How to design your user journey

Creating a user journey lets you communicate how your marketplace will work. You should define your marketplace’s user journeys in preparing to hire developers. Specifying to Flex development partners how providers create listings, how users find listings, and how they interact together during a transaction lets you receive more accurate estimates of the budget required to build your custom marketplace with Flex.

In the previous article, you learned how listing creation, listing discovery, and the transaction process works in one of the Flex Templates. Now it is time to define how users complete these critical journeys on your marketplace.

1. Background work

Pick one of the three processes (listing creation, discovery process, transaction process) to start with. Think through all the steps that your users need to go through while using your marketplace in this journey.

Listing creation

Focus on defining how users signup and create listings on your marketplace. Consider these questions:

• How do users sign up? What information do you want to collect? Are there additional security measures to signing up?
• Do you want to internally label people as providers and/or customers at signup and show them different views after?
• Is the provider an individual person or a company?
• What information do you require in a listing?
• Do providers offer an availability calendar for bookings? Are listings booked nightly, daily, hourly, or some other way?
• How are listings priced? Is it tied to the booking length, or some other way?
• Does the listing need to be approved by the operator before being published?

Discovery process

Focus on illustrating how users search and find listings. Consider these questions:

• Can the user browse the results before they have logged in?
• What is the main criteria the customer will use for searching: Location, availability, or a keyword?
• What filters are used to narrow the search results?
• In what order are the search results shown? Should the user be able to adjust the sorting criteria?
• What information is shown for each listing in the search view? How about in the listing view?

Transaction process

Focus on defining how your users transact on the marketplace. Starting from the listing page, depict the steps from request to successful completion. Consider these questions:

• What information should the customer provide when making a request?
• Should the provider accept each request, or are they approved automatically?
• Can customers propose prices as part of requesting a booking? Or, is the price fixed?
• When do you collect payment from the customer?
• Is the money transferred to the service provider before or after they have provided the service? Is there a need to delay the payout for some time to allow time for resolving possible conflicts or complaints?
• What is the cancellation and refund policy?
• How do reviews work? Do both parties review each other after a booking, or something else?
• What email notifications are sent as part of the transaction process? When are they sent?

Learn more about the transaction process functionality in Flex.

2. Create maps for listing creation journey, discovery journey and transaction process.

There are many ways to illustrate user journeys. You can draft using pen and paper, a mind map software like Whimsical or Miro, or by simply listing the steps in a document or Powerpoint. You can use our user journey map toolkit to help. To help you to get started, you can download our Powerpoint template for Saunatime user journeys, and use it as a basis for drawing your own. Powerpoint templates can be edited in Powerpoint, Key or Google Slides.

User journey templates

Start simple. The easiest way to start is to write the default successful user journey first, and then add differing paths. Remember, you can see the default User Journeys for Saunatime in this article.

3. Share the journey maps with developers

If you would like to hire vetted Flex developers, start either by booking a call with our team or connect directly with Flex Experts through the Expert Directory.