Trailmap user survey 2025: what we learned and what we focus on next

A big thank you to all of you who answered this summer's Trailmap user survey. Over 600 users responded, and their answers brought valuable information and feedback. One message came through strongly: Trailmap is an important part of how many people get around, both in everyday life and on holiday, and it is used in a wide range of sports. The feedback is a good basis for carrying on with development.

Special thanks go to those of you who have recommended Trailmap to friends and riding mates. The survey showed that tips from people you know and discussions on social media were the biggest reason new users joined — search engines and the app store came clearly after that.

How Trailmap is used

Trailmap is still especially popular with mountain bikers: around 80 % of paying users ride MTB, but a large share do several sports — gravel riding, walking and hiking are the strongest second sports. Many use the app several times a week, and use of the mobile app has now passed the web version. Still, the web is still important, especially for planning routes.

Over 80 % of PLUS users draw their own routes, and NAVI and FREE users make good use of it too. Navigation and ad hoc routing on mobile round out the picture.

The strengths we were thanked for

Once again the feedback strongly highlighted the trail map and how well the smart routing suits many different sports. The trail map's coverage, accuracy and clear colouring made it a favourite for many. The National Land Survey's NLS topographic map and the other background maps are also important to many as support for the trail map.

Users appreciate Trailmap's clarity and speed, and the fact that the app is homegrown and in Finnish. The integrations, such as Garmin and Strava, also came up often. Many said that "Trailmap combines varied map data and a route drawing tool that works, in a way you will not find in other apps".

Usability and learning

The single biggest area to improve is the usability of route drawing. The feedback made clear that many users have not found all the features that already exist, especially in the mobile app. So it is not so much a lack of new features as a matter of making the current features easy to find.

Typical examples:

Moving, adding and deleting waypoints, including in the middle of a route
Using a straight line when the automatic routing does not produce the result you want
Confusion about the difference between routes and tracks, because of which the right function was not always found

The aim is balance: the app has to serve experienced users and newcomers equally well. That sets a high bar for developing usability. Work to improve the usability of route drawing has already begun.

Other observations

Individual users reported problems with the app's features, performance and offline maps. These appear to relate to particular situations or devices, and so investigating them needs more detailed information from the people experiencing them. Since the survey was anonymous, a precise investigation is not possible on that basis. So I do hope users get in touch by email at support@trailmap.fi, so we can sort things out together — whether it is about the help pages or how the app works.

What users want in the future

Although improving usability is the number one priority for the near term, we also got plenty of ideas for new features. The most frequently mentioned were:

Search in the mobile app
Custom places as part of routes (and transfer to Garmin & GPX files)
The ability to share and rate users' routes and segments
Highlighting gravel roads on the map
Turn-by-turn navigation, with voice guidance too
Landscape mode
New integrations, such as Wahoo, Polar and Bosch Flow

Some of these are already in the preliminary plans, but the emphasis is primarily on improving the usability of the existing features. New features will be added selectively, and they will first be discussed in the app's Facebook group before decisions on prioritising them. That way we make sure the app stays clear and does not get too complicated.

Summary and next steps

Trailmap's strengths — the trail map, smart routing, a clear interface and the community — remain the app's central pillars. The most important message from the user survey is that the biggest need for development relates to usability: to the current features being findable and working smoothly.

We have already started work to improve route drawing in particular. After that we will focus on selected new features that benefit the whole community broadly.

Thanks once again to every respondent. Trailmap develops thanks to your feedback — and that is exactly why this survey is so valuable to us.