Organizing navigation and paths?

The scenario:

As a UX expert, I want to know how people are navigating through our website so I can shorten the path users need to take. 

Requires:

  • Google Analytics 4 installed
  • A way to filter what you are looking at by URL

Steps:

  1. Log into Google Analytics 
  2. Go to Explore, choose Path Exploration 
  3. Select Start Over 
  4. Select node under Starting Point and select from the following values: Event name, Page title and screen name, Page title and screen class, and Page path and screen class 
  5. Title your exploration name
  6. Choose a date range 
  7. Add the following segments: none
  8. Add the following dimensions: Event Name, Country, Device Category 
  9. Add the following metrics: Total Users, Active Users, Event Count 
  10. Repeat the Select Node process within the interactive path section as many times as necessary until you find your ending path OR select your ending path from the beginning
  11. Tab Settings: 
    • Technique: Path exploration 
    • Segment: none 
    • View Unique Nodes Only: yes
    • Breakdown: Event name
    • Values: Total users
    • Filters: None

Considerations:

If you have internal filters, the information will be filtered out.  

Starting point is the screen or event that begins the path you want to explore. 

Ending point is the screen or event that ends the path you want to explore. 

Steps are the columns in the graph. 

Nodes are the data points within steps, representing the number of users or events at that point in the path. 

Node type denotes the dimension values you’ll see in each step on the graph. 

Path is a specific sequence of nodes occurring across one or more steps, within a specified time frame. 

Further data exploration:

You can change the type of data shown in each step by selecting the node dropdown.  

You can apply filters to the exploration based on any of the available dimensions and metrics. For example, you can show only paths with a minimum number of users or events, or paths that occurred on selected browsers or operating systems. 

Applying breakdowns will provide you hovering options at the bottom of the page to view further broken-down information regarding a selected dimension.