The Digital Customer Journey: Follow the Yellow Click Road

Imagine that every customer sets off on a journey to find the product or service they need to solve their problems or address their needs. The journey starts with planning; your future customer needs to know what kind of product or service they’re after. Once they figure this out, they leave the house (or open their digital devices) to look at and compare different options. At some point, your customer finds the product that checks all of his or her boxes—and it’s your product!

Now, your future customer wants to make sure they pick the best option, so they read the product description and look for testimonials, case studies, and reviews (never underestimate word of mouth). They may even visit your social media profiles or ask additional questions. 

Finally, they are ready to make the purchasing decision. They go through the purchasing process, and shortly afterwards, they get the desired product or service. If everything goes well and your customers’ needs are fulfilled, many of them will become loyal customers, or perhaps even brand advocates. Some may find your product functionality isn't useful or ideal for their particular needs and churn.

Just like any other process, the digital customer journey has its stages and touchpoints (moments of interaction between the company and the customer). Typically, we can distinguish five main stages of every customer journey.

Stages of the digital customer journey

Stage 1: Awareness

This stage is all about the discovery of your product or service. The customer already knows that they need something to solve the problem. Anything can constitute a problem—from needing the perfect shirt for their best friend's wedding, to fixing a broken fridge or to subscribing to a new SaaS solution for their company (customer journeys work both in B2C and B2B, but we’ll get to that in a moment).

In the awareness stage, the customer is looking for possible solutions. They need to gather more information and have their questions answered. Your marketing campaigns plays a crucial role here, giving your products and services visibility. If your website is comprehensive and offers exhaustive answers to the questions your customers might have—that’s good; you’re on the right track!

Typical examples of marketing efforts and content that play a role in the awareness stage are:

• Ads and sponsored posts
• Guest posts on other websites
• Search engine results and suggested queries
• Tutorials and how-to videos on YouTube and other platforms

Take a look at this example of a YouTube tutorial for buying skis:

Digital marketing is essential in the awareness stage. You need ads, customer reviews, guest posts, and word of mouth to help potential customers discover your brand through diverse digital channels.

Stage 2: Consideration

In the second stage, the customer knows what they need to solve their problem. They are now comparing different options and looking for the best one. The consideration stage is the most important in the journey, and possibly the trickiest. You have to convince your potential new customer that you can offer them the best solution and solve their pain points.

For prospects in this stage, all kinds of guides, comparisons, Q&A sections, and YouTube videos are more than helpful. Product recommendations and reviews are crucial too, especially when they come from reliable influencers or people your users trust.

Stage 3: Purchase

This is the magical moment when the prospect clicks the “Buy Now” button. Both the cart and the checkout have to be intuitive and quick. A seamless experience is crucial, especially in the e-commerce sector. How crucial? Estimates show that the average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%. So your odds of having a customer complete a purchase are less than 3 in 10.

You don’t want to bother your customer with unnecessary questions and steps to complete. On the contrary, you want to close this stage as quickly as possible and move to the next one.

What’s essential here:

• Inform your customer of what they are buying and for what price
• Offer all the desired payment and delivery features (study market research to see what payment/delivery options are popular in your country or industry)
• Enable them to finish the purchasing process WITHOUT the need to create a new account (you can encourage people to do so, but it shouldn’t be mandatory)
• Make sure the checkout process is straightforward and fully functional (there is nothing more frustrating than a malfunctioning payment gate)
• Once the payment is made, show a confirmation page along with the information on what your new customer can expect next (shipping time estimate, approximate delivery date, etc.)

Take a look at this screen capture of the cart section on BestBuy.ca:

Everything is clear, there are no unnecessary distractions (you can add features your customers might want, e.g., extended protection or complementary offers), and the user can go straight to checkout.

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Stage 4: Retention/Experience

This is what happens directly after the product or service has been purchased—you want to ensure your customer receives their product and is satisfied with it. This stage is paramount to customer satisfaction. Even if the purchasing process is easy and quick, if the product takes forever to arrive or is not high-quality, you'll still end up with a disappointed user.

Typical things to consider at this stage are:

• Order tracking
• Shipping and delivery
• Online help center along with manuals, assembly guides, FAQs, return info, etc.
• Follow-up communication (customer surveys, questions about the product, asking for a review, etc.)

Consider this example. Clearly is a Canadian online retailer selling glasses and contact lenses. Shortly after each purchase, they send a message to make sure everything is good with the order:

That’s how you do it at the retention stage!

Stage 5: Advocacy/Retention

In order to create a comprehensive customer journey, you also need to consider the latter post-purchase stage. Treat every end of the purchasing process as an opportunity to start the new one. Stay in touch with customers and encourage them to buy more products. Better still, turn every happy customer into a brand promoter. How can you do that? Here are your options:

• Loyalty programs and newsletters
• Personalized offers and promo codes
• Incentives for referrals
• Social media interactions

Of course, it all has to be balanced. You should put your customers’ needs first and concentrate on making sure they get the best service possible. Once you have customer loyalty, only then can you approach them with more "sales-y" communication.

Sephora's loyalty program is a good example. They not only enable customers to earn points for every purchase, but they also offer a much longer list of available perks:

That about covers the five basic stages of the digital customer journey. The next step is to map this lifecycle journey and optimize all the relevant touchpoints to ensure a smooth and seamless digital customer experience.

What Is Digital customer journey mapping?

The customer journey can be presented visually in the form of an infographic or a flowchart. Such a visual representation of the digital customer journey is frequently referred to as a customer journey map. The process of creating this "map" is called digital customer journey mapping.

Your customer journey map should show all interactions and touchpoints that take place between the company and the customer before, during, and after the transaction is finished. The customer journey map is always the result of a thorough market and target audience analysis. You can’t really do customer experience management if you don’t understand your customers and their needs.

Why Is Digital Customer Journey Mapping Important?

Digital customer journey mapping enables your company to:

• Deliver better products and services
• Tailor products and services to your customers’ needs and expectations
• Understand your customers’ behavior and offer them the support they truly need
• Develop compelling offers to improve conversion rates
• Create personalized and accurate content
• Spot potential problems and shortcomings that can discourage potential buyers
• Automate repetitive steps for operational efficiency

Digital Customer Journey Mapping for B2B and B2C

In general, mapping the customer journey for B2B and B2C is quite similar—we start with a problem and end with a solution. However, for obvious reasons, mapping a B2B customer journey is more complicated and entails more elements. Take a look at this comparison:

B2C Customer Journey vs. B2B Customer Journey

One decision-maker (the individual customer)	Multiple decision-makers (several departments in a company)
One main problem to solve	Many problems to solve
One purchasing process	Multiple purchasing processes
Spontaneous/short-term decision	Long-term decision
Linear process	Non-linear process

What Are The 6 Stages of a B2B Customer Journey?

According to Gartner, there are six repetitive stages of every B2B customer journey:

1. Problem identification
2. Solution exploration
3. Requirements building
4. Supplier selection
5. Validation
6. Consensus creation

All these six stages usually happen at least once to finalize the purchase. However, they can occur simultaneously or not in the assumed order. For instance, the supplier selection stage can occur before the requirements-building stage.

How to create a digital customer journey map

Step 1: Design a buyer persona

The buyer persona is a profile of your perfect customer. It comprises several elements, such as:

• Position in the company
• Department they work in
• Behaviors and habits
• Motivators
• Needs
• Challenges
• Objections

Creating the customer journey without a buyer persona is like wandering around in the fog. You need the buyer persona to understand who your customer really is, what their needs are, pain points, and challenges that can be solved with your product or service.

Step 2: List customer touchpoints

Touchpoints are specific moments in the customer journey through which your customers can discover and communicate with your company. Touchpoints are present all the way through the customer journey. Typical touchpoints include:

• Websites and social media profiles
• Newsletters and push notifications
• Blog posts and guest posts
• Ads
• YouTube videos
• Ebooks and FAQ sections
• Customer interactions through chatbots, help desks, or call centers
• Web and mobile apps

Each such element can encourage your potential customer to take the next step or ditch your company and go elsewhere. Of course, these touchpoints are vital at every stage. For instance, if you have a mobile app, it can be helpful in the consideration, purchase, and retention stages.

List all the touchpoints in your business and see how they fit in the customer journey. This way, you can assess which of them are crucial for the purchasing process in your organization. Each touchpoint needs to be optimized towards a common goal—landing the customer and ensuring long-term customer success.

Step 3: Divide customers into segments

It is likely you will need more than one customer journey map in your company, especially in a B2B environment. Each customer segment usually requires a separate map. Why? Here’s an example: Suppose you offer pest control services and you work with both individual and corporate clients. These two groups will likely follow a significantly different journey.

Individual customers will probably find you via the search engine and just call you to set up an appointment. On the other hand, business clients may require you to participate in a more complex selection process. You may have to conduct a field visit to prepare a valid offer. These are two different purchasing processes and, therefore, two different customer journey maps.

You may also want to segment your audiences based on demographics, geographic location, product type, and more. Well-defined customer segments allow for more personalized experiences and can help strengthen customer engagement.

Step 4: Gather cross-functional input

The customer journey doesn’t live in just one department — and your mapping process shouldn’t either. Pull in voices from product, marketing, support, sales, and success to uncover gaps, handoff issues, and channel inconsistencies. Customers don’t experience teams in silos, so your map needs to reflect the reality of cross-functional ownership.

Step 5: Walk in your customer’s shoes: Identify pain points and moments of truth

Now that you've listed different customer segments and touchpoints and looped in other departments, the next step is to dig into the data: where are users bouncing? Where are they dropping tickets? Which moments matter most for trust, conversion, or churn risk? These “moments of truth” help you prioritize where to fix friction — and where to double down on delight.

Try to look at things from your customer’s perspective. You can do that by walking through all the customer journey stages just like a customer would. Note all the touchpoints you encounter and obstacles you bump into. Is the purchasing process quick and easy? Is your website fully operational? Was it easy to get in touch with customer service? Was the consultant knowledgeable? What is the app's usability like? Is the loyalty program really attractive?

If you'd like more data to solidify your customer journey map, it's a good idea to ask for customer feedback or look at your metrics. There are also usability testing tools that allow you to observe real-time user interactions on your website or app for valuable insights on pain points and roadblocks.

Step 6: Visualize your digital customer journey

The last step is to put all that together to create clear, well-organized digital customer journey maps guiding you from the beginning right to the end.

Tools like Miro, Lucidchart, or Smaply help teams collaborate on a shared view of the journey. Include touchpoints, emotions, tools used, and metrics at each stage — and keep it live, not locked in a PDF. Your map should evolve with your product and your customer.

If you’ve never made a customer journey map, it all may be a bit overwhelming. To help streamline this task, I want to show you some examples of what the digital customer journey map should look like.

Customer journey map examples

Example 1: Spotify (the linear customer journey model)

This is the most popular and straightforward model. It divides the customer journey map into several stages (usually five, but sometimes more), one after another. Here’s how it can look based on the example of Spotify:

Example 2: Emirates (the non-linear customer journey model)

In the second example, I want to show you a map of Emirates airlines' customer journey. At first, it seems disorganized, but the fact is, it’s a very complex model taking into account hundreds of possible scenarios.

In a more detailed version of this map, you can see every possible scenario and touchpoint:

As a result, every interested party or employee has access to detailed information on what should be done at each and every stage and in every possible situation. Such maps are sometimes called performance or tactical customer journey maps, and they are reserved strictly for the biggest companies.

How To Improve The Digital Customer Journey

I cannot emphasize this enough: Your customer journey is a living, breathing path. Once you’ve mapped the customer journey, the next move is (continually) improving it. Here are five proven strategies to optimize your customer journey and enhance the digital experience across touchpoints:

• Eliminate friction at critical stages: Run journey audits to spot high-abandonment points, dead-end interactions, or inconsistent handoffs. Then redesign with customer intent in mind.
• Personalize based on behavior and intent: Use product usage, campaign engagement, or lifecycle stage to tailor onboarding, offers, and support experiences.
• Align messages across teams and channels: Ensure marketing, success, and support aren’t sending mixed signals. Cohesive omnichannel journeys build trust, especially in SaaS.
• Embed feedback loops: Collect feedback at key moments (e.g., post-onboarding, after a renewal decision) to close the loop and surface blind spots.
• Track journey-stage KPIs: Use metrics like task completion, CES, activation rate, and retention by stage to benchmark and iterate.

Improvement doesn’t mean overhauling everything. It means continuously fine-tuning based on what customers actually do (not just what you hoped they’d do).

Digital Customer Journey FAQs

Don’t we all wish the digital customer journey was straightforward and self-explanatory? Yes, but it isn’t. Here are some things you should know:

What are the key digital touchpoints across the customer journey?

Digital touchpoints are the online interactions where customers experience your brand — intentionally or not. Each stage of the journey has its own:

• Website and landing pages – Discovery, education, and comparison

• Social media and influencer content – Early awareness and trust-building

• Email and chat – Mid-funnel nurturing and support handoffs

• Mobile apps and in-app guidance – Adoption, onboarding, and daily use

• Help centers and knowledge bases – Self-service during support or troubleshooting

Mapping these touchpoints helps ensure you’re showing up with the right message, in the right format, at the right time.

What are the common pain points in a digital customer journey?

Even the slickest digital experiences have cracks. Here are some common pain points you should keep an eye out for:

• Unclear navigation – Customers can’t find what they need, fast enough.

• Slow load times – Page delays erode trust and kill conversions.

• Inconsistent messaging – Mixed signals between marketing, product, and support confuse users.

• Lack of personalization – One-size-fits-all journeys feel irrelevant and robotic. Even worse is a bad attempt at personalization (here’s looking at you, bad data).

• Poor onboarding – Customers sign up… and then stall out.

• Fragmented support channels – Repeating info across chat, email, and forms = instant frustration.

• Dead ends or missing touchpoints – No clear next step in the journey? That’s where churn sneaks in.

Identifying and resolving these friction points is key to turning passive users into loyal customers.

What tools can help in mapping the digital customer journey?

Several tools can help visualize and analyze the customer journey:​

• Journey Mapping Software: Platforms like FullStory and Lucidchart allow teams to create detailed journey maps collaboratively.​

• Analytics Tools: Google Analytics and similar tools provide data on user behavior and interaction points.​

• Customer Feedback Platforms: Tools like SurveyMonkey or Qualtrics help gather and analyze customer insights.​

Utilizing these tools enables businesses to gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer experience and identify areas for improvement.

The next journey is yours.

Mapping the digital customer journey takes some time and effort, but it’s definitely worth the elbow grease! This way, you can optimize your sales and marketing strategies, provide better customer service, and build strong customer relationships. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

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