Also known as CJM (Customer Journey Map), storytelling is key to describing and understanding the journey that a consumer makes through the entire shopping experience. With this information, brands and companies can offer simplified and tailor-made processes for each person.

In order to create a CJM, it is necessary to plan from the consumer’s point of view, using resources such as personas, stories, epics, tasks and features. Once the project is done, the Customer Journey Map should help achieve business goals and meet beyond user expectations.

A CJM tries to capture the customer’s emotions by helping the brand understand their mind, interests and tastes to improve the user experience, putting themselves in their shoes.

Generally, it begins by anticipating what the potential consumer’s interactions with the brand’s app or digital store will be, developing a story about it. That is why it is important to develop characters that resemble real people, with impulses, emotions and empathy.

The CJM borrows a lot of data from KPIs and metrics that provide valuable information from past experiences and behaviors on the web in order to better target products to people who need it. User-product interactions generate feedback that is later used to understand needs.

Hierarchy of the CJM

Every CJM project must respect a certain hierarchy in order to meet the needs of the consumer:

• Understand user and buyer personas
• Create epics to address touchpoints
• Use epics to support the narrative

Understand user and buyer personas

The first step is to define the personas that will be part of our story. Beyond answering basic questions such as “who, what and why”, the behaviors, goals, demographics and needs of these characters that represent consumers must be taken into account.

Once the characters are defined, you can start creating the themes that accompany the epic towards a better user experience.

Create epics to address touchpoints

Those responsible for the project must consult with the client and other stakeholders about the main theme of the storytelling, which will be translated into epics that will flow from left to right in the storyboard and tell a big story in small fragments.

Epics must have certain requirements to work:

• Include specific features and benefits
• Address the needs of the characters
• Address touchpoints between brand and consumer
• Pursue business goals taking into account previously created characters

Use epics to support the narrative

Once the epics that will cover the main objectives of the project have been created, we can start to create the narrative flow through them. Epics move from left to right, accomplishing small objectives.

As if it were a story, the events happen linearly until they reach their goal.

Final thoughts

Once the story map is complete, it needs to be tested without fear of adding or deleting elements that enhance the narrative. Being flexible when it comes to changing things avoids deadlocks and allows the story to always be evolving.

The benefits of using a visual format has proven successful, and having a detailed map of a user’s entire journey with your product helps drive better experiences and increase business sales.