Behavioral Journeys: What People Came to Do

The idea in one sentence: design for the task a person is trying to complete, not just the action your organization wants them to take.

In this paper, a journey means the purpose of a visit: learning, comparing, applying, getting help or something else. Behavior means observable actions, such as opening a page. An action and its meaning are not the same thing.

Start with the visitor's question

One person opens a pricing page to compare plans. Another needs a price for an expense report. A third is helping a colleague. The page visit alone does not tell you which explanation is right.

A marketing funnel describes steps toward an organizational goal, such as visit → inquiry → sale. It is useful for counting those steps. It is less useful when it treats every visitor as a prospective buyer or every departure as a failure.

Someone who finds a phone number and leaves may have succeeded. Someone who clicks six pages may be lost. Before changing an experience, ask what useful outcome the visitor needs—and how you could tell whether they reached it.

Ten possible needs to design for

These are planning prompts, not a scientifically validated classification system. The quoted needs are fictional examples, not statements that browsing lets us read from someone's mind. People can have several needs or move between them.

1. Discover: “What is this, and is it relevant to me?”

Give a clear explanation, a concrete example and recognizable routes. A business owner encountering Aware Design for the first time should not have to read its history before understanding what it could do for a website.

Avoid: a wall of terminology, a forced signup or a sales conversation before the offer makes sense.

2. Compare: “How does this option fit my needs?”

Make scope, prices, limitations and evidence easy to compare. Explain what a service includes and what it does not. If people can choose a sector or situation, say what that choice changes.

Avoid: treating a case-study view as proof of someone's employer, budget or intention to buy.

3. Act: “I want to take the next step.”

Use a specific action label and a matching destination. “Talk through a first build” should open a first-build inquiry, not an unexplained general contact form. Explain what will happen after submission.

Avoid: silently filling a form with guesses or removing necessary confirmation for a consequential action.

4. Research: “I need to understand this in depth.”

Provide examples, definitions, sources and optional technical detail. Let people follow related ideas without interrupting them with repeated offers. Give them stable links they can return to or share.

Avoid: claiming that a long visit proves careful reading or that reading alone shows purchase readiness.

5. Return: “Help me pick up where I left off.”

If a person chose to save a task or preference, offer a clear way to resume it. Show what was saved and provide “Start fresh.” If nothing was saved, a useful ordinary page is the right response.

Avoid: silently recreating a profile or assuming a returning device always represents the same person.

6. Find something quickly: “I need an answer now.”

Make essential contact details, instructions and help easy to reach for everyone. A person should not need to demonstrate urgency before the website becomes usable.

Avoid: inferring an emergency, emotional state or medical need from fast clicks. Sensitive situations need appropriate, clearly available human or professional routes.

7. Complete a task: “Let me finish what I came to do.”

Show the steps, explain difficult fields and keep entered information intact when the page changes. If saving progress is useful, explain what is saved, where and for how long. Confirm whether the task actually completed.

Avoid: unrelated promotions in the middle of a form or a “success” message before the action succeeds.

8. Explore: “I’m looking around.”

Offer a useful overview and inviting links. Keep the rest of the site accessible even when someone selects a topic. Browsing without a purchase is not automatically a failed visit.

Avoid: restricting someone to the first topic they opened or treating curiosity as consent to follow up.

9. Follow a recommendation: “Someone sent me here.”

Deliver what the link promised and explain where the person has landed. Someone arriving at Waypost needs to know that it is a fictional demonstration, not a consulting firm accepting clients.

A referral tag in a link may explain the intended arrival experience. It does not establish the visitor's identity, and it is not permission to send their activity to the person who shared the link.

10. Reconsider: “Things may have changed since I last looked.”

Explain what is new and make the current choices easy to understand. Offer both a useful return route and a fresh start. Do not assume the person remembers earlier explanations.

Avoid: guessing why they left, reviving outdated preferences without explanation or valuing them differently because of a speculative purchase history.

How can the site choose an appropriate response?

Start with the clearest input you can justify. Often that is a visitor's explicit choice: “I need support” or “I'm comparing options.” A good choice explains its effect and is easy to change.

Journey detection means interpreting available information to suggest a likely task. It is optional. If you use it, keep three things separate:

A long pause can mean reading, distraction or an abandoned tab. A direct return can come from a bookmark, a typed address or another source. The site's rules should not turn these ambiguous observations into confident personal claims.

When a response is based on a guess, make it modest and reversible: “Looking for pricing? You can open it here.” Do not announce “You are ready to buy.” Explain changes in ordinary language rather than exposing internal labels such as “evaluation segment.”

Optional detail for builders

Define the allowed inputs, the rule, its uncertainty and its fallback before implementation. Keep a small set of permitted changes. An unknown input should select the ordinary experience, not trigger more intrusive observation.

If a person corrects a choice, use that correction immediately. A rule should not repeatedly override them because an older history suggests something else. If you retain context across visits, treat storage, access and expiry as separate design decisions.

Measure whether the task became easier

Choose a measure that matches the need. For a form, ask whether people complete it correctly. For a reference page, check whether they can explain the idea and find the next relevant section. For a referral, check whether the destination matches the promise.

Do not substitute easy-to-count activity for understanding. More scrolling, longer sessions and return visits can have several explanations. A purchase outcome also does not establish what the person intended at every earlier click.

Compare the changed experience with the ordinary one on a defined task. Include wrong assumptions, resets, accessibility problems and staff effort—not only the organization's preferred action. Where an inference is involved, evaluate both whether it was accurate and whether acting on it helped.

Use the framework without making it a burden

Choose one important task. Describe what the visitor needs, where the current page makes it difficult and the smallest change worth trying. You do not need to classify every visit or implement all ten examples.

Compare situations on your own website or inspect a simple rule.