process towards a goal.

In this lesson we'll review how to see the paths user navigate to your goals, and how

to understand whether users are completing targeted objectives as you expect them to.

Before getting started with the Goal Flow report, you need to set up at least one Goal

for your website or application. This report is most valuable for Goals that have one or

more funnel steps preceding the goal completion.

For more information on setting up Goals and Funnels in Google Analytics, check out the

resources in this lesson.

Once you've set up Goals and Funnels, you can access the Goal Flow report in the Conversions

section of Google Analytics.

In the report, each box represents one of the funnel steps you create for your Goal.

We call these boxes "nodes." The final node you see in the report represents the Goal.

In this example, you can see three funnel steps for a checkout process laid out in the

report -- the billing address, the shipping details and the payment information. These

are all touch points along the way to the order completion conversion.

Visitors who travel through the funnel and exit at the Goal have completed your objective,

or "converted."

By clicking on any of the nodes in the report, you can see a breakdown of the percentage

of users who entered through the funnel step, and either continued to the next step or dropped

out of the funnel.

If you have a large drop-off rate at a certain step, this shows an opportunity where your

conversion process could be improved. Perhaps a technical issue is preventing users from

continuing through the funnel. Or, the step could be too confusing for users to continue.

By highlighting traffic through particular nodes in the report, you can also identify

where people may be having difficulties with the conversion process. Here you can see that

a significant percentage of people are looping back to the billing address page after entering

their payment details when they go through the checkout process. If this was an unexpected

behavior for your site, you might want to investigate whether there's a better way to

streamline the billing process for your users.

Clicking into the group details of one of the nodes shows you which pages are categorized

as part of a funnel step. This is an easy way to ensure that you've set up your funnel

correctly. If you notice pages listed in the report that don't belong, you can make corrections

to your Goal and Funnel set-up.

Beneath the Goal Flow report you will see a table version of the report data that breaks

out the Funnel performance metrics by the dimensions you have selected. By clicking

into one of the rows of the report, you can highlight the pathways for one particular

segment of your traffic. This can be a useful tool for analyzing your conversion processes,

particularly to investigate whether your conversion success varies by device type, location or

traffic channel.

For more details on how to get started with the Goal Flow report, check out the Google

Analytics Help Center and the additional resources in this lesson.