A practical guide to user journey mapping in the arts

We’ve all had moments when the path to getting where we want to is more confusing than it should be. Think about arriving at a busy train station and feeling unsure about which exit will take you where. Or buying a coffee at a crowded cafe where it’s unclear whether the people in front of you are queuing to order or just waiting for their drinks.

 When wayfinding breaks down, even in familiar settings, it creates friction and frustration. In cultural spaces, we usually put a lot of thought into the visitor experience once someone walks through the door. But what about the experience leading up to that moment?

That’s where journey mapping comes in. Journey mapping is a way of understanding how people interact with your organisation – online, on site and everywhere in between. Increasingly, this journey begins digitally.

Whether someone is browsing your website, looking for access information, booking tickets or clicking through from an email or social post, those early steps shape their perception, influence decisions and can determine whether they engage at all. And for potential visitors who have never attended before, that first impression matters more than ever.

What is journey mapping?

Journey mapping is a method used to visualise and understand the steps an individual takes to achieve a goal – e.g. booking a ticket, becoming a member or planning a visit. It considers each touchpoint from the user’s perspective and highlights where the experience helps them move toward their goal, and where it creates friction, confusion or drop-off.

In a sector in which digital resources are often stretched and teams are juggling multiple responsibilities with limited time and budget, taking the time to map user journeys might fall low on the priority list.

But journey mapping doesn’t have to be complex or expensive. And it often results in low-effort, high-impact improvements that can make a real difference to audience engagement.

Why it matters

Digital experiences are often designed based on organisational structures or assumptions about user needs. But those assumptions often differ from how users behave.

For example, we might:

• Assume users arrive on the homepage, when most come via search engines directly to event pages (more on this and lots of other insights can be found in our cultural websites benchmark report).
• Structure navigation around internal departments/needs/goals rather than the users.
• Prioritise the content we think is important or are under pressure to promote, even if it doesn’t align with what users are actively trying to find.
• Assume users understand internal terminology, rather than using clear and familiar language.

Journey mapping uncovers these disconnects by surfacing real user behaviours, emotions and barriers. It helps us design experiences that are intuitive, relevant and frictionless.

Getting started: a simple framework

You don’t need a UX team or a large research budget to map user journeys. Here’s a lightweight approach any arts organisation can use:

Identify the steps: Walk through the journey yourself. What are the touchpoints? What pages do you visit? Where do decisions happen?

Define the goal: Choose a specific user action to focus on – e.g. booking a ticket, finding access information or signing up to a newsletter.

Capture the user’s perspective: At each step, ask:

• What is the user trying to do?
• What information do they need?
• What might be confusing or frustrating?

Look for pain points and opportunities: Where are people dropping off? What small changes could make the process clearer, faster or more reassuring? Are there places content could be improved to make the journey clearer?

Test and refine: Validate your map with real users. Even short conversations or quick user testing can uncover insights you might miss internally (read our article on the importance of user research and testing).

Investing in journey mapping can improve conversion rates, reduce box office queries and increase audience satisfaction. And more importantly, it can empower your organisation to design experiences that are genuinely usable, accessible and enable users to reach their goals.

If you want to explore user journey mapping further or need support with any aspect of your digital work, Substrakt partners with cultural organisations to create digital experiences that are more useful, user-friendly and impactful.