Google has announced a new feature in Google Analytics (GA) that helps site owners visualize in a dynamic chart how visitors navigate through the site. The flow visualization feature has been implemented under the visitors and goals sections. This is an example of the flow visualization chart and its main components:
The nodes can represent two things:
1. Normally the first column is a dimension that you chose to filter the traffic analysed. By default this value is source, but you could select medium, custom variables, city, country, etc.
2. After the first column, the nodes represent single pages or collections of pages that the users have visited in your site.
The connections represent the paths users have followed and the size gives you an idea of the volume of traffic through those paths at a glance.
Visits Flow
The visitors flow report shows a chart representing visitors’ paths through the site. If you have used the navigation summary feature in GA and have felt frustrated trying to analyse visitor behaviour across the pages, the new flow visualization is a great solution, since it makes visitor flow patterns visible.
Not only the graphical representation of the flow visualization is quite different to the navigation summary, but it’s also interactive. You can highlight different pathways to see information of particular sections without loosing visualization of the entire picture.
One of the best things from the flow visualization chart is that it shows you percentages of the traffic that travels from one page to another as it was shown in the navigation summary, but in addition it gives you the information of the actual figures. Therefore, you can see number of visits that dropped off (exit the site) and the ones that continue to a different section of the site.
Goal Flow
From the two flow charts available, the goal flow is my favorite. How many times you tried to get better insights and segment traffic within the funnel visualization report but it wasn’t possible? With the goal flow chart you will be able to apply advanced segments (default and custom segments), dimensions and see details about the incoming traffic and outgoing traffic.
Stay tuned for my second post on this new feature, detailing some insights you can get by using the flow visualization charts.
