Flow Visualization in Google Analytics

Google Analytics has a new feature called ‘Flow Visualization’ to help you understand how people navigate your website. You can see Flow Visualization within the Visitors and Conversion reports. It allows you to see navigation paths on a dynamic chart.




Here is an example of the Flow Visualization report and its components:





What are nodes? Nodes can represent two things:

1. The first column is a dimension that allows you to analyze how particular types of visitors navigate through your website e.g. selecting ‘Country’ shows you navigation paths for your visitors by country, selecting ‘Source’ show navigation paths for how visitors found your website.

2. To the right of the first column are the nodes which show single pages or groups of pages users have viewed within your website.

What are connections?

The connections (between the nodes) represent the navigation paths users have followed. The size of these connections is relative which means you can compare traffic volume for particular navigation paths at a glance.

Visitors Flow

The Visitors Flow report shows the different paths visitors take to navigate your website. If you have used the Navigation Summary Feature in Google Analytics and didn’t have the level of detail you required, you will like Flow Visualization because it shows all your visitor flow paths beyond the individual page.

The Flow Visualization chart is interactive; allowing you to highlight different navigation paths to see flow for those sections without losing sight of the overall navigation picture.



The Flow Visualization chart also displays percentages of traffic traveling between pages as well as raw numbers. This was not possible in the Navigation Summary report. Now you can see the actual number of visitors dropping off at particular points!



Goal Flow

Goal Flow is fantastic! You can apply Advanced Segments to visitor conversion paths. This was not possible with the standard Funnel Visualization report. Goal Flow allows you to apply the default Advanced Segments and your own Custom Segments to understand how particular segments of traffic navigate through your Conversion steps.



The one thing missing from the Goal Flow report is the ability to scroll horizontally. This means if you are looking at the report on a smaller screen for example, you have to use the arrows to navigate left and right which makes it difficult to see the entire flow chart.



Stay tuned for our second post on the new Flow Visualization feature! Get ready for more details and insights into using the Visitor Flow and Goal Flow reports.

Labels: Flow Visualization, Goal Flow, Goals and Funnels, Navigation Paths, new Google Analytics features, Visitors Flow

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Reports in Google Analytics

You can now integrate Google Webmaster Tools with Google Analytics to access Search Engine Optimization (SEO) reports. These reports give you additional insights to improve your search engine rankings in Google.

Google Webmaster Tools provides you with information about how your website is performing in organic (free) search results on Google. This is important for SEO because you can see the number of times your website shows in results (impressions) along with clicks, giving you an indication of how relevant your website is in relation to what people are searching for.

Follow our steps for setting up Google Webmaster Tools (if you haven't already done this) and then you can link your accounts by following these steps;

1. Navigate to the 'Search Engine Optimization' reports under 'Traffic Sources'

2. Click on any of the report options ('Queries', 'Landing Pages' or 'Geographical Summary')

You will see the following message if you are linking the tools for the first time (please note you need to be an administrator in order to link the tools);



3. Click on the 'Set up Webmaster Tools data sharing' button

4. You will now be taken to the 'Edit Web Property Settings' page



5. Click 'Edit' under 'Webmaster Tools Settings'

6. Select the website (within Google Webmaster Tools) that you want to link to Google Analytics and click 'Save'.



7. You will be taken back to the 'Web Property Settings' tab in Google Analytics. If you would like to apply the data to additional profiles you can select them here and click the 'Apply' button.



You will now be able to access your SEO reports inside Google Analytics.

Labels: Google Analytics, Google Analytics Tips, Google Webmaster Tools, new Google Analytics features, Search Engine Optimization, SEO