Funnel visualization is a great method to understand how a user progresses through a structured flow of your site; e.g. a checkout flow that includes “cart”, “billing & shipping ”, “payment”, “review”, “purchase completed, can be visualized to see the drop-off at each step. This is useful for analyzing the user experience and to hypothesize ways to improve throughput in the funnel. In Google Analytics, there are two ways to do this. The legacy report is the Funnel Visualization report and the other is the Goal Flow report. So, which should you use?
Our previous blog post, entitled Google Analytics Flow Visualization Date Range Comparison, covered the addition of the “Compare to Past” date range feature in the Flow Visualization Visitors Flow report. This feature is available in all three Flow Visualization reports: Visitors Flow, Goal Flow, and Events Flow.
The Visitors Flow report, located under Standard Reporting > Audience > Visitors Flow, allows Google Analytics users to better understand visitor behavior.
The Goal Flow report, located under Standard Reporting > Conversions > Goals > Goal Flow, allows Google Analytics users to visually see the paths taken by those visitors who complete goals, including non-URL goals such as engagement goals like Time on Site or Pages Visited. For this Flow Visualization report, make sure to select the goal you wish to view from the first drop down menu. In the following example, we are viewing Newsletter Sign-Ups.
The Events Flow report, located under Standard Reporting > Content > Events > Events Flow, allows Google Analytics users to better understand visitor behavior in relation to the Events set up onsite. Users have the ability to segment the data and to display Event information as Category, Category / Action, or Category / Action / Label.
The three Flow Visualization reports are a great feature of Google Analytics that allows users to dive deeper into the relationships of different pieces of data about a website. If you have questions about any of these three reports, please contact MoreVisiblity or sign-up for a free Google Analytics Consultation.
The Visitors Flow report in Google Analytics, located under Standard Reporting > Audience > Visitors Flow, now allows users to compare data with past date ranges to better understand how users interact with a website over time. The official announcement was made on the Google Analytics blog in the post entitled Better Insights with Flow Visualization Enhancements. The following is a screenshot of how the Visitors Flow report looks before you click “Apply” to assign a comparison with a past date range.
Notice that after you click “Apply,” the flow updates with green increase percentages or red decrease percentages indicating how this data compares to the time frame you just set.
This report can help answer questions like:
What pages on what paths of my website increased in visitors over this time frame?
Are more people reaching the “thank you” page or “order completion” page than before? Are certain pages delivering more traffic to this page than before?
Visitors Flow is one of three Flow Visualization reports currently available in Google Analytics. Our next blog post will touch on the three different Flow Visualization reports currently available: Visitors Flow, Goal Flow, and Events Flow.
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