Flows Report

A flows report shows the sequence of pages or events users actually move through after a starting point, and how the population splits at each step.

Unlike a funnel, the steps are not declared in advance: the report starts from one event or page, discovers and ranks the most frequent next steps, folds rare branches into an other bucket, and gives exit a node of its own. It can run forward from a starting point or backward from an ending point, and those answer two different questions. The width of each branch is a share of the users who reached the previous step rather than of everyone who entered, so paths look thinner the deeper the report goes and a thin ribbon at step four is arithmetic rather than a finding. Web analytics tools build these flows from page paths and product analytics tools build them from events, so one site can produce two flow reports that disagree without either being wrong.