The process of documenting the specific paths different types of visitors are likely to take through a website — from their arrival point to the desired conversion — to ensure the site’s structure, content and design guide each audience type toward the right outcome.
The sequence of pages and interactions a visitor moves through from their first arrival on the site to completing (or abandoning) a desired action. Different user types (cold prospect, returning visitor, existing customer) take different journeys and need different page content and navigational guidance.
A cold prospect arriving from a Google search for a generic term needs brand introduction, trust building and a reason to explore further. An existing customer returning to manage their account needs efficient navigation to the relevant section. Designing a single journey for all audiences optimises for none.
A documented profile of a specific type of user — their role, goals, knowledge level, likely entry point to the site and the action they most need to complete. User personas make the abstract concept of ‘the user’ specific enough to make design decisions around.
A heatmap tool (such as Hotjar or Microsoft Clarity) records where visitors click, how far they scroll and what they hover over on each page. This reveals which elements attract attention, which calls to action are being noticed (or missed) and where visitors abandon the page.
A recording of individual user sessions on the website, showing the cursor movement, scrolling, clicking and form interactions of real visitors. Session recordings reveal friction points that analytics data alone cannot explain — why a visitor left a page without converting, for example.
By identifying the pages where the largest proportion of visitors drop off on the way to a conversion goal and investigating why — using heatmap data, session recordings and user testing to understand the friction point and design an improvement to remove it.
A report showing how many users enter and progress through a defined sequence of pages (for example, service page → contact page → thank-you page), identifying at which step the largest proportion of users abandon the process.
Mobile users typically have shorter attention spans, interact with touch gestures rather than precise cursor clicks and are more likely to be searching for specific information quickly. Mobile user journeys should be designed for speed and clarity, with large tap targets and minimal typing requirements.
Structured observation of real users attempting to complete defined tasks on the website, identifying where they succeed easily and where they encounter confusion or friction. User testing should be used before launch to validate design assumptions and after launch when analytics reveals a conversion problem.
