It’s Dangerous to go alone, take this Action Map 🗺

We love a good puzzle, solving some of our clients biggest questions is something we get excited about. The age old question of “What will our customers do next?” is one we particularly enjoy. We invite you to venture into how we answer this question through Action Mapping!

The magic number – at least 1,000 answers! Here’s the breakdown:

• Determine the scenario. What are you trying to find out about your customer’s actions? Think of a specific feature in your product experience that you want to learn more about, and as you’re gathering feedback from your customers, lay out a detailed scenario about how they have reached that feature and what their current purpose is. Each scenario represents a single survey question, and we typically see about 10 questions per survey depending on the amount of scenarios you want to test. See a great example here!
• Evaluate possible actions. Now that you’ve properly led your participants into a specific scenario, you’ll be able to evaluate all the different actions they can take. There are multiple possibilities that unfold in each scenario, even “negative” possibilities, such as completely leaving your site. Out of these 4 or 5 possible actions, one should be the ideal course that you want your customers to take.
• Explore the “Why?” of those actions. Once you provide the scenario and action options to your customers, you’ll be left with all the actions they’ll most likely take based on hundreds of answers you’ve collected along the way. Even if the actions seem obvious, take the time to look into why your customers will take that action by evaluating their written explanations. With only 100 responses to 10 survey questions, you’ll discover new insights about why your customers are making certain decisions and taking actions for different reasons. Powerful stuff.

Action Maps will produce a breakdown of the most likely action your customers will take in each scenario, and reflect what each possibility is. Like your best spell or most powerful move, this framework can be applied to any features or flows where you don’t know how your customers will take action. With your Action Map in hand you’ll have what it takes to build a strong understanding of your customers’ behaviors on your platform! And ultimately win the game.