Customer journey
Updated 2026-11-02
Definition
A customer journey is the sequence of interactions a person has with your business, from first hearing about you to buying and beyond. Each interaction is a touchpoint. Laid end to end, they show how someone actually became a buyer.
Journeys are rarely tidy. People leave and come back, switch devices, and hear about you in places no tool can see.
Example
This example uses made-up numbers and a made-up buyer, Dana.
| Date | What happened | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| June 2 | Reads a blog post | Organic search |
| June 9 | Clicks a newsletter link | |
| June 20 | Views pricing on a phone | Direct |
| June 21 | Signs up from a laptop | Paid search |
| June 21 | Pays $400 | Stripe |
That's 19 days from first visit to payment, with four visits from four channels. Dana's answer to "how did you hear about us?" was "a podcast," which appears nowhere in the table. Looking at one full journey like this is often more useful than a chart, since it shows what the tracked story leaves out.
From one journey to many
One journey is a story. Many journeys are a pattern. Funnels show the order of steps. Flow charts show common paths. Attribution sums journeys into channel totals.
How Headstream measures it
Once a browser is linked to a person, usually by email, Headstream joins all of that person's sessions and payments into one journey. Journeys are available on the Customers page, and through the get_customer_journey MCP tool, which shows touches and payments in order. Revenue data requires Stripe, and connecting Stripe is in beta.
A Sankey flow report shows journeys in bulk, from channel to landing page to next step. See identify people to link browsers across devices, or the attribution guide.