This article explains how to use the Goal Flow report to see how well you’re directing traffic within your site by showing you the most popular paths users take to your content. Before proceeding, you might want to review the content in the Related resources section below.
In this article:Scenario: Design your dream car
For our example, let's say you are promoting a new model car. So your website contains content describing the vehicle, providing technical specifications, sharing driver feedback, and finally, a page where users can select the options they want in their new ride. You've created a Destination goal on the design confirmation page, and set up a funnel that includes the pages or screens that are likely points along different paths to that goal. While you set up the funnel in Analytics as a linear path, in this case, you can think of it as a container for the content through which users are most likely to navigate on the way to your goal. You can include in the funnel your home page or promotional landing screen, search results, and the confirmation for building a customized version of the car.
Analysis 1: Track traffic to your goal
With this funnel in place, you can see whether users navigate from one page or screen to the next. Are you calling appropriate attention to your promotion? Do you provide clear navigational options from the promotion to the next step? If there’s an acceptable amount of traffic to your goal, then you can likely answer yes to those questions. If there’s a significant drop-off, evaluate your content or the steps to see how you can improve.
Analysis 2: See more connections
You can also use this report to see alternative entrance points for your goal. Move the Connections slider to the right to expose more pathways, and you can see things like how much direct traffic there was to your goal (bypassing the funnel steps), and whether organic search was taking users to promotional content or straight to your goal.
You can see how much traffic there was from your promotion to other related content, like the a brochure or specifications page. If there’s an unexpected drop-off after the first step, then there might be a fundamental flaw in the creative content, or something as simple as a broken link.
Analysis 3: Look for loops
You can also see where users loop back from one node to another:
- A loopback from search-results to the search page can indicate that users are not finding what they’re looking for.
- On the other hand, a loopback from the final page to the first page in a configuration cycle might indicate that users are configuring different models of your new car and saving the results to compare. You can then look for an uptick in direct traffic to those pages of saved results.
Analysis 4: Explore for more insights
You can use the Explore traffic through here option for a node to examine traffic to and from different nodes. For example, if there’s an unacceptable drop-off from your promotion and users aren’t taking an interest in the specifications of your new model and aren’t exploring the different engine and paint options as you had hoped, you can see where they’re going instead. Are they returning to the first step and then checking out other models, or are they leaving your content altogether?
