What gets mapped
A journey map lines up, step by step:
| Layer | What it captures |
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| Steps | What the user is trying to do at each stage |
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| Touchpoints | Where it happens - page, screen, email, call, document |
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| Behaviour | What actually happens - from analytics, recordings and observation |
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| Friction | Where people hesitate, repeat, fail or wait |
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| Thoughts and questions | What users are wondering, from interviews and testing |
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| Opportunities | What could remove or reduce the friction |
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For different user types, I map separate journeys and compare them. On a B2B hospitality equipment platform, three buyers - a decisive café owner, a first-time operator and a spec-comparing buyer - took completely different routes and struggled at different points; one generic journey served none of them. See persona-led UX for B2B buyers.
Evidence sources
Journey analysis is only as good as its evidence. I combine:
- Analytics - entry points, paths, step-by-step drop-off, segmented by source, device and audience.
- Session recordings and heatmaps - where permitted, to see hesitation and repeated actions.
- Support and sales data - the questions people ask and when they ask them.
- Interviews and usability sessions - the "why" behind the behaviour.
- Heuristic review - principles such as visibility of system status and error prevention applied to every step.
Prioritised recommendations
The part most teams value most is the prioritisation. Every opportunity is scored so the team can start work immediately:
| Priority | Impact | Effort | Typical examples |
|---|
| Do now | High | Low | Clearer status and next steps; removing redundant fields; fixing broken error messages |
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| Plan next | High | High | Restructuring navigation; rebuilding a flow; adding save-and-resume |
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| Batch | Low | Low | Copy fixes, spacing and consistency tweaks grouped into one release |
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| Reconsider | Low | High | Features requested internally with little evidence of user need |
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Where relevant, a third factor is added - compliance risk in healthcare and finance, or revenue exposure in commerce - so a "quick" change to a sensitive step gets the care it needs.
