Customer journey / customer drop off

[datarat]

Hi All,

I would like to understand how visitors navigate through my site and find out where the main drop out areas are (i.e. what pages / sections of the site do users leave on).

I will then be segmenting by mobile, tablet, new visitor, returning etc. to see how the various subsets of users behave.

To do this I generally do the following:

1. Identify main sections of the (ecomm) site: homepage, category pages, product pages, cart, checkout 1, checkout 2, checkout x, payment confirmation.

2. For each section above I either use a segment to isolate that section of the site, either by regex or a simple page selector and apply to the Audience >> Overview report and record the resulting session count.

OR

I filter the Behaviour >> Site Content >> All Pages report to isolate the various site sections and record unique pageviews.

3. I then plot these figures horizontally under a heading for each section of the site representing a flow between the pages of the site with a calculation showing the difference between each section of the site which represents user drop off.

Hope that makes sense.

What I am interested to know is, do you have any better suggestions to the process laid about above.

Do you see any issues with this process?

[DSM_UK]

Hi,

It's a more visual approach than a reportable one (though the numbers are always there to be extracted) but I prefer:
Audience > Visitor Flow

It defaults to country, but if you set the Criteria to 'Landing page' and use the setting cog, you are able to set up to 5 pages with regex.

As you already have your starting pages (category pages, product pages etc), it is a good way to see not only how people respond, but also how well they are doing in comparison with each other, such as someone landing on a category page could have more interactions that a product page, so it is of best interest to drive people to the category pages.

It also has the option of segmenting the traffic.

Many Kind Regards

mozvisitorflow.png

[datarat]

Hi,

Many thanks for your response.

Can you clarify what you mean by "It's a more visual approach than a reportable one (though the numbers are always there to be extracted)"?

Presumably, using your method, if I had a 10 step process from homepage to payment confirmation I could run visitor flow in two tabs / windows. One with the first half of the process, the other with the second half of the process?

If I compared the visitor flow with the goal flow for the checkout goal, would they match up (more or less)?

Thanks again.

[DSM_UK]

Hi,

It's more visual in that Google creates an interactive image representing the data whereas your first solution sounds very number driven in a spreadsheet format?
But as it is interactive it still offers the data for you to be able to input into a separate spreadsheet if you wished.

If you had a ten step process you would be able to see all this on one page (You can specify up to 5 pages as your starting step using regular expression).

If your goals have specific steps then yes it would be similar data, the advantage being you would also see any steps taken before or after your goal also.

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards

Jimmy

[ToriC]

Hey there!

Something that may be helpful to you is Multi-Channel Funnels reports in GA. They're super awesome for ecommerce sites to see when your users leave "the funnel".

Search Engine Land posted a great article on what they do and how to use them.

[datarat]

Hi Tori,

Thanks for the reply.  I've looked at the MCF reports but what I need is a similar report but once the user is on the site, i.e. a step after the MCF reports.

Does that make sense?

Thanks again.

[datarat]

Hi Jimmy,

Ah, I get what you mean about the visual element but I'm sorry I don't understand

what you mean about being able to plot the entire journey.  If I have 5 slots, how can I

fit 10 site layers in?

Is it possible to view: Home > Cateogry Page > Product Page > Basket > Cart > Confirmation Page

As distinct sections in the flow?

Thanks again.

[ToriC]

Hey there,

I think I get what you're saying. Have you set up goals in GA? That could tell you the path users followed to get to a certain place.

Example:

freetrialconversion.png

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

I would take a look at the following opportunities in Google Analytics:
Funnel Visualization
Goal Flow
Behavior Flow
Conversion Funnels Multi-Channel Funnels Attribution Modeling

There are also numerous opportunities in Enhanced eCommerce. There are countless reports you can look into, including Shopping Behavior Analysis, as well as Checkout Behavior Analysis.

You can also take advantage of awesome testing, heatmapping, and visitor recording features in tools like Visual Website Optimizer, Hotjar, or Optimizely.

All of the tools above will not only help you understand how your customers and users are moving through your website, but could also give you more insights in how to structure your website to create the best possible user experience. Here are some more tips.

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any more questions or comments! Good luck!