Forward Flow

Forward flow is an analysis that starts from an event or page and walks into the future to see where users usually go after that point.

Forward flow is the most common direction of path analysis and answers “what next”; it serves entry pages and key product pages, to reveal where users are steered after seeing them. Its difference from a funnel is the absence of a hypothesis: a funnel defines the intended route in advance and measures how many followed it, while forward flow shows real and often unplanned behavior. The usual path-analysis trap is here too: each extra step branches the routes and the top branch's share stays small, so you should not read the first branch as the dominant path. Hub pages such as home and search pull the branches into their own node and flatten the picture. Forward flow is descriptive: it says where the user went, not why.