How to Do User Flow Analysis

Innovative mobile apps are easy to use, seamless, effective, and readily available. Put differently, they provide customers with happy paths to make their journeys easier. However, developing these routes is not always simple; to determine what works and what does not, user journeys must be closely examined. User flow analysis can help with this. It is a powerful tool to help you understand the common paths people take through your website, application or digital product.

And today, we will be explaining the user flow definition, some examples, the importance of user flow analysis, how to conduct an analysis and free tool for user flows.

What is a User Flow?

User flows are a thorough representation of the individual actions a user takes to complete a task. Similar graphic representations can be seen in user journeys, which are typically much bigger and include a full experience. A sign-up flow that breaks out each step a user must take to create an account is one of the user flow examples. You can increase conversions, lower churn, and gain a deeper understanding of user behavior by performing user flow analysis.

In the area of SaaS, “user flows” have grown in popularity recently. They are frequently discussed with “user journeys” or even used interchangeably. But, what is the difference between them?

User flows are sometimes complex, comprehensive graphical depictions of the individual stages a user takes in a path or procedure to finish a specific action (such as downloading an app).

The word “user journeys” is far more broad covering an all-encompassing perspective of the whole customer experience.

What are User Flow Examples?

One of the user flow examples is a signup user flow and this is how a SaaS product’s signup user flow can look like;

-Visitors arrive at the signup landing page on the website.

-In order to register for a new account, users click the appropriate button.

-They give important personal information (password, email address, and other details about which user segment they belong to).

-Upon successful account creation, users are prompted to confirm their email address.

-After that, customers are taken to your app to finish setting up their accounts.

-After saving their modifications, users return to the home screen and are prepared to use your main features.

As one might expect, depending on the situation, there may be several different kinds of website user flow examples. A variety of UI patterns may be used in an on boarding flow to assist users in learning about and interacting with your product, hence increasing the conversion rate of free to paid users.

On the other hand, a cancellation flow (an unpleasant but necessary job) could entail a user submitting a request, corresponding with customer service, providing information outlining their cancelation reasoning, etc.

What is the Importance of User Flow Analysis?

The process of figuring out how users interact with a website or app is called user flow analysis. It usually entails examining the different routes that lead to an objective and identifying the obstacles and trouble spots that make a path unpleasant. Let’s look at the importance of user flow analysis in detail.

Understanding user behavior: You may go deeply into comprehending interactions within specific features and sections of the high-level user journey by using user flow analysis. It supports design decisions by assisting teams in comprehending usage and figuring out the logic behind activities.

Visualizing UX: You will be given an overview of your application and how its pages and components interact to either help or hinder the user’s ability to navigate it. It draws attention to unclear and badly laid out pathways.

Conversion optimization: It enables you to concentrate on the critical points in the user journey. It allows you to create designs that advance customers through the sales funnel and increase conversion rates.

Defining the Happy Path: The “Happy Path” of user experience is a seamless, error-free user flow. By determining the optimal in-app path, user flow analysis enables you to investigate the actions that get users to the intended outcome more quickly. You can use the findings to create better pathways for increased engagement and client loyalty.

What Can You Achieve Through Analyzing User Flows?

You have made the decision to examine your user flow website reports more closely. Let’s see what you can accomplish with your newly acquired knowledge.

Finding the happy path

The happy path outlines the quickest, error-free route that customers can take when using your product to get the intended outcome.

By performing a user flow analysis, you may determine what the “ideal” path through your product is. Once you have identified the quickest path to value, you can break down the actions that lead more users there more quickly. This will contribute to the growth of more devoted, active users.

Reducing the amount of friction in user interfaces

You will be able to clearly see every step a user takes in your product after you zoom out, including the initial step, any dead ends, and any difficult spots. You should remember that a friction is anything that makes it difficult for your users to navigate your site; this could be a malfunctioning component, an unclear UI element, or an excessive amount of functionality. Your ultimate goal needs to be to provide a smooth experience for your customers.

Types of frictions: Emotional (When the user interface or the experience feels overwhelming), Cognitive (When user interface is not intuitive and users freeze), and Interactive (When users click on something and the action they expect does not happen).

Observing how various user segments engage with the app

You should not approach your users as a single homogeneous group because they will differ in their behavior, have different aims, and do business in various ways, among other things. You will be able to distinguish between different groups with the aid of UX analysis. Which specific phases in a user flow are most likely to be completed? Which characteristics apply to one group more than the other?

After that, you can modify the experiences to best fit each segment’s flow (different in-app messaging, unique UI patterns, and more).

What are the Common User Flows to Analyze?

Top Paths on a Website

The majority of businesses have very clear activities, like buying, trying, or subscribing to a product or service, that they would like website visitors to take. User flow analysis makes it easier to see how users get to the desired activity and where they get sidetracked.

In these situations, user flow analysis can provide answers to the following scenarios, for example:

Online shopping (E-commerce):

-When a user lands on the main page, how often do they use the search bar, drop-down menus, or the “popular products” section?

-Which item detail pages do visitors most frequently view before adding items to their carts?

-Once items are added to the cart, what processes are undertaken before completing the purchase that could potentially be streamlined?

Sign up for a trial or subscription:

-Which pages are most often visited prior to becoming a subscriber?

-Is there a specific page that is causing a drop-off that may be improved to attract more users to the website?

-How are the purchasing processes different for those who choose the Basic and Premium plans?

Top Paths within a Product or Application

The goal of a website for the majority of digital businesses is to draw customers in and provide information about the product or products they sell. The goal of the product is to fulfill the value that its users are looking for. User flow analysis can demonstrate how users go about completing these tasks in each scenario. As an example:

-What do users do after they log in?

-What sequence of events causes users to exit or shut off the application?

-What variations exist between the top user flows according to the user’s device type, region, or app version?

Some Ways to Customize Flow Analysis

Breakdown by segments or cohorts: While taking a broad view of the top user flows can be useful, going deeper into your data can yield more meaningful insights. Users differ substantially in their behaviors depending on a variety of factors, including the device they use, the region they use it in, the app version, and much more.

Select where the flow starts and ends: There are situations when you know precisely where you want customers to end up—like after making a purchase. When that is the case, you can lock the “end step” in a flow to determine the most common paths leading to purchase.

In the same way, you might want to provide the starting point and observe how users proceed from there. For instance, you can observe what happens when a user opens an application or finishes watching a video.

Observing how individuals travel from point A to point B can be useful if you have identified a very particular path that you would like to optimize. For instance, you might want to look at the top flows from “First Login” to “Invite Friend” if you know that users who invite friends to your video-on-demand service are more likely to stay.

To better understand your user experience and provide answers to questions like “How do users navigate my product?”, user flow analysis is an excellent place to start. However, once you have identified the typical routes that people prefer to follow, you should optimize those routes by lowering user friction. They are able to finish the journey more quickly and frequently as a result. For instance, user flow analysis can assist you in determining the best route to finishing a first journey if you are in charge of bringing in new customers for a ride-sharing business like Uber.

After identifying this flow, you can change the visualization to a view of a funnel. From there, you can determine the precise number of users who leave at each intermediate step, as well as the proportion of users who complete the process from start to finish.

How to Conduct a User Flow Analysis?

Step 1: Deciding on the goal and success metrics

First, make sure you understand why you are doing a user flow analysis—for example, to improve user guidance during the conversion process or to boost engagement. After you have connected your “why” to a product objective (like a 20% revenue increase), choose your success metrics.

Assuming that boosting revenue is your primary goal, you can examine how design modifications have affected in-app purchases, subscriptions, and other forms of in-app monetization by examining mobile app KPIs like average revenue per user.

Step 2: Mapping the current process

You can select a user flow to illustrate a typical use case. For instance, a group might look at the complete processes involved in their high-end clients’ purchases of skipping ropes from a sporting goods website. This would be a good short-term objective because it just requires a small number of interactions and can be completed in a matter of minutes.

Use a physical or virtual whiteboard, or behavior analytics tools, to map the flow that you have selected. Throughout user flows, these platforms highlight all the significant interactions and touch points. For a comprehensive knowledge of your app’s user experience, they incorporate context data such as session replays and micro-interactions, including frustration signals like fury taps.

Add action labels to the screens or screen representations that correspond to them if you are manually designing your web user flow.

Step 3: Conducting a data analysis

It is time to start analyzing the user flow and every aspect of their activity. To ensure an effective user flow analysis, take into account the following;

Think about what users expect: Take into account the user’s expectations and what they know about your app. Does each screen and stage, for instance, make clear to the user what is required of them to accomplish their goal? Do icons and menus appear in traditional visual representations?

Analyze usability heuristics: Think about the fundamental design guidelines by employing a heuristic analysis. These are recommended practices, norms, and standards to improve the usability of your software. It can be used as a benchmark to assess how useful each stage or procedure in the user flow is. Do you not have enough time to run heuristics? You could track how long it takes for each section to do the assignment and then analyze why certain groups finish the task faster or slower than others.

Analyze actions: Count the number of taps, swipes, and scrolls required when creating a goal. Think about the mental and physical work involved. Sort actions based on their difficulty and usage frequency, then monitor the frequency of each action. Make sure the amount of work and difficulty level are constant.

Do not forget to question everything. For instance, does the user really need to tap five times? Or is there a way to reduce that figure to three or perhaps four? Even while the modification seems small, it can add up to a significantly more user-friendly experience.

Access application structure: Analyze the ease of feature switching and the feature layout. This kind of analysis is essential to demonstrating how app architecture helps users achieve their objectives. For example, even if switching between sections is rare, the items that a specific user group interacts with the most might be spread throughout two or more sections. Think about whether customers miss crucial information or call to action (CTAs) in one place because they spend more time there.

Step 4: Streamlining the user flow

Equipped with your discoveries, proceed through the user flow and, if required, identify areas where steps can be combined to reduce the overall number of activities. Swap out complex actions for simpler versions.

Refrain from combining screens that have a lot of information because it could overload users. Design simplification can be achieved by emphasizing less clutter rather than more screens. For instance, it could be excessively cluttered to have payment information and user information fields on the same screen. You can also try to reduce the flow’s friction as much as you can.

Step 5: Prioritizing areas for improvement

The best method for identifying design opportunities is a user flow analysis. If your analysis reveals long pauses or drop-offs at a specific point in the flow, you may provide further insight using a contextual tooltip. An individualized message, on the other hand, would be a great method to advance users through the funnel.

Step 6: Repeat user flow analysis continuously

To get the best results, user flow analysis needs to be started early in the design process and continually iterated, just like any other kind of UX assessment. Various user subgroups will exhibit various behavior patterns. For instance, there will be major differences in the in-app experiences of new and returning users. Ultimately, the goal is to continuously raise conversions through happy paths.

Free Tool for Analyzing User Flows: Google Analytics

A free and easily available web analytics tool that provides you with some insight into the performance of your web pages is Google Analytics. You are also able to track in-app events with the new Google Analytics 4. Helpful information on user sessions, segment-level analysis, understanding of how users move between pages, and even the amount of time they spend on each screen are among the key aspects.

Anyone with a Google Analytics account may examine a user flow report and see how users are navigating your website or app, and it is a surprisingly strong tool for being free.

Google Analytics User Flow Options

If you scroll all the way down to the Audience area, you will find the users flow. Currently, the user flow’s default beginning point is Country. And this is an intriguing research if this demography matters to your company. It is possible to determine if individuals from various nations have distinct navigational styles. It is also something to consider, for example, if your website is multilingual. Google analytics user flow has some excellent options:

Selecting Dimensions in Users Flows

It is conceivable that the reasons why visitors come to your website could vary depending on the source, the campaign, and other factors. User flows let you examine people’s intentions. People who find you through an organic search, for example, are likely doing so with the intention of finding information. Those arriving from social circles might be seeking entertainment. Additionally, you undoubtedly want visitors from a campaign that you are executing to become converts. The web user flow has many dimensions from which to choose, giving you the ability to examine visitors coming from various sources, landing sites, and other sources.

Adding a Segment

It is interesting to see how individuals behave across various contexts, but it is much more fascinating to focus on that particular set of people. For example, consider examining the actions of both new and returning visitors.

Additionally, you can compare the visitors who converted with those who did not. Examine their routes and create a navigation plan. Is there any way you might improve your navigation options? Here, you have a plenty of possibilities to consider and examine as much as you want.

Highlighting Traffic from a Specific Segment

There is a lot to process in the user flow. Seeing just one flow can also be beneficial for your eyes, and it is likely to help in your analysis. Each item has an option to show traffic or view the section alone by clicking on it. Not to mention, you can share the users flow with someone you believe might find it interesting by exporting it to a PDF file.

What is Google Analytics Behavior Flow?

The route a user takes from one page to the next or from one event to another is represented visually by behavior flow google analytics. A path may have one page view in a session or several page views. Assume that a user visits the “Blog,” “Resources,” and “Contact Us” pages before leaving. Afterwards, the user would go to blog -> resources -> contact us. It can basically help you identify the most engaging content on your website. Google analytics behavior flow can also help identify problem areas and potential content issues.

Conclusion: How to Do User Flow Analysis

By using user flow analysis, you can learn how users navigate your website and get tips on how to make the navigation better. It will provide you with information on the effectiveness of your sites and sources. In that way, you can see where people drop off. Additionally, you can determine whether sources or campaigns are more successful than others by specifying the users flow. Before making any judgments, you should find out what the campaign’s source wants to achieve or what you want to investigate.