Forward and reverse path clickstream analysis in Google Analytics

Unravel your customer journeys with Google Analytics Entrance Paths

Value: ★★★★★

Our commentary: I don’t know whether you have heard of the forward and reverse path clickstream analysis technique? It used to be in vogue years ago, but I haven’t seen it used for a while. I was prompted to think of the power of this technique while reading this post from Michael Whitaker on how to apply the technique in Google Analytics.

It’s a shame clickstream analysis isn’t so well known as say funnel analysis, since it’s a strong analysis technique to help understand top-of-funnel customer journeys on a site to identify inefficiencies. When analysing client sites tagged with Omniture I use the Next Page Flow often to understand the journeys and similarly in Google Analytics use the “Navigation Summary” for paths forward or backwards from a page.

Marketing implications:

A forward path analysis reviews the popularity of destination clicks that occur from a page. This analysis is most beneficial from high volume pages such as the home page, category or landing pages. I use this technique to identify: messaging, navigation and page template combinations which:

Yield the most clicks from a page. These approaches can then be deployed elsewhere on the site or page
Work poorly and yield a relatively small percentage of clicks from a page

A reverse path analysis indicates the most popular combination of pages and/or calls-to-action run-of-site or run-of-section which lead to a page. This is particular useful for transactional or outcome pages such as:

The first checkout page on a consumer site
A lead generation or contact us page on a business-to-business site
An e-mail subscription page
A call-me back option

So finally, to our recommended link. This post shows nicely how to complete a forward path analysis from the home page in Google Analytics using the Entrance Paths report. There are a couple of points to note:

You can perform this for any page – the quickest way to get there is from the Pages, top content report
The “Navigation Summary” report is very similar, I personally use this
The power of this techniques is applying a segment to show the relative value generated from a link, e.g. through segmenting on number of transactions
If the Site Overlay report is working for you this gives another option to visualise click volume and click value

http://www.msicommerce.co.uk Michael Bates

Hi Dave

As you point out the analysis of user journeys can be very powerful in ecommerce, especially to help with the positioning of products. Whilst working with a client, in the clothing sector, I found that a high percentage of users were entering a page looking for ‘nightwear’. There was then an equal high percentage clicking on another link on the right that said ‘nightwear’. On review of the page it was then obvious that none of the products above the fold screamed ‘nightwear’. Users, being as lazy as they are, decided clicking another link was easier than scrolling. Movement of products within the category resolved the problem.

Although typically we would advise to have some of your best selling products at the top of a category, they do need to be relevant. The journey through a page can highlight that what you think is relevant isn’t the same as your customers.

Michael

Dave Chaffey

Thanks for the example at a product page level Michael. The original post was about home pages, but your anecdote nicely shows how path analysis can apply to any type of landing page such as a category or product page on an ecommerce site and that you can segment further by entry keyphrases.

I think AB and multivariate testing get all the attention because of the tools available (and agreed their power in increasing conversion), but path analysis isn’t discussed enough as a technique.

Unravel your customer journeys with Google Analytics Entrance Paths

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