Get to know your customers ( User Flow vs User Journey maps )

User Flows and User Journeys are two key parts of design that Product Managers should be very interested in, as they both heavily affect how the user interacts with and experiences your product.

However, these two terms are sometimes used interchangeably, and at first glance, they can look incredibly similar. So let’s take a look about the difference between them .

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Let's talk first about the User Flow :

What is a user flow?

A User Flow is a detailed illustration that shows the very specific steps a user takes to complete a task using your product.

A user flow Can be visualized with flow charts, using boxes and arrows. Each box represents a step in a user’s action, like entering information or clicking a button.

Simply, a User flow is the interaction (step by step) a user shall take to complete a job using your product, it’s the breakdown of the actual User Interface.

Unless an app can be very simple, your User Flow diagram is unlikely to be very complicated!

Example of a user flow:

Let’s say we want to get users to make a purchase using an e-commerce platform :

The example above is known as a happy path. This simply means the path your users take to achieve their desired result without encountering friction. In real life, however, things could go differently!?

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Why Should we need a User Flow ( or what is the purpose of a User Flow?):

• A User Flow describes what a user sees on the screen and how they interact? and navigate with the screen to move forward. This is critical for designing good product experiences, without getting lost in the details.
• By understanding a User Flow, you can analyze where a user drops off or struggles?and debug the reasons before they become costly issues.
• User Flow is crucial for the development phase, developers use this tool to translate designs into physical features.

Let's then move to User Journey Maps:

A User Journey, also known as a Customer Journey, is the experience your customers have when interacting with your product/brand?at each touchpoint, it’s the overall experience you want your ideal user to take from discovery to adoption, until being a loyal one and #1 fan.

While User Flows describe the physical journey of the user through your product, User Journeys deal with the emotions, the pain points, and the motivations of the customer.

Why is the User Journey map a great idea?

• It helps you create a more efficient and effective customer journey; Do your customers take 3 steps to get to a place when you only intended them to take one?Do you have an experience that captures the overall wants and needs of your customer?
• It helps you understand your customers better; This means you understand how they behave, how they feel, what their struggles are, what they want, and more importantly, what they don’t want.
• It helps you identify customer pain points; Before doing your mapping exercise, you might not realize just how many pain points there are for your customers, or how severe they are.
• It helps you innovate ;You need to have a thorough understanding of your customer’s experience to know what great product you can offer them next.

Tips and tricks for a great User Journey Map :

1. Know what you want to achieve : Be very specific about your objective , using a SMART technique will help being clear and specific.
2. Create Buyers Personas :You need buyer personas to create an accurate customer journey map and to implement improvements to the customer journey. It’s likely that your business has many types of buyers, and it’s your job to document, analyze, and understand these buyers and their motivations.
3. Identify Customer Touch Points :This is the foundation of your customer journey, touchpoints are anywhere that the customer interacts with your brand.?Identify all of your touchpoints first before starting your customer journey map, this way you can build an accurate picture of how customers experience your business.?
4. Think About Customer Emotions: This can be a simple emoji or quick sketch of the emotion the customer feels as they move through the journey. You can assign negative emotions to areas where the customer hits a pain point or experiences more friction, and positive emotions when the user is rewarded for their actions, like when they receive a confirmation email after purchase. With the market being so customer-focused, you need to maximize positive emotions and minimize negative emotions to set yourself apart. Customers will remember if your business caused them a headache, and they will choose a different option the next time they need a similar product.
5. Clearly Mark the weight of Each Touchpoint: All touchpoints are important, but they’re not all equal. Some touchpoints carry more weight because customers experience them at key moments in their journey that can make or break their experience.?
6. Make Sure It Makes Sense to the People Using It: You can create customer mapping journeys with excel sheets, word documents, flashy visuals, or even notes whiteboard. Whatever you choose, it has to make sense to the people using it.