6 Customer Journey Map Examples: How UX Pros Do It

Customer journey mapping is a widely used and impactful technique that can help you improve your product, marketing, UX, and merchandising decisions.

However, like other UX research techniques (including user personas), there’s some vagueness and obscurity around how to actually create user journey maps.

This article draws on processes and user journey mapping examples from experts in the field. You’ll walk away with a clear picture of how to do it on your own.

What are customer journey maps?

Customer journey maps come in various forms, tailored to specific industries or customer interactions. These maps visualize the steps customers take, highlighting key touchpoints, emotions, pain points, and behaviors across different stages of the journey. 

By mapping this process, businesses can identify friction points, improve user experience, and create more personalized and effective engagement strategies.

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One of the first authors to write about user journey maps or “cycle of service mapping,” Dr. Chip Bell, co-author of the book, Service Wisdom: The Art of Amazing Your Customers, said:

“The goal of customer journey mapping is to create and retain a deep understanding of the customer’s experiences while he or she is traversing the path taken between having a need and getting that need met.

Its intent is to ‘get inside the customer’s head’ to ‘see,’ and therefore, understand the customer’s experiences. Armed with that perspective, organizations are better able to craft or recraft processes and encounters to become more customer-centric.”

Dr .Chip Bell

However, one of the key factors to keep in mind when mapping your ‘ideal customer’ is that “there is no ideal customer.” Dr. Chip Bell warns.

“It is like building your marriage expectations around a profile of the ‘ideal husband or wife.”

Another mistake companies often make is assuming customer mapping is static. On the contrary, it’s ever-changing. 

“It is like believing an annual customer satisfaction survey is the best way to understand customers. It is essentially an evergreen effort since the needs and expectations of customers are constantly changing. And, it is why diverse customer intelligence methods are vital and need to be perpetual.”

To help you get inspired, here are six successful user journey map examples implemented by various global companies. While some weren’t able to share the entire process due to privacy issues, they did share a specific section of the process of creating a customer journey map.

6 key examples of customer journey maps

1. Leadfeeder

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Finland-based Leadfeeder is a top (Google) Analytics tool that shows the companies that visit your website. The company’s mission is to bring web intelligence into business.

Their user journey maps the following path from Awareness/Discovery to Purchase/Sales to Loyalty/Retention. They have identified their customers’ goals, touchpoints, assets, channels, success factors, and secondary Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

For example, some of their customers’ goals in the Discovery or Awareness phase are:

• Identifying a tool that tracks unknown website visitors;
• How to get more B2B sales leads; and
• How to close more B2B sales deals.

During the Free Trial or Consideration phase, the customer finds out:

• How Leadfeeder works;
• How others use Leadfeeder; and
• How Leadfeeder compares to other providers.

 Once the customer buys the subscription or reaches the Purchase stage, customers may be looking at:

• How long they’re locked in for;
• Whether they need leadership buy-in; or
• Whether the data is accurate.

If they reach the purchase stage, the customer proceeds to the Retention phase, where they want to see a return on investment (ROI).

Leadfeeder also prioritizes analyzing customer engagement across various Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) and Bottom-of-Funnel (BOFU) marketing strategies. 

TOFU efforts are implemented at the Awareness stage to help generate more leads. For Leadfeeder, their most successful TOFU leads came from ad campaigns, 50% derived from incoming traffic and 35% from free-trial conversions. 

BOFU marketing strategies, implemented in the final stages of the customer journey, target prospects on the verge of making a purchase. Leadfeeder leverages Intercom to offer new users a free training session—immediately upon sign-up and at key intervals—resulting in a 25% completion rate, which strongly correlates with paid subscriptions.

When it comes to evergreen KPIs, Dr. Chip Bell emphasizes that:

 “Metrics should be anchored in part to customer outcomes, not granular processes and practices. It enables having a ‘line of sight’ to the overall customer evaluation.”

Be careful of missing the point—the end goal of customer mapping isn’t meeting KPIs; it’s a loyal customer.

Takeaway: This approach shows how important it is to create a buyer persona based on data-driven insights to identify and map what your customer needs and wants at every stage of the journey. The key is to get granular when getting to know your customer base/audience through segmentation, which can be based on three core strategies:

• Behavioral — based on customers’/prospects’ previous actions
• Demographic — based on physical and socioeconomic factors: age, location, gender, ethnicity, education level, income level, etc.
• Psychological — based on beliefs, emotions, personality traits, motivations, intent, interests, lifestyle, worldviews, etc.

This will help determine how to position your product as a solution to the challenges they may be facing.

2. Dapper Apps

Dapper Apps is an Australian-based mobile app development company that specializes in the design and development of stunning and intuitive apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows, and the web.

Dapper’s user journey has five phases: 

1. Research
2. Comparison 
3. Workshop 
4. Quote
5. Sign-Off 

But their customer journey map highlights something that Leadfeeders doesn’t—emotions and feelings.

Kofi Senaya, Director of Product at Clearbridge Mobile, a Canadian-based mobile app development agency, said that “mapping out the user journey is an effective way to understand what turns a viewer into a long-term, loyal customer.” Based on his experience, this process should focus on two things:

1. Motivations. “Like actions, companies need to understand what motivates a customer to keep progressing in their experience. What emotions is the customer feeling?”
2. Moments of Truth. “Emotions are powerful determinants of how the customer perceives the brand, meaning they will either want to continue engaging with you or they will abandon you.”

Chloë Constantinides from Dapper explained their user journey mapping process:

“The user journey focuses on that of a typical startup or someone who comes up with an independent idea. Often, corporate and enterprise clients need another stage at the beginning, which I would call ‘Education.’ This is because often enterprise customers are yet to even understand the value of technology being implemented into their business.

Startups generally come prepared with an idea.

We find that no matter how much clients believe they have thought about their app idea, there are always gaps. We use a journey map to really understand what our customers are thinking and feeling throughout the process, what resources or information they may require, and what actions we need to take to ensure the process is as clear and positive as possible for both parties.”

Chloë Constantinides

Takeaway: Dapper Apps tailors its journey map to different customer types (startups vs. enterprises) and focuses on understanding customer emotions and needs at each stage. By involving customers in the process, Dapper ensures their journey map reflects real customer experiences.

3. NinjaOutreach

My friends at NinjaOutreach run an all-purpose influencer marketing tool designed for bloggers, startups, small businesses, digital marketers, agencies, and large brands.

Their user journey map is quite complex and consists of several phases. Below, Viktor Popovski described one of the phases: Day 3 (Consideration phase), which translated into an email message based on the following assumptions:

• People need time to explore and use a new application, so if they don’t appear to be engaged in the first day or two, it’s probably natural.
• At the same time, people can easily forget about an application and become quickly disengaged, so if by day 3, 4, or 5 you are not seeing sufficient activity, then it may be cause for concern.
• Often, applications might require something from the user to allow the user to really experience the full benefits. This might be something like:
  • Importing a list;
  • Integrating with another application;
  • Filling out a profile.

Tasks like these can be tedious and uninspiring, so NinjaOutreach looked at this as an opportunity to complete them for the user. Here’s Popovski explaining further:

“The company needs to do this early enough in the cycle, so that afterward the user still has time to experience the full benefits of the software, while at the same time not making the invitation too early, otherwise it will exhaust the company’s resources and interrupt the natural user engagement flow such that they do not make the personal commitment in the application necessary to be successful with it.

As a result, the ‘Day 3: Are You Having Problems’ email is intended to focus on the subset of users in NinjaOutreach who have not yet experienced the full benefit of the app (have not created a list of prospects) and are perhaps on the verge of becoming completely disengaged.

The service we offer is to create a list of prospects for them, and users often jump at this offer. We collect the necessary data (i.e. who they are targeting) and promise to fill their list with around 50 prospects in 24–48 hours.

After going through the process, ourselves, we can describe to the user the different search techniques that we used to build the list, to empower them with the knowledge they will need to do it themselves.”

Viktor Popovski

Takeaway: NinjaOutreach uses proactive engagement to re-engage users who might otherwise disengage in the Consideration phase, ensuring they derive value from the app. By addressing user disengagement early, NinjaOutreach turns potential abandonment into loyalty.

4. IdeaRocket

William Gadea, Creative Director and Founder at IdeaRocket, a provider of animated videos for businesses, said that “most of our lead generation comes from search engine marketing, and we feel that the search term can be a clue for where in the journey the searcher is.”

“This insight can let us focus the call to action on each of our blog posts to what is appropriate for the visitor’s circumstances,” Gadea said.

Takeaway: IdeaRocket leverages search data to align its content and calls-to-action with the customer’s stage in the journey, ensuring relevance and engagement. By focusing on customer outcomes (e.g., finding the right solution), IdeaRocket ensures its journey map drives meaningful engagement.

5. ElevatedThird.com

Judd Mercer, Creative Director at Elevated Third, a B2B digital marketing agency, outlined  how to use journey maps in the real estate industry to develop your business, focusing on six distinct phases:

1. Design
2. Financing 
3. Construction 
4. Leasing 
5. Model 
6. Completion

The entire map is a bit more granular, but overall, they’ve modeled the process a customer goes through from start to finish.

Takeaway: Elevated Third’s granular journey map helps real estate businesses understand the customer’s experience at each stage, enabling them to address pain points and improve satisfaction. By modeling the customer’s journey in detail, Elevated Third ensures its map accurately captures the customer’s perspective.

One of the biggest mistakes companies make when mapping their ‘ideal customer’ is not leveraging customer insights. Dr. Chip Bell warns:

“The biggest mistake is the failure to actively involve the customer in verifying a journey map. Too many organizations think they know what their customers’ experience is. It is as challenging as a parent thinking they know what their teenager is going through because ‘I was once a teenager.’

As the owner of the processes and practices our customers negotiate, we know way too much. We understand what is behind the encounters that customers experience naively. But we are blind to many details that customers see and experience.”

A guest can see more in a day than a host can see in a year.

Therefore, it is imperative that the customer takes an “empathy walk” with the service provider to verify that “we accurately captured” what the customer experiences.” 

6. Website Setup

“Our customers have specific needs, and we have structured our website with targeted, problem-solving solutions,” said Robert Mening, the founder of WebsiteSetup.

Mening continued:

For example, if someone wants to know the answer to a question such as “Is it hard to create my own website?”, they could end up on one of our resource pages that talks about how to setup a website or a WordPress blog.

Mening also shared some stats regarding social media and the user journey map. Social is the main acquisition channel for the site, so the inflection points of the user journey often occur there.

They focus on post-click engagement metrics like pages/visits and bounce rate, which are good proxies for the success of specific channels. Their journey map also includes inquiries and search terms (as mentioned above) to assess the problem/solution fit:

Kofi Senaya suggested analyzing your customers’ experience on various channels. 

“User personas provide a starting point for user journey maps. Businesses should focus on mapping the story ending—the end goal of that user.”

Ask yourself, “What channel(s) have you chosen to analyze your customer experience on? Determine and prioritize it, because this is where all the customer interaction occurs – mobile app, website, or in-store. List the user(s) on the left and their story-ending (end goal) on the right, and all the actions in between.”

Customer personas should be based on quantitative and qualitative research. And there’s no better way to gain insights into how and why a customer takes the actions they do (from one stage to the next to get to that end goal) than social media market research.

Takeaway: WebsiteSetup uses targeted content and social media insights to guide users through their journey, ensuring they find solutions to their specific problems. By focusing on social media as a key channel, WebsiteSetup ensures its journey map reflects where customers are most active.

Conclusion

User journey mapping is a complex process. As you can see from the examples and interviews above, there is no one-size-fits-all model. Instead, journey maps, like user personas, should be backed by data and user research. Ultimately, they need to be actionable for your specific purpose.

In addition, just like personas, user journey maps shouldn’t be static; rather, you should continually update and improve your models.

There are many ways to research and build journey maps, and many more ways to create the end product (the map itself). Hopefully, these journey mapping examples inspired you to create your own. Discover how top UX professionals craft seamless customer experiences with real-world customer journey map examples. Learn actionable strategies and take your skills further with CXL’s course on mastering customer journey optimization.