A user flow is a diagram of a user's journey through an app or website, helping ensure a clear and efficient path to their goals.
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Chapter 1
A user flow is a diagram or flowchart of the complete pathway a user of your website or app takes from their entry point to accomplishing their goal.
User flow
user flow • [yoo-zer floh]
A visualization of all the steps a user will take as they move through your website or app as depicted in a diagram or flow chart.
noun
"After optimizing user flow, we saw a significant decrease in our site's bounce rate"
Synonyms
Chapter 2
User flows make your site intuitive to navigate, ensuring it's more than just a pretty piece of internet real estate. A site with good user flow is one that doesn't interrupt a visitor's thought process as they steer through it. When you clearly understand user goals, you can build a site that aligns with them.
User flows allow you to tap into what a user's experience will be, making it easier to visualize the architecture and content required.
Working from a single user flow chart means more clarity for your entire development team.
A user flow focuses your attention on defining and building the optimal pathway users take from the entry point to the final action.
Chapter 3
User flows come in many forms and vary based on their purpose and context within your site or app. Some common types include:
What are task flows good for?
What are wireflows good for?
What is customer journey mapping good for?
Chapter 4
These may two sound similar but the key differences between these two are the scope of what they each look at and what they focus on. We'll touch on how they differ here but for a more in-depth look, check out our page on user journey vs user flow.
These focus on a specific task or goal within your site or app. So what is a flow? Think of it as a more zoomed-in view, showing the sequential steps a user takes to achieve their goal. User flows don't consider emotions or external factors, just the actions on the interface from the entry point.
Excellent for:
This is the bigger picture, the journey. A user journey is more than how someone navigates from page to page. It encompasses the entire user's experience with your product or service, considering all touchpoints and emotions starting from initial brand awareness.
Excellent for:
Chapter 5
Creating user flows is as straightforward as putting one step in front of another, but there are multiple ways to go from idea to strategy.
The old-fashioned way, pen and paper is still a great method for getting ideas out of your head and into the world quickly. And let's be honest, some people just like the hands-on, tactile approach.
The particular process of creating a user flow on paper is no different than using digital tools. With user research in tow, list out the steps of the task you're looking to build or optimize and then draw them out sequentially.
A big drawback of pen and paper, however, is that drawings aren't easy to share with other team members or collaborate on.
Getting yourself and your team into a dedicated tool built specifically to create user flows is a no-brainer.
These tools solve the collaboration and shareability issue while giving you endless space, well beyond the limits of a sheet of paper, to build out user flows.
Be choosy with your tools though, our Diagram Maker, for example, isn't a unitasker; it's part of a larger suite of website planning tools, where you can build content and architecture around your flows as well as oversee design.
Design tools like Figma, for example, are a great option for creating user flows, offering a visual canvas to map out different pathways and going further than using solely shapes inside a diagram maker.
Once user flows are established, your designers, developers and product managers can seamlessly transition to creating higher fidelity mockups, refining page layouts and UI elements around these flows within the same tool.
This integrated approach streamlines the design process, ensuring the final product closely aligns with the intended user experience.
Think visually. Improve UX with Slickplan
Chapter 6
User flows are super versatile tools that can be used by anyone on your team who's looking to improve a specific process.
Build more efficient pathways for users to take by visualizing the entire route they travel from entry point to end goal.
See and understand a user's objective to both improve functionality and inform interface development based on user flow insights.
Create user flows to identify key touchpoints, better direct traffic and optimize content to align with user goals.
Create user flow diagrams to evaluate your users' experiences and how efficiently they're able to move through different paths on your site to reach their goals.
Chapter 7
As mentioned, a user flow and a customer journey aren't the same thing. A user flow is part of the bigger journey a user takes toward their goal and understanding that is the key to creating a crisp on-site or in-app experience.
A customer journey map is by nature much more complex as it takes into account emotions and all touchpoints starting from awareness, way before they hit your landing page.
To create effective journey maps, you need to build them around a specific user persona, or representation of your target audience.
The exercise of mapping each step a user takes and all touchpoints, while time-consuming, is critical for optimizing UX and ensuring user visits align with their goals.
User research you compile through story mapping will be the basis for not only mapping each user flow, it's also key to ensuring your site's content is filled with relevant information.
Ok, now that you know your user and their journey inside and out, it's time to spell out what you and they want to achieve.
Are you looking for sales on your ecommerce site? Newsletter sign-ups? More subscribers?
Each page on your site or app isn't going to be built for the same user goal either. Some users will be looking to buy something, some are signing up for a trial, some may want your newsletter, while others are entering your site to download a lead magnet and so on.
There's a world of motivations out there and to lead a user where they want to go, you need to be crystal clear on what you want as well.
The alignment of your goals and theirs is what leads to seamless user flow; a great tool to use as a building block is the user story.
Establishing the endpoint of a visitor's journey aka their goal, is only part of the equation, how are they finding you in the first place?
It's a big internet out there after all!
Again, this is where your customer journey map comes in handy as it documents a user's entire experience with your company.
Pore over it and consider the different paths a person can take to get to your site or app. The most common places users enter from:
Entry points tell you a lot about user needs and motivation. Someone coming from a paid ad, for example, will likely have less purchase intent than someone who comes directly to your site.
Scour your data sources like Google Analytics and your CRM to source this kind of info.
Where and how someone enters your site determines the information they'll need to see when they get there.
A user who arrives via an email to your product landing page is further along in your funnel than someone who hits the same page via Google search and the information they're seeking will be different.
To fill each page with the right content, you'll need to think through these different paths and design pages that satisfy intent across the board.
In the example scenario above, maybe you're seeing increased traffic on an adjacent page that does a deep dive into how your product works. That implies users need more information before making a purchase decision.
The solution from a user flow perspective?
Optimize product pages with richer information and add clear links and CTAs to those deep dive pages.
The questions to think about here:
Once you've established a thorough understanding of your users, what they need and how they're finding you, it's time to visualize an optimal user flow.
This is where user flow tools like our Diagram Maker come in handy.
Remember, each user flow should be built around a specific task, not the entire customer journey.
You'll start with the entry point of your user, which in the world of flowchart symbols is represented by the terminator symbol.
That's an important thing to note; whether you're using pen and paper, Slickplan or any other software to create user flow diagrams, there are standard symbols and shapes that ensure every collaborator understands exactly what you mean.
Just because you've mapped out a flow doesn't mean you're finished.
Getting things right the first time is rare and even when it happens you still want to move forward with the confidence of consensus.
Share your user flow diagrams with your product managers, developers, UX designers and other key stakeholders as well as clients to work together refining pathways to perfection.
With Slickplan, you can easily invite all your collaborators to edit the same flow chart in real time and optimize UX flows as a team.
Once your team is in agreement, you can finalize your diagram and move into development then user testing to see how it works in the wild.
Keep in mind, optimizing your site is an ongoing process, just because something produces results today, doesn't mean it's going to work tomorrow. User motivations, needs and goals change over time and so should your site.
Chapter 8
User flows are of course particularly beneficial in the planning phase for a new site. Once you've done your research, identified user needs and the rest of the nitty-gritty, developing a process flow diagram is useful in documenting and getting a bird's eye view of the specific steps a person will take to reach their goals.
User flows allow you to identify which pages you'll need to create, the order they'll go in within your website architecture and inform the design process of each page.
Existing sites benefit from the diagramming treatment too as user flows are essential for diagnosing areas for improvement.
By recognizing key goals and the paths users take to accomplish them, user flow UX diagrams make it easy to identify starting points and pathways that aren't as optimal as they could be.
Taken together, UX flows can streamline your site or app by helping you reduce the number of steps it takes to reach a particular goal, get rid of content that might be irrelevant or mockup new designs that cut to the chase.
But user flows may not be necessary for every situation
Utilize a user flow for…
You don’t need a user flow for…
Chapter 9
Understanding user flows is one thing, using them to ensure your users can sail smoothly to their goals is another. Start building a better user experience with Slickplan today.
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Start from scratch or use one of our flowchart templates
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Chapter 10
You don't have to start from a blank slate, we have dozens of user flow examples to help you get the ball rolling and shape better user visits.
Sales process map template 
Flow chart template 
Login process flow chart template 
Checkout process flow chart template User flowchart template 
Registration process flow chart template System flowchart template Create your own user flow diagramFree demo – See how Slickplan works
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User or customer journeys map the complete user experience, emotions and all, across every touchpoint. User flows focus on specific actions within a product or website, like completing a sign-up for a course.
Sitemaps are like blueprints showing all website pages and their hierarchy. User flows, on the other hand, are flow charts that zoom in on specific tasks, detailing steps users take to achieve goals, like buying a product.
Take a look at our user flow vs sitemap breakdown for more details.
A good example of user flow is the customer's purchase journey on an ecomm website. This ecommerce user flow would guide a user through the process of buying a product or service, step by step.
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Find out what flow diagrams are and which are optimized for your needs. Whether it’s a website, app or rap song, good flow is the aim.
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Standardized flowchart shapes are the universal language of diagrams. Learn the meaning and use of each diagram symbol & connector to create diagrams that everyone can understand.
Collaborate to build and refine the pathways your users take to find what they're looking for.
We found a hidden snag in our checkout process after mapping it out step-by-step with Slickplan, a quick fix and we saw an almost immediate jump in our conversions.
Charles Wells, Owner at Heat Productions
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