A basic introduction to user journeys

Hey Chris!

Hey Matt, how are you doing?

I’m very good, thank you. Enough of that.

Hi.

Hi, it’s another Monkey Monday, and what we’re going to try and do today is a real quick basic introduction into how we look at user journeys, and how you can adopt a similar approach. So we have another vlog about user journeys, why they’re great, and what they are, and this is a more in-depth example, but even this is really light.

Yep, and this is an exercise which we’ve done with multiple people on a creative workshop day. So you get all your team together and you work on this together, and you can work out where all your pinch-points are within your business.

Yeah, so we’ve tried to keep it simple, and even trying to keep it simple it expanded into something a bit more complicated, but what we’re gonna pretend we are doing is we are pretending that we make guitars, and that we sell guitars. Mostly just through shops. We’ve had to avoid as much online stuff as we can, because that expands out this user journey quite far.

So, we’ll start by putting the phases – so this will be different for each company. So we have first exposure here, then we go into research, purchasing, and post purchase.

And across each phase we’re going to look at what the user would be doing at the time, what they’re thinking, how we connect with them through the touchpoints, and importantly, how they feel at that time as well.

So in the first exposure to a brand, of our guitar brand, what would we be doing? We’d be going to a live show, perhaps we’ve watched a music video with a nice guitar in, or you’ve gone past a music shop and you’ve seen something wonderful there.

Yeah, and there’s probably loads loads more, loads of other ways a user might be exposed to our brand. And it’s important to understand, absolutely everybody at some point in every single user journey, will have that first exposure. This exists for every single use case everywhere. At some point somebody doesn’t know about you, and then they do. So it’s what is that first exposure, what does it look like and what are they doing when they are first exposed?

And the next thing is what they’re thinking at that point. Can I play or own that guitar?

Who else plays that guitar? Do any of my guitar heroes also play that guitar?

And how much is it? That’s quite an important one.

Yeah, what’s it going to cost? So again, there’ll be loads more in here once you do this process, we’re just trying to keep it simple. And then we look at the touchpoints, probably for each of these if we can. Some of them will cross over a little bit. So let’s look at the live show, Chris. We’re going to see some band. What opportunities have we got, other than the guitarist who’s playing that guitar, to try and expose them to our brand?

Well, we’ve got adverts on scrims, which are apparently…

Scrims are like the big banners that sit either side of the stage, maybe. So you know, you’ll see Marshall-endorsed artists will maybe have some Marshall logos dotted about their stage.

Yeah, or on some t-shirts or flyers or freebies or adverts on screens.

Yeah, so sometimes you have the video screens up at live shows – is there an opportunity there to try and talk about our brand and things like that? So even in the very sort of unique use case of someone being at a live show, there’s probably opportunities there. Handing out flyers, giving away t-shirts, loads of different ways you can connect.

Yep, and in your music video, we’ve got adverts, social media, and online influencers.

Yeah, and going into a guitar shop, you’ve got the product itself, you’ve got the sales staff who might be talking about the product, can you give out any freebies? Is there point of sale you can do? Can you do those pull-up banners talking about your products?

So there might be things in here that you don’t do, and you work out, ‘Oh, we need to do some point of sale things.’

So doing this exercise does help open this up, it helps you find opportunities of where you can talk to them.

So once you’ve been first exposed to a brand and you’ve decided you want to go ahead and buy something, you go into your research phase.

Generally you’re either gonna do this, you’re gonna go online and have a look online, or maybe you’re gonna go into a store or guitar show, to try and try the guitar. So you’ll be thinking, ‘Where should I buy this? Is this the right guitar for me at this point?’ And you’re gonna start checking out reviews, and trying to see if you can get your hands on it, talking to other people who play it.

So online, you might visit other people’s websites, you might check out other people’s social media, you might ask people on your own social media what they think of it, you might check out YouTube videos of people playing it, check out review sites… This list goes on and on and on, and once you understand how big this list is it lets you see all these touchpoints.

Yeah, and if you’re in the guitar shop, you might see a demo, you might see someone playing it in there, the staff might come up and talk to you about it, because they’re experts in that particular brand.

Yeah, let you play it yourself, let you play it through different amps. Whatever it may be.

So we’re ready to buy now, aren’t we? I’m thinking at this purchasing stage, ‘I want this guitar, I’m ready to buy.’ So what am I doing at that time? I’m probably looking at my options here. What options have I got? Does it come in a different colour? What accessories does it come with? Is there a hard case with it, is there just a gig bag? Do I get any free strings with it? All of these kind of things we can address. I might be looking at my finances, do I need to transfer some money around? Stuff like that.

Yeah, and it’s an exciting time, cus we’re thinking ‘I’m ready to buy.’ And your touchpoints in here are you might see the packaging, you might see some freebies which get chucked in with the guitar, you might get set-up and support to help you start your journey.

Yeah, so if I’m buying the guitar does it come with free set-up, will someone set the guitar up for me? All those sorts of things. And then we’ve got the guitar, we’re excited, we’re going home. So what are we doing at that point? Well, we’re unpacking the guitar, and we start using the product itself. We start asking ourselves, ‘Was this the right choice for us? Does this guitar meet my expectations? How does it even work? Where do I plug it in?’

Yep, so your touchpoints at this point are you’re opening the box – you know, that nice feeling when you open an Apple box, you get that – you’ve got the guides, maybe online guides or printed guides, aftersales and support, and also returns if you decide it’s not for you.

Now the important thing once you do all of this is to understand how the user feels during this whole process. So at this first exposure point – and what we have here is a feeling of either positive feelings or maybe kind of negative feelings, and this helps you understand 1) how you communicate to them, and 2) where you might have room for improvement of how you already communicate to them.

Yeah, we’re trying to make everyone feel happy all the way along if we can. Whether that’s possible or not…

Yeah. So first exposure, generally, most people are feeling pretty excited. They’re kind of up here somewhere, they're above positive, feeling pretty happy. They’re looking at this thing and going, ‘I want one of these. This looks really cool.’ And then you move into the research phase. And this can depend, you know – each company would have its own different ideas about how the customer’s feeling, because maybe as you start doing some research, oh my god, you see that this is really expensive, or has really horrible reviews. But let’s assume that we make great guitars, Chris, and that as people do their research, at this point they’re still feeling pretty positive. That takes them into the purchasing side of things. We may see this again start dipping down towards this unknown part here. You start feeling a bit pensive.

Yeah, there’s a bit of buyer’s remorse kind of thing. So you might go, ‘Oh, I’ve spent a fortune on something that I’m not quite sure if I’m going to be able to play or use properly.’

And that can definitely take you into this – after you’ve purchased and you take that home and you have that buyer’s remorse. However, if it’s all handled right, and they’re happy with their purchase, and everything is great, then they could be up here. So depending on this whole part of their journey and how they feel, depends on how you can maybe talk to them and help them through some of these trickier feelings here, where they’re going, ‘Is this the right purchase?’, and when they get back, making sure that product is really great, and it meets their expectations, it answers all the questions they ask at the start.

And this is a very small example. Behind us on this board, we’ve been through it with a different company, and there’s an awful lot more that you can do with it. So just spend a lot of time and you’ll find the areas where you can improve.

And we’ve put a wider example at the bottom of the page here. Down there. This may just be one part of a wider series of blogs we do, because we want to talk about places in between touchpoints and the fact that this user journey is simply for somebody who is interested in buying one of our guitars – however, there are user journeys across the company. So, for instance, if you have a company where you have people who do installations for you, what’s their user journey? What is your supplier’s user journey like? What is their experience of your brand?

There’ll be a user journey for your guitar shop as well, they’re buying stuff from you.

Yeah, people who are reselling for you. So there’s loads of different user journeys you can create, and the better you understand everyone who deals with you, everyone who’s subjected to your brand, and what their journey feels like, the better you can start creating really, really engaging communication to improve their happiness curve.

So go away and do your user journeys. Really important; really interesting as well.

And we hope your happiness curve is as happy as ours. Thanks very much!

Seeya later!