Why User Journey Mapping is an Intrinsic Element of Website Design
When it comes to modern web design in the sphere of online retail or service industries, a majority of organizations still fail to allocate funding for thorough UI testing, resulting in a large number of broken customer interactions and thus, decreased rates of conversion.
The fact of the matter is that UI testing and user journey mapping can be fantastic methods for ensuring that the layout of both your website or any organizational apps, can effectively facilitate focus-driven interactions with potential customers. From opening your eyes to the makeup of high-converting landing pages to ensuring that users take as much away as possible from your applications, user journey mapping is vital.
There is truly more to user journey mapping than just curating a stunning user interface alone, and the benefits of this often-overlooked art don’t just extend to ensuring your customer base has a smooth web browsing experience.
Here are just a few notable ways that user journey mapping can prove to be an intrinsic element of your organization’s website designing plans.
Designing in accordance with your buyer persona questions
As one of the most foundational elements of business development, the formation of your organization’s buyer persona questions can have a great impact on how your business presents itself across a variety of digital channels, as well as dictating which channels your business will be most likely to use.
Alongside this, your buyer persona questions may even dictate the look and feel of your site, too, meaning it can not only play a role in branding but also in the creation of user journey maps. Any website that has failed to consider these questions in its design is likely to exist as a static environment, where user interaction starts and ends on the site itself.
This, in a nutshell, is the reason why digital marketing specialists can tell the difference between a site that has utilized informed user journey maps in its design and a site that’s simply designed to appeal to a loosely outlined target audience.
Opportunities to conduct real-time consumer research
Naturally, your business is likely to have a variety of different types of buyer personas, each with its own needs and consumer preferences. An organization that has been able to practice user journey mapping comfortably and effectively will also be likely to curate a selection of different user journey maps, each targeting a specific subcategory of their wider digital audience.
UX designers know all too well that there are lessons to be learned with every unique user interaction, and the best way to respond to any changes or deviations from your intended user pathway is simply to adapt the pathway itself.
However, gaining a deeper understanding of consumer behaviour isn’t the only benefit to practising user journey mapping.
Conducting in-house A/B testing
It goes without saying that being able to tailor user pathways and touchpoints on your site to specific users is likely to yield stronger rates of conversion, but imagine being able to test multiple conversion channels against each other in real-time without even having to pay marketing agencies to run research-based simulations! Imagine being able to conduct consumer research whilst simultaneously making concrete sales!
This can be achieved through developing multiple user journey maps that are tailored to the same subcategories within your wider target demographic and then measuring the quantitative results from both of these user pathways to ascertain what journey maps to produce in future interactions. This practice has also been referred to as A/B testing.
Whilst it may feel daunting to create multiple tailored conversion channels, it can actually be quite a simple endeavour when buyer persona questions are taken into account.
Suffice to say, the opportunity to both test and take action, is by far one of the most cost-effective benefits you’ll be able to experience when utilizing the power of user journey maps.
Positive impacts to both qualitative and quantitative KPIs
When developed and implemented correctly, user journey maps can effectively improve the user experience of your customer base, as well as inspire a higher rate of conversions, resulting in positive impacts to both your organization’s qualitative and quantitative KPIs.
It’s important to note, however, that user journey mapping cannot be achieved without utilizing UX laws. These are principles of UX design that support designers in the formation and implementation of user journey maps and user interfaces.
Some of the most vital laws that should be taken into account during the development of any user journey map are:
- The Doherty Threshold – Stipulates that a computer and a user should maintain a response time of <400ms for maximum productivity and user satisfaction.
- Hick’s Law – Stipulates that the time it takes for users to make decisions will increase with the number of choices available to them, as well as the complexity of those choices.
- Goal-Gradient Effect – If users know how close they are to completing a task, they’re more likely to complete said task.
With regards to the Doherty Threshold, a site that’s been thoroughly optimised to ensure fast loading speeds and effortless navigation, coupled with a tight journey map, will ensure that your organization experiences minimal accounts of abandoned carts and other forms of broken interactions with your customer base.
In a similar fashion, Hick’s Law and the Goal-Gradient Effect can provide some valuable insight into how to create your user journey maps so that they best facilitate your outlined KPIs. If you want people to sign up to your mailing list, provide your users with both the means and clear-cut desire to do so. If you’d like users to fill out a poll, be sure to provide a status bar so that they know just how far through the process they happen to be.
Even the simplest additions to your UI can generate exponentially positive results.
Most of what UX designers do tend not to see the light of day. They’re all blueprints, the skeletons behind sitemaps, and are thus, hidden from both the consumer, as well as from your wider organization as well. Despite this, user journey maps are unequivocally the most crucial element in your website design plans, and their impact can hold monumental weight over the longevity of your digital enterprise.
Be sure to take full advantage of these inessential tools, and engage further with the sciences behind UX to ensure your business can take full advantage of every interaction that comes it’s way.
Sell more, understand your customers’ journey for free!
Sales and Marketing teams spend millions of dollars to bring visitors to your website. But do you track your customer’s journey? Do you know who buys and why?
Around 8% of your website traffic will sign up on your lead forms. What happens to the other 92% of your traffic? Can you identify your visiting accounts? Can you engage and retarget your qualified visitors even if they are not identified?
