Understanding Customer Journeys as a Web Developer or Web Designer to Help Your Business Innovate

It is becoming more important for web developers and designers to appreciate and understand the marketing side of business. In other words, to understand the life and experiences of a customer they are developing code for. Companies are becoming more and more competitive by insuring a "better customer experience" but what does a "better customer experience" mean? What does it mean to a web developer or web designer?

Understanding Innovation Roles

I recently read a book titled "The Art of Innovation" by Tom Kelley  (Author),? Jonathan Littman (Author),? Tom Peters (Foreword). In this book they discuss ways a company can innovate and insure a great product or service for a customer. They discuss the importance of understanding roles. The roles they mention are the designer, researcher, curious kid, and historian. These roles are more about perspectives and ways of thinking rather than titles in a company. For example, when innovating it is important not to just throw a designer perspective at a problem - insure a researcher is also involved.

The researcher is involved in observing the customer's pain points, needs, and overall experience with the business. These types of people are often referred to as functional analysts and UX designers. The problem is, these types of people don't always exist in a company and if they do, they might not be working close enough with designers and web developers to innovate and test a product via rapid prototyping and customer validation.

The role of the "curious kid" is to insure that basic questions are being asked about a product or service such as "What does it allow me to do?", "How do I know I'm getting a good deal?", "What makes your product different?", "What problems (pain points) does it solve for me?", "Is it easy to setup?", and "Will I have to maintain anything?". The curious kid is the one who puts themselves in the seat of the customer. The one who empathizes with the customer. This perspective is best adopted by everyone involved in a project and especially the functional analyst and UX designer.

The role of the historian is to point out what has not worked in the past. However be careful not to listen to the perspective of the historian too much as they may dismiss doing any research in areas that need research.

As a Web Developer or Web Designer You Can Better Understand the Customer by Understanding Their Customer Journey

As a developer it is important to understand the customer. One excellent way to do this is to create or have a designer map out the user journey of a customer. A user journey is not just an experience a customer has with a website. The experience of a potential customer can involve many touch points such as a conversation with a call center representative, a video, a seminar, a conversation with a friend, or touching/seeing a product before they become a customer. This phase is called customer acquisition.

The next phase is customer retention. The customer journey here usually involves a cycle. The customer will have certain needs such as to place an order, check some data metrics, or connect with someone. This can repeat from time to time and in the case of the company I work for it happens month to month with a monthly scheduled order called a "Loyalty Rewards Order". All of these user needs, and understanding the day in the life of a customer, are important because these experiences can give insights into how to build a better web experience.

While in school, at UVU, I was studying web design and we talked about testing the usability of a website. One exercise of UX design involves giving a customer or volunteer beta tester a goal before testing your beta website or prototype (such as to login and place an order). The idea is not to help them navigate! Rather observe what they are doing and where they struggle. This will give you insights into what doesn't make sense.

You may also consider having the customer or tester think out loud to best understand what they are thinking and struggling with. The idea here is to find "UI Friction". Find out what doesn't make sense with your User Interface. Revisit the design and interfaces of the website and make slight adjustments and then retest them. This may involve choosing a better icon or label that represents something. It may involve making sure your action items are clear, navigation makes sense, and layout makes sense. It may also involve looking at what others have done. This is called "external consistency". For example, if people are used to logging into a website in the top right of a website, you probably should design your login there.

One thing to keep in mind is to pay attention and listen to the larger part of your customer base. You may have one customer that is wanting a feature that only helps their needs. Be careful not to implement a new feature that negatively effects the experience of your larger customer base. Perhaps there is a way to add the feature without obstructing any UI flows that the larger customer base is already accustomed to.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Let me know if I missed anything or you differ in opinion or have any other insights!

The following are examples of User Journey designs you may consider designing to better understand your business and customers.

References:

Map 1: https://www.servicedesigntools.org/tools/8

Map 2: https://lookaheadstayahead.com/research/customer-experience-mapping/

Map 3: https://www.katesteinmeyer.com/blog/2014/6/4/user-experience-maps