User Story Mapping

User story mapping is a tool that outlines a customer’s interaction with a product and things the company’s team should do next to ensure a great user experience. It enables brands to unveil possible risks, reach a consensus, and provide an excellent customer experience.

In this article, we’ll uncover the purpose and advantages of user story mapping. We’ll also review when and how to do user story mapping.

What is the purpose of user story mapping?

Producing a product customers appreciate requires companies to work hard on different aspects of their businesses. People choose specific brands for the value and benefits they provide. To meet expectations and bring value to your target audience, you need to know them better. User story mapping helps you with it. A marketing team creates an outline of customers’ interactions with a product and decides which steps to take next to achieve the necessary outcomes. As a result, all your team members understand your clients and can work towards the achievement of their goals.

With a user story map, you’ll identify the value that plays the most important role for your customers. The departments of your company will know the steps they should take to resonate with the audience and encourage them to take the desired action.

Now that you know the purpose of user story mapping, let’s explore the benefits.

Benefits of User Story Mapping

Businesses spend a lot of money to create a great product. Besides, it’s a time-consuming process. Yet it’s a must if you want your brand to thrive and prosper. One of the things we recommend doing is user story mapping because of the pros it provides.

This tool focuses on the value user can obtain from your brand. A product team creates the map to figure out how customers perceive a product, how they react, and how they perceive specific options. With its help, companies can identify the steps they need to take next to provide clients with the best products. Also, departments can prioritize their work and determine the tasks they should perform immediately. An accurately developed plan allows businesses to find potential risks that should be eliminated before they escalate. Finally, your teams reach a consensus and act towards the achievement of common goals.

It’s time to unveil when to do user story mapping.

When to do user story mapping?

The product development stage is the most appropriate time for companies to create user story maps. They encourage discussions between team members and try to align them. Maps cover user experience and ways to solace customer problems. You can develop maps both for your new product and the existing one.

Now that you know when to create a user story map, let’s proceed to the next section to figure out how to do it.

How to do user story mapping?

If you need to make a user story map for your new or existing product for the first time, you need to stick to several steps. Follow our guide to do everything right and obtain excellent results.

1. Define the problem your product helps solve. You need to know the problems your product can solve and the value it brings to consumers. Think about it because it’s essential both for your customers and business. A product should give customers the benefits they need. If it satisfies users, they will come back.
2. Understand your customer. If you know your audience, you understand how to approach them and address their needs, expectations, and desires right. Your audience segments are different; that’s why you need to analyze them all. As a result, you’ll have a clear picture of how to solve their problems and resonate with their needs.
3. Identify customer actions. Identify customers who interact with your product and analyze their activities. Users can filter items to find the cheapest ones, add and delete products from their shopping carts, and finish buys. This information will give you reasons why some users leave your website without purchasing.
4. Search for user experience stories. When customers perform certain actions, they can encounter different problems. As a result, you’ll have different stories about their user experience. For instance, a user might face problems with adding more products to the shopping cart.
5. Identify issues. A story map is an excellent way to identify problems and risks that might influence user experience later. There might be various problems, from missing information to technical requirements.
6. Work on product releases. Finally, the product team collects all the information to find out what things should be improved first. The product should pass all the levels of improvement to provide customers with a seamless user experience in the nearest future.

Consider a user story map if you create a new product or improve an existing one. Hope our information will help you do it right.

References:

1. This article defines user story mapping.
2. In this article, you’ll find how to create a user story map.

Last Updated: 23.03.2023