Today, we’re continuing our deep dive into features released in our recent Beta refresh.
We've touched previously on The Dashboard, The Treemap Report and The Entry & Exit Page Report and continue the reporting theme by talking about the adCenter Analytics Path report.
Most analytics reports tell you about the visitors to individual pages of your web site. By contrast, the Path report shows you how visitors actually navigate through your site, from page to page. This information can be very valuable in understanding user behavior and identifying problem pages.
Setting up the Path report
Before viewing the Path report, you first need to set up which paths to track:
· Log into adCenter
· Click the Analytics tab
· Click ‘manage’ your settings for the chosen profile
· Then ‘Configure reports’
· Finally, click on ‘Path reports’
You should now see a list of your active Path reports. In the example below, there’s just one report, ‘From home page’ (you can have up to 5 such reports).
On clicking ‘Add new path report’, you’ll be prompted to enter a name for the report, the focal page URL, and the type of the report (paths from a source page, or paths to a target page). In this example, we’ve created a report tracking how users get to our help page.
When you edit an existing path report, you can only edit the name. To change the focal page or report type, you need to create a new report.
That’s it! Your report is set up and will start capturing data. You may want to wait a day or two before viewing the report, when meaningful data has been gathered.
Viewing the report
To view the Path report, return to the profiles page and view the reports for your selected profile. Expand the ‘Paths’ menu to see your current Path reports, then click the report you want to see.
The report tracks path views. Each time a visitor navigates to the focal page, that’s the start of a new path view (for paths from a source page—it’s the end of a path view for paths from a target page). You can have more than one path view in a session, and they can even overlap. The maximum path length tracked is 7 pages (including focal page).
The path report is an explorative tool. Rather than simply showing static data, you can browse through the tree of paths taken by your users. You can see if the actual site navigation matches that intended by the site design—and thereby identify problem areas to improve or new features to add.
Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.
Example: Paths from the Home Page
This is the most obvious report—tracking visitor paths as they navigate from your home page.
You can see the number of path views for your home page on the left—as the focal page, these always equate to 100%. Branching from this you can see which pages the visitors went to next, and in what numbers.
In this example, you can see that many visitors entering the offers section are either returning to the home page or product listings, or leaving the web site altogether. This suggests a problem with the ‘offers’ page that is confusing users. Fixing this page should improve site performance.
Example: Paths to the Help Page
The Path report also allows you track paths to a target page. In our second example, we track paths to the ‘help’ page, to better what users were doing before they got stuck.
In this case, you can see that a large proportion of users visiting the help page are coming from the ‘samples’ page. Of these, a sizeable proportion has come from the ‘checkout’ page—a navigation not intended by the site designer. Perhaps there is a problem with the site navigation that is confusing users—this should be investigated.
Let us know what you think of this new feature and thanks for reading!
Jonathan