 03. User Journey Map Examples
• 04. User Journey Map Template

User Journey Map Template

• Card Sorting
• Tree Testing
• Preference Test
• Five Second Test
• Session Recording
• Freeform Interviews
• Study Interviews
• Mobile Testing
• First Click Test
• Prototype Testing
• Website Testing
• Onsite Recruiting
• Own Database
• Documentation
• Product features
• UX Glossary
• Comparisons

A Beginner’s Guide To User Journey Mapping

To design a great product, you need to understand what the user does with it. A user journey map will help you to answer that question for the product’s entire lifecycle.

“How do people actually use this product?” is a fundamental question that every product creator must answer. In order to do so, product designers need to understand the essence of the whole product experience from the user’s perspective. Fortunately, user journey mapping is an excellent exercise that can shed light on the ways in which the users interact with the product.

What Is a User Journey Map?

More From Nick Babich What Is Microcopy?

What Design Problems Does a User Journey Map Solve?

A user journey map is an excellent tool for UX designers because i t visualizes how a user interacts with a product and allows designers to see a product from a user’s point of view. This fosters a more user-centric approach to product design, which ultimately leads to a better user experience.

User journey maps help a product team to find the answer to the “What if?” questions. Also, a user journey map can be helpful when a company tracks quantitative key performance indicators . In this case, a user journey map can become a cornerstone for strategic recommendations.

The 8-Step Process of User Journey Mapping

Before creating a user journey map, review the goals of your business or service. This knowledge will help you align the business and user goals.

• Choose a scope.
• Create a user persona.
• Define the scenario and user expectations.
• Create a list of touchpoints.
• Take user intention into account.
• Sketch the journey.
• Consider a user’s emotional state during each step of the interaction.
• Validate and refine the user journey.

1. Choose a Scope

The scope of the user journey map can vary from a high-level map that shows end-to-end experience (e.g., creating a smart home in your house) to a more detailed map that focuses on one particular interaction (for instance, adding a new device to your smart home ecosystem).

2. Create a User Persona

Who is your user?

A user journey map is always focused on the experience of one main actor — a user persona who experiences the journey.

A user persona should always be based on information that you have about your target audience. That’s why you should always start with user research . Having solid information about your users will prevent you from making false assumptions.

Gather and analyze all available information about your target audience:

• Interview your real or potential users.
• Conduct contextual inquiry. This is an  ethnographic field study that involves in-depth observation of people interacting with your product.
• Conduct and analyze the results of user surveys.

3. Define the Scenario and User Expectations

The scenario describes the situation that the journey map addresses. It can be real or anticipated. It’s also important to define what expectations a user persona has about the interaction. For example, a scenario could be ordering a taxi using a mobile app with the expectation of getting the car in five minutes or less.

4. Create a List of Touchpoints

Touchpoints are user actions and interactions with the product or business. You need to identify all the main touchpoints and all channels associated with each touchpoint. For example, for the touchpoint “Buy a gift,” the associated channels could be purchasing online or buying in the store.

5. Take User Intention Into Account

What motivates your user to interact with your product? Similarly, w hat problem are users looking to solve when they decide to use your product? Different user segments will have different reasons for adopting it.

Let’s take an e-commerce website. There is a big difference between a user who is just looking around and one who wants to accomplish a specific task like purchasing a particular product.

For each user journey, you need to understand:

• Motivation. Why are the users trying to do this action?
• Channels. Where the interaction takes place.
• Actions . The actual behaviors and steps the users take.
• Pain points . What are the challenges users are facing?

Also, ensure that the user is getting a consistent experience across all channels.

6. Sketch the Journey

Put together all the information you have and sketch a journey in the format of a step-by-step interaction. Each step demonstrates an experience that the persona has with a service/product or another person.

You can use  a tool called a storyboard,  which is a graphic representation of how a user does something, step by step. It  can help you show how users can interact with a product. Using storyboards, you can visually depict what happens during each step.

7. Consider a User’s Emotional State During Each Step of the Interaction

What does a user feel when interacting with your product?

The products we design need to mirror the states of mind of our users. When we consider a user’s emotional state, this knowledge will help us to connect with them on a human level. That’s why it’s important to add an emotional lane to the user journey map. By visualizing the emotional ups and downs of the experience, you’ll find the areas that require refinement.

You can create an empathy map to better understand how the user feels. Try to mitigate the emotional downs and reinforce emotional ups with good design. 

8. Validate and Refine the User Journey

Journey maps should result in truthful narratives, not fairy tales. Even when a user journey is based on research, you must validate it. Use the information from usability testing sessions and app analytics to be sure that your journey resembles a real use case.

Gather and analyze information about your users on a regular basis. For example, user feedback can be used to improve your understanding of the user journey.

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Map the User Journey

Remember that the goal of making a user journey map is to create a shared vision within your product team and stakeholders. That’s why, once you create a user journey map, you should share it with your peers. Make it possible for everyone in your team to look at the entire experience from the user’s standpoint and draw on this information while crafting a product.

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10 must-haves for customer journey mapping tools.

14 min read There are dozens of customer journey mapping tools out there, so it can be hard to find the right one for you. Here are 10 things to look out for, whether you’re just getting started or looking to upgrade what you currently have.

In today’s world, there are multiple ways in which a customer interacts with a brand. This might be direct – through the website, in-store, or on the phone; or it might be indirect, for example, reading a third-party review of the brand’s product or service. One thing is sure – how a customer is influenced varies from person to person, and this continues to evolve.

With multiple channels, both online and offline, and evolving buyer needs, understanding the customer journey map — how a customer interacts with your brand before, during, and after purchase — can be complex.

What is a customer journey map?

A customer journey map is a visual representation of your customers’ interactions with your organisation, tracking the steps they take as they progress through their relationship with your brand. A customer journey map can help you to see where your existing customer journey is working and where pain points are occurring and assist you in optimising your efforts for a better customer experience .

Ideally, you use a customer journey map to strengthen the moments that matter to your customers and to heighten the points of emotional load. This will encourage your customers to continue their journey and take the actions you’re guiding them towards. It’s useful not only to create a better customer journey but to increase customer engagement and to extend your customer lifetime value.

Customer journey mapping, it follows, is then the process of creating a user journey map. Charting the customer experience through customer journey mapping is vital for understanding your customer’s perspective of the steps they take when they interact with you – and for making your customer experience memorable.

What are customer journey mapping tools?

A customer journey mapping tool is a digital tool that collates information on the various stages of customer journeys and presents them in a way that’s easily understood. A customer journey mapping tool can track your users’ pathways across your platforms with the data you have, and help you to see where you can invest more time and effort to create a more effective customer experience.

The best customer journey mapping tools are sophisticated, with the ability to help you not only manage your customer journey but to orchestrate them in real-time. This enables you to personalise your customer’s experience as they undergo their journey and to offer them a customer experience that feels unique to them.

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What are the benefits of using these tools for customer journey maps?

Customer journeys are often not single or linear. For a business of huge scale, manually undergoing the customer journey mapping process for every customer type is impossible. This is why tools to help you with customer journey mapping are so valuable; because the quicker you can understand the customer journey, the quicker you can find ways to improve the experience and reach your goals — whether that is buying a product, getting a customer to renew, upgrade their subscription or refer to a friend.

Customer experience often falls short of customer expectations – and that’s where your audience can suffer from churn. By using tools to help you with customer journey mapping, you’re able to use customer experience insights to notify team members where they need to create follow-up actions and amend journeys. A visual collaboration tool makes it easy to see where the issues lie and where your team is best placed to make a change.

Read on to understand the must-have key features for the tools you use for customer journey mapping.

Choosing a customer journey mapping tool

Customer journey mapping tools should include the following:

1. Simple design functionality

You shouldn’t need coding know-how to start customer journey mapping, so whatever tool you use should offer easy design functionality. On the flip side, you shouldn’t have to stick to a rigid customer journey map template that doesn’t suit your customer journeys. Customer journeys can be complex, so being able to see the journey visually – in a simple and clear way – is a huge benefit. It will make the decision-making process far more effective if your user interface is easy to parse.

2. Fast and easy editing

With new channels, evolving buyer habits, and changing needs, the customer journey isn’t static, and therefore your customer journey mapping tools shouldn’t be either. You want the ability to change your journey maps quickly, in order to reflect new products, services, or processes, or change customer behaviours. As the customer journey evolves, so can you — meaning any actions you take will be as effective as possible. Ideally, you can make real-time changes to the customer journey using your mapping tool as a guide.

3. Sharing functionality

What’s a journey map if only you get to see it? Your chosen customer journey mapping tools should enable you to share your maps quickly and easily, with as many stakeholders as you want. The customer experience should be something that’s owned by the entire company — from marketing and sales to customer service and product.

But only by knowing how customers interact with the brand throughout the customer journey can your teams ensure the experience will meet their needs and expectations. Empowering your organisation from top to bottom is key to making this a reality. Customer journey mapping is inherently going to be a collaborative process, so make sure your tool is equipped for multiple sources of input.

4. Real-time collaboration

Along with shareability, you also want a customer journey mapping tool that enables your team to collaborate in real-time. It should be possible to set permissions for those who can view, edit, or create journey maps. If you’re serious about improving the customer journey, then journey mapping should become a part of your daily routine, and not something that is done at the start of the year and forgotten about afterward. Turn your journey map into a living, breathing document that every team can access, learn from, and improve.

You should run regular  workshops on customer journey mapping  to help your team improve as you go. Your customer feedback and customer engagement is likely to change over time as you implement new products, services and processes, meaning your mapping tool and your team need to be able to keep up with any evolution.

5. Integration with data sources and other software tools

A great customer journey mapping tool will integrate with your existing data sources, allowing you to feed in real customer sentiment into your journey maps. By using data to inform your customer journey mapping, teams can have real confidence in the actions they take, removing any element of guesswork. Data-driven decisions are much easier to chart and justify. Create a journey map based on real customer behaviour, emotions and attitudes backed up by data, rather than what you assume  to be true.

Customer journey mapping software should ideally also be able to integrate with other software you use for action management and team direction. Rather than using multiple tools for mapping software and taking subsequent action to improve the customer experience, the ideal journey mapping software will encompass everything you need in one place.

6. Action trackers

Once you’ve identified pain points and come up with ideas to remedy them, you should be able to assign actions within your customer journey mapping tools and track progress. With access to a single platform, teams from across the business should be able to collaborate, and take steps towards a shared vision and better customer experience. After all, a journey map is just a piece of paper unless you’re taking steps to gain insights and implement the actions you gather from it. This is where the true value of customer journey mapping becomes clear to see.

A great journey mapping tool will also be able to automate these actions to save your team members time and effort. Your customer analytics are likely already automated – so your actions should be too where possible.

7. Customer personas

Some of the best customer journey mapping software allows you to  create customer personas  as well. But at the very least, you should be able to import existing personas into your maps. Why is this important? Because there is no single journey that customers take, but similar groups of people may take a similar journey. This is where  segmentation  (dividing customers up by personas) is helpful because you can see how the customer experience varies for certain groups of customers. Ultimately, customer persona capability will allow you to take an even more tailored approach to your mapping process.

8. Omni-channel data integration

The very best customer journey mapping tools will combine offline and online data sources, reflecting the fact that your customers will veer between the two during most customer journeys, and some sets of customers will lean towards one more than the other, depending on their preferences and demographic. This means that your journey mapping will reflect the full picture, making it as accurate as possible.

Remember, your customer data won’t just come from the channels you control or customer satisfaction surveys you send out. Your customer feedback will also be reflected in the data you collect on customer behaviour – your operational and contextual data – and on third party channels.

9. Unlimited journeys and personas

Once you get the journey mapping bug, you’ll want to create lots of them. Your customer journey mapping tool shouldn’t limit you to a certain number or set a restriction on the number of customer personas per map. Your customer maps will evolve over time, so you need to be in a position where you can as a business too — and quickly.

Don’t be held back by technology. The customer journey maps you create will likely be dictated by the size, location, and industry in which your business operates. For example, if you’re a global FMCG business then you will have various maps that account for the various channels in which your customer personas interact with the brand, both directly and indirectly, throughout the journey. However, if you’re a B2B IT manufacturer then the journey maps you create will focus on a totally different set of customer personas, with their own purchase intent, motivations, and timeline.

10. Attractive and easy-to-understand customer journey maps

It’s easier to get senior buy-in when your customer journey maps match your brand colours and are easy to understand at a glance. Don’t go for a tool creating customer journey maps that are overly complex and, frankly, ugly. As a business, you want your teams to be brought into the process. Create customer journey maps they can easily understand, recognise, and use again and again. Branding will help too because it will create a sense of familiarity. Getting the look and feel right is a small but effective way of driving buy-in throughout the business.

Helpful customer journey mapping tools

Customer journey mapping tools don’t have to be complicated to get you started. No matter the size and maturity of your business, there are tools to match your customer journey map needs. Digital whiteboard tools or even PowerPoint can help you to start charting your initial customer journey maps. However, for businesses working at scale, your customer journey mapping process needs to have the ability to pull online and offline data into a cohesive, all-encompassing set of maps.

Qualtrics CustomerXM can identify points of friction and orchestrate your customer journey in real time, personalising your customer journey maps at scale for your audience’s current needs. With contextual data analysis and actionable insights built in, your customer journey evolves as your customers do.

Rather than simply outlining your customer journeys, Qualtrics CustomerXM unites all your customer data to create living customer journey maps that you can work on collaboratively with your team. With hundreds of integrations, 27 channels and 128 data sources feeding into a singular platform, Qualtrics CustomerXM offers you powerful customer journey mapping software that’s sophisticated and adaptive.

With hundreds of integrations, 27 channels and 128 data sources feeding into a singular platform, Qualtrics CustomerXM offers you powerful customer journey mapping software that’s sophisticated and adaptive.

Related resources

Customer Journey

Customer Journey Mapping 14 min read

The complete guide to customer journey management 14 min read, customer journey stages 12 min read, buyer’s journey 16 min read, customer journey analytics 13 min read, how to create a customer journey map 11 min read, customer journey mapping workshop 3 min read, request demo.

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Journey mapping 101.

December 9, 2018 2018-12-09

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Journey maps are a common UX tool. They come in all shapes, sizes, and formats. Depending on the context, they can be used in a variety of ways. This article covers the basics: what a journey map is (and is not), related terminology, common variations, and how we can use journey maps.

In This Article:

Definition of a journey map, key components of a journey map, journey-map variations, why use journey maps.

Definition: A journey map is a visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal.

In its most basic form, journey mapping starts by compiling a series of user actions into a timeline. Next, the timeline is fleshed out with user thoughts and emotions in order to create a narrative. This narrative is condensed and polished, ultimately leading to a visualization.

The terms ‘user journey map’ and ‘customer journey map’ can be used interchangeably. Both reference a visualization of a person using your product or service.

While the argument can be made that the term ‘customer’ does a disservice to the method (because, especially for certain business-to-business products, not all of end users are technically customers, i.e., product buyers), alignment on what you call the map is far less important than alignment on the content within the map.

Journey maps come in all shapes and sizes. Regardless of how they look, journey maps have the following 5 key elements in common:

Scenario + Expectations

Journey phases, actions, mindsets, and emotions, opportunities.

The actor is the persona or user who experiences the journey. The actor is who the journey map is about — a point of view. Actors usually align with personas and their actions in the map are rooted in data.

Provide one point of view per map in order to build a strong, clear narrative. For example, a university might choose either a student or a faculty member as actor — each would result in different journeys. (To capture both viewpoints, the university will need to build two separate maps, one for each of the two user types.)

The scenario describes the situation that the journey map addresses and is associated with an actor’s goal or need and specific expectations. For example, one scenario could be switching mobile plans to save money, and expectations for it include to easily find all the information needed to make a decision.

Scenarios can be real (for existing products and services) or anticipated — for products that are yet in the design stage.

Journey maps are best for scenarios that involve a sequence of events (such as shopping or taking a trip), describe a process (thus involve a set of transitions over time), or might involve multiple channels .

Journey phases are the different high-level stages in the journey. They provide organization for the rest of the information in the journey map (actions, thoughts, and emotions). The stages will vary from scenario to scenario; each organization will usually have data to help it determine what these phases are for a given scenario.

Here are some examples:

• For an ecommerce scenario (like buying Bluetooth speakers), the stages can be discover, try, buy, use, seek support.
• For big (or luxury) purchases (like buying a car), the stages can be engagement, education, research, evaluation, justification.
• For a business-to-business scenario (like rolling out an internal tool), the stages could be purchase, adoption, retention, expansion, advocacy.

These are behaviors, thoughts, and feelings the actor has throughout the journey and that are mapped within each of the journey phases.

Actions are the actual behaviors and steps taken by users. This component is not meant to be a granular step-by-step log of every discrete interaction. Rather, it is a narrative of the steps the actor takes during that phase.

Mindsets correspond to users’ thoughts, questions, motivations, and information needs at different stages in the journey. Ideally, these are customer verbatims from research.

Emotions are plotted as single line across the journey phases, literally signaling the emotional “ups” and “downs” of the experience. Think of this line as a contextual layer of emotion that tells us where the user is delighted versus frustrated.

Opportunities (along with additional context such as ownership and metrics) are insights gained from mapping; they speak to how the user experience can be optimized. Insights and opportunities help the team draw knowledge from the map:

• What needs to be done with this knowledge?
• Who owns what change?
• Where are the biggest opportunities?
• How are we going to measure improvements we implement?

There are several concepts closely related and thus easily confused with journey maps.

It is important to note that this section is only meant to help your personal understanding and clarification of these terms. It is not advised to debate or attempt to shift a whole organization’s language to abide by the definitions stated here. Instead, use these definitions to guide you towards aspects of another method that your team has not previously considered.

Journey Map vs. Experience Map

Think of an experience map as a parent to a journey map. A journey map has a specific actor (a singular customer or user of a product) and specific scenario (of a product or service), while an experience map is broader on both accounts — a generic human undergoing a general human experience.

The experience map is agnostic of a specific business or product. It’s used for understanding a general human behavior; in contrast, a customer journey map is specific and focused on a particular business or product.

For example, imagine the world before the ridesharing market existed (Uber, Lyft, Bird, or Limebike, to name a few). If we were to create an experience map of how a person gets from one place to another, the map would likely include walking, biking, driving, riding with a friend, public transportation, or calling a taxi. Using that experience map we could then isolate pain points: unknown fares, bad weather, unpredictable timing, paying in cash, and so on. Using these pain points, we would then create a future journey map for specific product: how does a particular type of user call a car using the Lyft app?

Journey Map vs. Service Blueprint

If journey maps are the children to experience maps, then service blueprints are the grandchildren. They visualize the relationships between different service components (such as people or processes) at various touchpoints in a specific customer journey.

Think of service blueprints as a part two to customer journey maps. They are extensions of journey maps, but instead of being focused on the user (and taking the user’s viewpoint), they are focused on the business (and take its perspective).

For the Lyft scenario above, we would take the journey map and expand it with what Lyft does internally to support that customer journey. The blueprint could include matching the user to a driver, contacting the driver, calculating fares, and so on.

Journey Map vs. User Story Map

User stories are used in Agile to plan features or functionalities. Each feature is condensed down to a deliberately brief description from a user’s point of view; the description focuses on what the user wants to do, and how that feature will help. The typical format of a user story is a single sentence: “As a [type of user], I want to [goal], so that [benefit].” For example, “As a checking account holder, I want to deposit checks with my mobile device, so that I don’t have to go to the bank.”

A user story map is a visual version of a user story. For example, take the user story above (“As a checking account holder, I want to deposit checks with my mobile device, so that I don’t have to go to the bank.”) and imagine writing out the different steps that the team plans for the user to take when using that functionality. These steps could be: logging in, beginning deposit, taking picture of check, and entering transaction details. For each step, we can document required features: enabling camera access, scanning check and auto filling numbers, and authorizing signature. In a user story map, these features are written on sticky notes, then arranged based on the product release that each functionality will be added to.

While, at a glance, a user story map may look like a journey map, journey maps are meant for discovery and understanding (think big picture), while user story maps are for planning and implementation (think little picture).

Although a journey map and user story map may contain some of the same pieces, they are used at different points of the process. For example, imagine our journey map for Lyft indicated that a pain point appeared when the user was in a large group. To address it, the team may introduce a multicar-call option. We could create a user story map to break this feature (multicar call) into smaller pieces, so a product-development team could plan release cycles and corresponding tasks.

The benefits of journey maps (and most other UX mappings ) are two-fold. First, the process of creating a map forces conversation and an aligned mental model for the whole team. Fragmented understanding is a widespread problem in organizations because success metrics are siloed; it is no one’s responsibility to look at the entire experience from the user’s standpoint. This shared vision is a critical goal of journey mapping, because, without it, agreement on how to improve customer experience would never take place.

Second, the shared artifact resulting from the mapping can be used to communicate an understanding of your user or service to all involved. Journey maps are effective mechanisms for conveying information in a way that is memorable, concise, and that creates a shared vision. The maps can also become the basis for decision making as the team moves forward.

Journey mapping is a process that provides a holistic view of the customer experience by uncovering moments of both frustration and delight throughout a series of interactions. Done successfully, it reveals opportunities to address customers’ pain points, alleviate fragmentation, and, ultimately, create a better experience for your users.

Additional articles are available, discussing: 

• When to create customer journey maps
• The 5-step process
• Journey mapping in real life

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Customer Journey Maps: How to Create Really Good Ones [Examples + Template]

Updated: April 17, 2024

Published: May 04, 2023

Did you know 70% of online shoppers abandoned their carts in 2022? Why would someone spend time adding products to their cart just to fall off the customer journey map at the last second?

The thing is — understanding your customer base can be very challenging. Even when you think you’ve got a good read on them, the journey from awareness to purchase for each customer will always be unpredictable, at least to some level.

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While it isn’t possible to predict every experience with 100% accuracy, customer journey mapping is a convenient tool for keeping track of critical milestones that every customer hits. In this post, I’ll explain everything you need to know about customer journey mapping — what it is, how to create one, and best practices.

Table of Contents

What is the customer journey?

What is a customer journey map, benefits of customer journey mapping, customer journey stages.

• What’s included in a customer journey map?

The Customer Journey Mapping Process

Steps for creating a customer journey map.

• Types of Customer Journey Maps

Customer Journey Mapping Best Practices

• Customer Journey Design
• Customer Journey Map Examples

Free Customer Journey Map Templates

Free Customer Journey Template

Outline your company's customer journey and experience with these 7 free templates.

• Buyer's Journey Template
• Future State Template
• Day-in-the-Life Template

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The customer journey is the series of interactions a customer has with a brand, product, or business as they become aware of a pain point and make a purchase decision. While the buyer’s journey refers to the general process of arriving at a purchase, the customer journey refers to a buyer's purchasing experience with a specific company or service.

Customer Journey vs. Buyer Journey

Many businesses that I’ve worked with were confused about the differences between the customer’s journey and the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey is the entire buying experience from pre-purchase to post-purchase. It covers the path from customer awareness to becoming a product or service user.

In other words, buyers don’t wake up and decide to buy on a whim. They go through a process of considering, evaluating, and purchasing a new product or service.

The customer journey refers to your brand’s place within the buyer’s journey. These are the customer touchpoints where you will meet your customers as they go through the stages of the buyer’s journey. When you create a customer journey map, you’re taking control of every touchpoint at every stage of the journey instead of leaving it up to chance.

For example, at HubSpot, our customer’s journey is divided into three stages — pre-purchase/sales, onboarding/migration, and normal use/renewal.

1. Use customer journey map templates.

Why make a customer journey map from scratch when you can use a template? Save yourself some time by downloading HubSpot’s free customer journey map templates .

This has templates that map out a buyer’s journey, a day in your customer’s life, lead nurturing, and more.

These templates can help sales, marketing, and customer support teams learn more about your company’s buyer persona. This will improve your product and customer experience.

2. Set clear objectives for the map.

Before you dive into your customer journey map, you need to ask yourself why you’re creating one in the first place.

What goals are you directing this map towards? Who is it for? What experience is it based upon?

If you don’t have one, I recommend creating a buyer persona . This persona is a fictitious customer with all the demographics and psychographics of your average customer. This persona reminds you to direct every aspect of your customer journey map toward the right audience.

3. Profile your personas and define their goals.

Next, you should conduct research. This is where it helps to have customer journey analytics ready.

Don’t have them? No worries. You can check out HubSpot’s Customer Journey Analytics tool to get started.

Questionnaires and user testing are great ways to obtain valuable customer feedback. The important thing is to only contact actual customers or prospects.

You want feedback from people interested in purchasing your products and services who have either interacted with your company or plan to do so.

Some examples of good questions to ask are:

• How did you hear about our company?
• What first attracted you to our website?
• What are the goals you want to achieve with our company? In other words, what problems are you trying to solve?
• How long have you/do you typically spend on our website?
• Have you ever made a purchase with us? If so, what was your deciding factor?
• Have you ever interacted with our website to make a purchase but decided not to? If so, what led you to this decision?
• On a scale of 1 to 10, how easily can you navigate our website?
• Did you ever require customer support? If so, how helpful was it, on a scale of 1 to 10?
• Can we further support you to make your process easier?

You can use this buyer persona tool to fill in the details you procure from customer feedback.

4. Highlight your target customer personas.

Once you’ve learned about the customer personas that interact with your business, I recommend narrowing your focus to one or two.

Remember, a customer journey map tracks the experience of a customer taking a particular path with your company. If you group too many personas into one journey, your map won’t accurately reflect that experience.

When creating your first map, it’s best to pick your most common customer persona and consider the route they would typically take when engaging with your business for the first time.

You can use a marketing dashboard to compare each and determine the best fit for your journey map. Don’t worry about the ones you leave out, as you can always go back and create a new map specific to those customer types.

5. List out all touchpoints.

Begin by listing the touchpoints on your website.

What is a touchpoint in a customer journey map?

A touchpoint in a customer journey map is an instance where your customer can form an opinion of your business. You can find touchpoints in places where your business comes in direct contact with a potential or existing customer.

For example, if I were to view a display ad, interact with an employee, reach a 404 error, or leave a Google review, all of those interactions would be considered a customer touchpoint.

Your brand exists beyond your website and marketing materials, so you must consider the different types of touchpoints in your customer journey map. These touchpoints can help uncover opportunities for improvement in the buying journey.

Based on your research, you should have a list of all the touchpoints your customers are currently using and the ones you believe they should be using if there’s no overlap.

This is essential in creating a customer journey map because it provides insight into your customers’ actions.

For instance, if they use fewer touchpoints than expected, does this mean they’re quickly getting turned away and leaving your site early? If they are using more than expected, does this mean your website is complicated and requires several steps to reach an end goal?

Whatever the case, understanding touchpoints help you understand the ease or difficulties of the customer journey.

Aside from your website, you must also look at how your customers might find you online. These channels might include:

• Social channels.
• Email marketing.
• Third-party review sites or mentions.

Run a quick Google search of your brand to see all the pages that mention you. Verify these by checking your Google Analytics to see where your traffic is coming from. Whittle your list down to those touchpoints that are the most common and will be most likely to see an action associated with it.

At HubSpot, we hosted workshops where employees from all over the company highlighted instances where our product, service, or brand impacted a customer. Those moments were recorded and logged as touchpoints. This showed us multiple areas of our customer journey where our communication was inconsistent.

The proof is in the pudding — you can see us literally mapping these touch points out with sticky notes in the image below.

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Conversion Analysis

5 best user journey mapping tools.

17 May, 2023

Growth Manager

What are the best user journey mapping tools?

At UXCam , we know how vital a robust journey mapping tool is for empathizing with the user’s experience. And that’s why we’ve handpicked and reviewed below 5 of the best journey mapping tools to support your mobile app teams in creating empathic products.

UXCam is a leader in mobile app analytics and supports your product teams in taking app experiences to the next level through empathic design. Our comprehensive, easy-to-use suite of powerful functionality provides the complete customer perspective and their innate behavior while interacting with your app.

Relevant features

Journey analysis.

With our journey analysis feature, you can achieve the following:

Examine your screen flows to make design decisions for more conversions and engagement

Find conversion paths and common exit screens

Uncover pain points

Understand why users leave

Identify unusual in-app journeys

Use heatmaps and session replays for more context

Tagless autocapture

Use a single snippet of code to automatically track all user gestures, interactions, and device properties. With UXCam, you can start analysis immediately, and the data will surface many unknowns. For example, bugs not caught by testing or visible on crash logs.

Conversion funnels

Create multi-step funnels in seconds to understand at which part of the user journey people drop off and discover hidden trends. You can view the sessions or users that have dropped off at a particular step to examine the behavior and better understand complex conversion behavior.

UXCam has three flexible pricing plans for companies of all sizes. They offer a free plan, two tailored paid plans, and all start off with a 14-day free trial.

Lightweight and stable SDK captures data without affecting the UX

Privacy compliant

Integrates seamlessly with other analytic tools

Pricing information is not provided on their website

Glassbox is a digital experience analytics platform to support businesses in developing customer journeys. It helps teams understand how product friction impacts people's behavior to build apps that drive customer loyalty and growth.

Augmented journey map . Understand and optimize your customer journeys with conversion, drop-off, and pain point insights across your website or app. Evaluate the cost of poor UX with the revenue impact metric.

Mobile app analytics . Glassbox captures all user interactions and technical events to examine the in-app experience. See how crashes, errors, and lag affect behavior.

Struggle & error analysis . Discover where customers struggle by analyzing different actions, patterns, and technical events. Pinpoint friction quickly with a struggle score.

Glassbox features are packaged based on your business requirements; you must contact them for pricing information. If the package you need is unavailable, you can customize one.

Great support team

Real-time dashboards with alerts

Customizable layout

Lack of customizable reporting options

Contentsquare

Contentsquare is a digital experience analytics platform. One of their standout features is CS Live. This Chrome extension transforms the website into a dashboard highlighting the elements driving the most transactions, highest click rate, first click, hesitation times, and more.

Their CS Digital product covers the features to understand customer interactions and includes:

Journey analysis . Their advanced journey analytics highlights the most valuable content to customers and makes behavior anomalies easy to understand.

Zone-based heatmaps . See how customers interact with the page elements on your site. Compare clicks, hesitations, and scrolling to find optimization opportunities.

Contentsquare does not list pricing information available on their website, but you can book a demo to get started.

Heat map reporting for landing page tests

Mouse mapping

General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliant

No pricing information on their website

Quantum Metric

The Quantum Metric platform focuses on customer-centric product design and helps businesses to develop digital products faster. It delivers quantifiable data grounded on the customer's experience, so teams can prioritize and confidently build innovative products.

Customer journey analytics. Their journey mapping includes omnichannel analysis, and you can refine the data by adding steps based on clicked buttons, conversion events, and more. The journey can be customized to focus on a particular audience.

Page analytics. Enhance UX by relating engagement with business outcomes and user sessions. You can find page-level conversions and benchmark behaviors by page or page group

The Quantum Metric website doesn’t display pricing details, but you can request a custom demo or contact them for information.

High fidelity replay

Tracking and reporting on detailed KPIs

Easy-to-use dashboard

Lags occasionally

UserExperior

UserExperior is a Digital Experience Monitoring (DEM) and UX analytics platform. It delivers customer experience analytics for faster diagnosis of broken digital experiences. Teams can interpret usage patterns, find UI and UX flaws, and monitor app performance.

Funnel analysis . Map and analyze critical issues for drop-offs. Find conversion opportunities at each step, and test how UI/UX changes influence conversions.

Heatmaps . For analysis of different types of interaction alongside issues. You'll have the option to filter with various gestures and interaction types, like rage taps.

Session replays . To reproduce interactions for deep behavior analysis—and access session recordings connected to any issue.

UserExperior offers a free and paid plan with a 14-day free trial.

Great customer support

Session replay available for every user action

A slight learning curve for non-techie users

Choosing the best user journey mapping tool

What are user journey mapping tools.

A user or customer journey mapping tool visualizes the process necessary to accomplish a goal using your app. It uses quantitative and qualitative data to create a narrative of your user's journey, making it easier to understand how people use your product, whether it’s easy to navigate, and other important data.

Why are user journey mapping tools important?

User journey mapping tools surface people's pain points and other problematic areas they have encountered when interacting with your apps. These elements should be improved to avoid churn . In addition, it will show the seamless parts of the design that could be optimized.

Enhance collaboration

Although user journey maps can be hand drawn, using this method for every customer type accurately is impractical. Digital mapping tools save time and present the findings precisely.

A clear and unified customer journey map is essential for sales, marketing, and product teams, as it optimizes collaboration and makes sure that everyone is on the same page.

Criteria to consider when choosing user journey mapping tools

Intuitive and adaptable . Consider a journey mapping tool that your teams can start using right away. There should be support materials for guidance should you need them.

Specialized functionality . The tool should be designed with a focus on understanding the user experience. And include the features required to develop a rich user journey representation.

Seamless integration . The best mapping tools offer several app integrations like Google Drive and Slack to include journey mapping data with your workflows.

Use UXCam for accurate insight into user journeys

In a constantly evolving digital world, the journey map is a valuable UX tool that allows teams to see apps from the user's perspective. It's vital for guiding UI/UX design and conversion optimization.

Today's tools deliver cutting-edge functionality for detailed journey maps focusing on web and mobile app journeys. However, it is common that the SDKs are unstable and cause lag that affects the UX, thus, causing the customer to change their behavior in response to the performance. 

UXCam has a solid lightweight SDK built for mobile apps, so it doesn't affect performance. It quietly collects the data mobile app teams need taken from unaffected user behavior. See for yourself by signing up for a free trial .

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Visual Tools To Optimize Employee Journey Mapping

What is Employee Journey Mapping?

Employee journey mapping is a strategic approach used in HR management to visualize the entire lifecycle of an employee within an organization, from hiring to retirement. This technique helps in pinpointing various touchpoints where the employee interacts with the organization, which can significantly influence their overall experience and, consequently, organizational success.

What is an Employee Journey?

Hiring and onboarding

Training and development

Performance reviews

Promotions and career progression

Exit interviews and offboarding

Each of these stages offers unique opportunities for enhancing employee engagement and satisfaction, making it crucial for HR teams to carefully analyze and optimize these interactions.

Traditionally, employee journey mapping might have been conducted through simple checklists or basic flowcharts. However, with the advent of advanced visual tools like those offered by Creately , the process has transformed. Visual mapping techniques allow for more dynamic, interactive, and comprehensive representations of the employee journey. These tools not only facilitate a clearer understanding but also enable real-time collaboration among team members to iteratively refine the journey maps.

By integrating feedback directly into these visual maps, organizations can swiftly adapt and implement changes that enhance the employee experience, leading to improved team dynamics and productivity. This shift from traditional to visual mapping techniques represents a significant leap towards more effective and efficient HR management practices.

Employee Journey Map Template

• Ready to use
• Fully customizable template
• Get Started in seconds

Key Benefits of Visual Employee Journey Mapping

Visual tools in employee journey mapping offer transformative benefits that can significantly enhance the way organizations understand and engage with their employees. By leveraging these tools, HR teams can gain deeper insights into employee experiences, leading to more effective engagement strategies and improved organizational productivity.

Enhanced Understanding of Employee Experiences: Visual employee journey maps provide a clear and comprehensive view of the employee experience, helping HR teams to identify moments that matter most. This enhanced understanding facilitates the development of targeted engagement strategies that are more likely to improve employee satisfaction and retention.

Improved Team Dynamics and Productivity: Through targeted interventions based on insights gained from visual mapping, teams can work more cohesively. This not only boosts team morale but also enhances overall productivity, as employees feel more valued and understood.

Streamlined HR Processes: With tools like HR Planning Software , HR processes become more streamlined. Visual tools allow for the clear documentation and analysis of employee data, making processes like onboarding, training, and development more efficient.

Facilitation of Personalized Employee Development Plans: Visual maps enable HR teams to create personalized development plans that cater specifically to the needs and career goals of each employee, fostering better personal and professional growth.

Reduction in Employee Turnover: Proactive management of the employee experience through visual tools can significantly reduce turnover rates by addressing potential issues before they escalate, ensuring a more stable and engaged workforce.

What to Map in Employee Journey Mapping?

Effective employee journey mapping involves a detailed understanding of the various stages and touchpoints that an employee encounters throughout their career. By mapping these critical elements, organizations can significantly enhance employee experiences and streamline HR processes. Here’s what to focus on:

• Key Stages and Touchpoints: From the initial onboarding to ongoing training, performance reviews, and eventually offboarding, each stage of the employee lifecycle offers unique opportunities for engagement and development. Mapping these stages helps in identifying areas for improvement and intervention.

Onboarding and Training: A smooth onboarding process sets the tone for the employee experience. It’s crucial to map out a comprehensive onboarding plan that integrates the new hires into the company culture and equips them with the necessary tools and knowledge. Consider using Visual Employee Journey Map Templates to design these processes.

Performance Reviews and Promotions: Regular assessments and recognitions are vital for employee motivation. Mapping out when and how performance evaluations and promotions occur can help maintain fairness and transparency within the organization.

• Exit Interviews and Offboarding: The final stages of an employee’s journey can provide critical insights into the overall employee experience. Effective mapping of exit interviews and offboarding processes ensures valuable feedback is captured and addressed.
• Incorporating Feedback Loops: Continuous improvement is key in employee journey mapping. Integrating feedback mechanisms at various stages allows for real-time updates and enhancements to the journey maps, ensuring they remain relevant and effective.

Stages of the Employee Journey

Understanding the stages of the employee journey is crucial for effective employee journey mapping . From recruitment to retirement, each stage presents unique opportunities and challenges that can significantly impact employee engagement and retention.

Recruitment: The initial contact and attraction of potential employees. This stage sets the tone for the organizational relationship.

Onboarding: Critical for employee integration, involving training and initial assessments to ensure a smooth transition into the company.

Development: Ongoing training and professional growth opportunities to maintain employee engagement and adaptability.

Retention: Strategies to keep employees motivated and committed to the company.

Retirement: Transition strategies that honor the employee’s contributions and encourage ongoing association with the company.

Aligning these journey stages with organizational goals is essential for maximizing employee potential and achieving business objectives. For instance, during the onboarding stage, integrating tools like Creately’s Employee Onboarding Template can streamline processes and enhance the initial employee experience.

Each stage of the employee journey offers distinct touchpoints that, when effectively managed, can lead to improved employee satisfaction and productivity. By customizing journey stages based on organizational roles and departments, companies can foster a more engaged and productive workforce.

Designing Effective Employee Journey Maps

Designing an effective employee journey map is crucial for enhancing the overall employee experience and optimizing organizational productivity. This comprehensive guide will walk you through the essential steps to create a visual employee journey map that not only captures the essence of your employees' experiences but also aligns with your organizational goals.

Step 1: Segment Your Employees

Begin by segmenting your workforce into distinct groups based on their roles, departments, or career stages. This segmentation allows for a more tailored approach to mapping, ensuring that each map is relevant and specific to the group it represents.

Step 2: Establish the Journey for Each Persona

For each employee segment, establish a clear and detailed journey. Consider the unique touchpoints, challenges, and opportunities that each persona might encounter. This step is crucial in making the journey map actionable and insightful.

Step 3: Map Feedback and Insights to the Employee Journey

Incorporate real-time feedback and insights into your journey maps. Use tools like Employee Journey Map Templates to dynamically update the maps based on employee feedback, ensuring they always reflect current experiences and sentiments.

Step 4: Identify Value Creation Opportunities

Identify key areas within the journey maps where your organization can create additional value for employees. This might include enhanced training programs, better career development opportunities, or improved work-life balance initiatives.

Step 5: Revise the Journey Map

Regularly review and update the journey maps. As your organization evolves, so too should your employee journey maps. This iterative process ensures that the maps remain relevant and continue to provide valuable insights into employee experiences and organizational dynamics.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Employee Journey Mapping

Mastering employee journey mapping is crucial for enhancing employee experiences and organizational efficiency. However, there are essential best practices to follow and common pitfalls to avoid to ensure the effectiveness of your journey maps.

Best Practices

Regularly Update Journey Maps: The employee experience is dynamic, so your journey maps should be too. Regular revisions keep your maps relevant and reflective of current employee needs and organizational changes.

Ensure Data Privacy : When mapping sensitive stages like onboarding or exit, it’s crucial to maintain high standards of data privacy and security to protect employee information.

Include Diverse Perspectives: Incorporate inputs from a wide range of employees to ensure your journey maps are inclusive and represent diverse employee experiences.

Common Pitfalls

• Overlooking Employee Feedback: Neglecting feedback can lead to outdated or irrelevant journey maps. Utilize tools like Employee Development Plan to integrate continuous feedback into your maps.

Ignoring Individual Differences: Avoid one-size-fits-all maps. Customize journey maps to accommodate different career paths, departments, and individual needs.

Failing to Align with Organizational Goals: Employee journey maps should support broader business objectives. Misalignment can lead to ineffective HR strategies and reduced employee engagement.

How Creately Supports Effective Employee Journey Mapping

Employee journey mapping is a crucial aspect of HR management, and Creately offers robust tools to enhance this process. With its interactive mapping interfaces and real-time collaboration tools, Creately provides a dynamic platform for creating comprehensive employee journey maps.

Interactive Mapping Interfaces: Creately’s user-friendly interfaces allow HR teams to visualize each stage of the employee journey effortlessly. This visualization aids in identifying critical touchpoints and opportunities for engagement and development.

Real-Time Collaboration Tools: These tools enable multiple team members to work on the journey map simultaneously, ensuring that all insights and inputs are integrated in real time. This feature is particularly beneficial for remote teams looking to maintain synchronization across different geographies.

Multiple Visual Frameworks for HR Planning: Creately supports various visual frameworks, which can be tailored to fit the unique needs of any organization, enhancing the clarity and effectiveness of the employee journey maps.

Central Canvas: This feature provides a single point of reference for all journey mapping activities, helping to maintain organizational clarity and ensuring that all team members are aligned with the HR strategies.

Visual tools like Creately revolutionize employee journey mapping by transforming static processes into dynamic, interactive experiences. This enhanced approach provides HR teams with deeper insights into employee touchpoints, fostering engagement and productivity. By continuously updating maps with real-time feedback, organizations can create more personalized and efficient HR strategies, ultimately leading to a more satisfied and committed workforce.

Join over thousands of organizations that use Creately to brainstorm, plan, analyze, and execute their projects successfully.

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Chiraag George is a communication specialist here at Creately. He is a marketing junkie that is fascinated by how brands occupy consumer mind space. A lover of all things tech, he writes a lot about the intersection of technology, branding and culture at large.