Analytics show UX professionals the drop-off point. Mapping user journeys reveals why people left.
Over the last five years, I’ve built journey maps for SaaS companies. The ones that drive results highlight points of friction and moments of delight, creating team alignment that improves product metrics. When done right, journey mapping leads to increased satisfaction, customer loyalty, and sales. And this is precisely why the customer journey analytics market is expected to reach $25.1 billion by 2026 from just $8.3 billion in 2020 (a CAGR of 20.3%).
In this article, I’ll outline the step-by-step process of user journey mapping along with the map’s key components and actionable tips on how to turn a user journey map into action.
Try Userpilot Now
See Why 1,000+ Teams Choose Userpilot
What is a user journey map?
A user journey map is a visual representation of the process a user goes through to accomplish a specific goal.
While a flowchart (or user flow) tells you what happens, a journey map tells you how it happens and how it feels to the user. It combines two distinct layers:
- Actions: The tangible steps users take. Click signup. Enter email. Submit form.
- Experience: The thoughts and emotions at each step. “Why does this need my credit card already? I don’t want to commit yet. I feel pressured and suspicious.”
Actions show what users did. Meanwhile, emotions explain why they stopped. When you layer these together, you stop seeing “users” and start seeing people struggling with specific problems.
Here’s what an effective user journey map example looks like in practice.
This example demonstrates how both components reveal friction points and opportunities for improvement. You can use this structure to map any user experience from onboarding to feature adoption.
The key components of a user journey map
Every effective journey map contains five key elements: actions, touchpoints, pain points, opportunities, and emotions that drive user behavior throughout their experience.
1. The actor
71% of practitioners use journey maps to understand active product usage for specific segments, not generic flows. So, you can’t map “everyone’s” experience and expect actionable insights.
When building your own user journey map, skip the demographics spreadsheet. Focus instead on what drives behavior: motivations, fears, goals, the things that keep them up at night. If you don’t have this data, you need user research before mapping anything. I often create an empathy map first to capture user attitudes and behaviors.
2. The scenario and expectations
“Using the app” isn’t a scenario. “Creating their first invoice to get paid before the 15th” works better because it has concrete parameters you can test.
The goal connects directly to user needs and expectations at crucial moments. For a project manager racing against payment deadlines, success means creating and sending an invoice in under 5 minutes. For a manager exploring new products, success means understanding whether the tool fits their workflow.
3. User journey phases
For SaaS products, I typically follow high-level phases that represent the stages the users pass through:
- Discovery (finding the feature)
- Evaluation (figuring out how it works)
- Action (doing the task)
- Confirmation (knowing it worked)
4. Actions, mindsets, and emotions
Nielsen Norman Group’s findings show that journey maps excel at educating internal parties about customer pain points and creating alignment among internal teams. Both outcomes depend on accurately mapping actions and the user’s emotional state at each journey stage.
- Actions: The literal clicks and steps, for example, “Clicked ‘New Invoice,’ selected client from dropdown, entered amount.”
- Mindsets: The user’s thoughts, questions, and motivations derived from research.
- Emotions: Plot them as a line graph across different stages. When users achieve quick wins, the line rises. When the user encounters walls, it drops. Those drops mark friction points that kill user retention.
5. Opportunities and ownership
Best-in-class organizations convert maps into assigned action items, which separates companies that see results from those that create documentation nobody acts on.
For every friction point, I document:
- The specific problem.
- The proposed solution.
- Which team member owns the implementation.
- Expected impact metric.
- Timeline.
Without ownership and tracking, journey maps become wall art instead of actionable tools to reveal opportunities.
Eliminate Product Friction and Scale Faster by Mapping User Journey with Userpilot
Why is mapping user journeys important?
Journey mapping changes how organizations understand and serve customers. I’ve seen journey maps create team alignment, build customer empathy, and reignite growth by shining a light on where to focus product development efforts.
1. Understand user experiences
If you don’t understand the journey after signup, you’ll lose users. The post-purchase experience is critical to improving customer retention rate, which is why mapping the entire experience matters.
When teams understand customer journeys, they make better decisions at every touchpoint. Moreover, this process helps foster a more customer-centric mindset across your organization.
For instance, Kommunicate mapped their activation journey and discovered 60-70% of users engaged with only 3-4 major features because they didn’t know other features existed. The users went from initial excitement at signup, confusion during exploration, frustration with perceived limitations, and finally churn. Kontentino added in-app guides for key features, and the chatbot integration completion rate saw a 15+ percentage point increase.
2. Uncover pain points and friction
You might know users drop off at the billing page. But do you know why? Is it a technical error, or because they felt blindsided by a hidden fee? A journey map forces you to look at the context because knowing these friction points can help you turn a leaky funnel into a smooth path.
For example, Touchright Software’s journey mapping revealed that activation required completing steps in both their web dashboard and mobile app. Users would complete the web setup, then forget about the mobile setup. Because of that, the Touchright Software team added cross-platform prompts, and activation rates increased significantly.
3. Align teams around a shared vision
Marketing thinks users buy “freedom.” The engineering team thinks they bought “database infrastructure.” Sales thinks they buy “ROI metrics.”
A user journey map forces everyone to discuss actual user behavior rather than assumptions. It creates a shared vision that aligns your product-led growth strategy across departments.
When everyone sees the same user reality, decisions improve, and teams develop a deeper understanding of customer needs.
The types and variations of journey maps
Your map structure depends on what you’re trying to solve. I use different variations depending on whether I’m diagnosing current problems, planning future experiences, or understanding the broader context.
Current-state vs. Future-state
A current-state map visualizes current customer interactions, showing you actual behavior with all its friction points and workarounds. I always start here because we can’t fix what we haven’t accurately diagnosed.
A future-state map visualizes the ideal journey you want to build. Use this for major redesigns or new product release planning when you need to align teams around a vision rather than document the current reality.
Day-in-the-life map
These maps outline the user’s entire experience throughout their day, not just time in your app.
Additional context determines whether a 2-second load time feels acceptable or catastrophic. A train commuter with 3G expects delays. A manager presents live experiences for 2 seconds as failure. That real-life context shapes perception of your product.
Service blueprint
If the user journey map is the front-end, the service blueprint is the back-end. It maps the user’s actions alongside the internal processes (support tickets, server calls, email automations) that support them. This is important for optimizing customer experience lifecycles where offline interactions matter.
Customer journey map vs. User journey map
UX journey maps focus on product experience. Customer journey maps track the entire customer lifecycle, from awareness through post-purchase. They span complete relationships: ads, sales, blog posts, product usage, invoices, support, renewals.
For UX professionals, the UX journey is typically the priority. However, creating multiple personas may require multiple journey maps to capture different user segments.
User flow vs. User journey
A user journey vs user flow comparison is common. A user flow is a diagram of the path a user takes through the system (Screen A → Button B → Screen C). It’s technical and logical.
Journey maps add an emotional layer and show why progression stops. I find this distinction matters for design thinking approaches that prioritize the user story over technical requirements. You need the flow to build the product, but you need the map to design the experience.
How to start mapping user journeys in 6 steps
Journey mapping is an iterative design process that turns user research into actionable improvements. Here’s my step-by-step framework for building maps that actually change how your team builds products.
Step 1: Define your actor and scope
Start with a specific product persona. For example, if you are building a project management tool, the journey of the “Manager” setting up the workspace is entirely different from the “Employee” who just needs to check off a task.
Once you have the actor, define the scope. Are you mapping the entire lifecycle, or just the customer onboarding process? I recommend starting small. Mapping a specific slice of the experience allows you to go deep enough to find actionable insights.
Step 2: Gather your data
Building accurate journey maps requires combining quantitative behavioral data with qualitative emotional insights. You need to know what users are doing and why they’re doing it.
Numbers show you the drop-off point. User feedback reveals the reason behind the abandonment.
Quantitative data: What are the users doing?
You need to track exact user paths and abandonment points systematically. I rely on product analytics to track these movements without making assumptions about user behavior.
Look for:
- Drop-off points: Where does user volume decrease drastically? Funnel analysis reveals these leaks by showing you exactly where users abandon your flow.
- Feature usage: Are users actually clicking the buttons you think matter most? With autocapture, you can track all interactions without requiring engineers to manually set up event tracking code for each step.
- Path analysis: This report reveals the actual routes users take through your product. Sometimes these paths look nothing like the idealized flows you designed for them.
Qualitative data: What’s the “why” behind users’ actions?
Quantitative data tells you if a user dropped off at the billing page. But it doesn’t explain whether the issue was price sensitivity, a confusing interface, or a broken credit card form. That’s where qualitative research fills the gaps.
To build the emotional layer of your map, I suggest using these methods:
- Session replays: Watching a session replay shows you exactly where users struggle. You’ll see them rage-click unclickable elements. They scroll past your primary CTA multiple times. They abandon forms after entering half their information.
- Microsurveys: Triggering microsurveys at specific friction points captures immediate feedback as the experience is still fresh in users’ minds.
- Sentiment analysis: During the research stage, you can also review NPS analysis comments to plot emotional highs and lows across the timeline. You’ll discover patterns in user satisfaction that raw scores alone miss.
Step 3: Draft the phases and touchpoints
With the research data collected, begin organizing it into a clear timeline. Standard SaaS journeys typically follow phases like Discovery, Evaluation, Purchase, and Adoption. Your specific product might require different stages.
For each phase, document how the customer interacts with your product or brand through landing page visits, welcome emails, tooltip interactions, feature discoveries, and support contacts.
Here’s where honesty matters most. If your data shows users consistently ignore welcome emails, map that. When users skip product tours, don’t pretend that tours work. Your map’s value comes from reflecting what users actually do during their journey.
Step 4: Map the friction, pain points, and emotions
Overlaying emotional states onto journey phases turns your map from a flowchart into a diagnostic tool. I draw a visually appealing line graph across phases to visualize the emotional journey.
When users achieve quick wins or reach their “Aha!” Moment, the line goes up. When they hit obstacles, it drops.
Use your research to identify specific friction points that kill retention. The most common ones I encounter include:
- Empty states: Users log in to blank dashboards with no guidance on where to start or what to do next.
- Complexity overload: Settings pages with 50 options overwhelm users. Analysis paralysis sets in, leading to complete inaction.
- Technical errors: Buttons that don’t respond, pages that load slowly, features that break under normal usage patterns.
Mapping these emotional lows gives your product team a prioritized list of problems to solve. You’re pointing to specific moments where users abandon your product and explaining exactly why they leave.
Step 5: Identify opportunities and assign internal ownership
A journey map without actionable next steps is just a poster. For every emotional low point, you need a corresponding opportunity section that converts problems into solutions.
Consider how specificity changes the conversation. For instance, when the friction point is “User doesn’t understand data import,” the opportunity becomes “Build an interactive checklist guiding users through import steps.” Or when users forget to invite team members, the solution is “Add in-app prompt immediately after first project creation.”
Your discussions go from “We should improve the experience” to “We need to fix the import flow by implementing a guided checklist, which should reduce abandonment from 34% to 18%.”
But to implement the solutions, you need to assign clear ownership for each improvement. Designate which team or specific team member is responsible for implementing changes. I typically assign owners based on functional area. The product team handles feature changes. The growth team tackles activation improvements. The support team manages documentation updates.
I include expected timelines and success metrics alongside each assigned opportunity so everyone knows what success looks like and when to measure it. Without accountability, opportunities remain theoretical.
Step 6: Validate and refine the map
Journey maps only deliver value when they accurately reflect user reality. I validate my maps by personally moving through the complete user journey, experiencing every step to get a better idea of a new user’s perspective.
To make the most of a journey map, combine your firsthand experience with objective validation methods.
Run usability testing sessions where you observe real users navigating the mapped journey. Review analytics data to confirm that identified patterns hold at scale. Collect feedback from actual customers through interviews or surveys to verify your map captures their experiences accurately.
Also, treat your map as a living document that evolves alongside your product and users. What worked six months ago might not reflect current behavior after a product release or market shift.
I revisit my journey maps quarterly, updating them with new research findings and behavioral patterns. When you discover discrepancies between your map and reality, refine immediately. The map stays relevant when you commit to continuous validation and improvement.
How to turn a user journey map into action
Now you have a map rooted in reality. But simply seeing friction means nothing if you don’t intervene to fix it. Here’s how I translate the insights we gather into measurable improvements through data-driven changes.
Fix onboarding gaps
If your map shows users are confused by a specific feature, don’t just hope they figure it out. Use the map to inform your user onboarding process.
I deploy a flow specifically targeting users who reach that friction point. You can also implement a native tooltip next to the confusing feature that explains what to do.
Drive feature discovery
Maps might reveal opportunities where users engage with core product functionality but miss valuable secondary features. This is a feature discovery problem.
You can place a hotspot (a subtle flashing beacon) on that feature to draw their eye. Or, if it is a complex feature, you can use a checklist to incentivize them to try it out as part of their setup tasks.
Test different discovery approaches and measure which ones actually increase feature adoption rates.
Monitor improvements
A user journey map is never finished. After you implement these fixes, you need to verify they worked.
Track whether changes actually improved experiences. Create funnel reports tracking steps from journey start to end. Compare conversion rates before and after interventions.
Did drop-off decrease? Did time-to-completion improve? If yes, I go back and update maps with results. When improvements don’t work, I’ll re-examine the session replays and iterate.
Create user journey maps and improve customer experience with Userpilot
A user journey map is the bridge between your code and your customer. It forces you to get out of your own head and step into theirs. It turns abstract data into a narrative that your whole company can understand.
Talk to your users, watch their sessions, and plot out their reality. You might find that the biggest opportunity for growth wasn’t the next big feature on your roadmap-it was removing a single stone from the user’s shoe in step three of their journey.
You don’t need expensive software to start, but as you scale, you need tools that handle data. Book a demo to see how UX professionals use Userpilot to create experiences that users actually complete.
Skyrocket Retention by Mapping User Journey with Userpilot
About the author
