@Kyle – Yes, I definitely think that a specific path, or funnel (or goal with Google Analytics) is very actionable. I do think that you have to be careful about how the “funnel” pages are presented on your website, though. For instance, if the funnel is a “mandatory” path, say a shopping cart on an ecommerce site, then a funnel is a no-brainer as it will show you at what specific stage the user “fell out” without any other influences on the pages (I’m assuming the shopping carts are set up correctly – without links elsewhere within the site).

I think that if you create a goal or funnel with pages with many *other* links on them, you run into the same issue with “too many options” so it’s harder to specifically say, “page 4 of my funnel is where users fell out” if there are other options within that funnel.

@Ken – I do think that everyone starting out in web analytics is excited about the concept of path analysis. Unfortunately, when trying to put it into any practical action, full path analysis falls short for the specific reason that there are way too many options on a website.

For example, if my path is 20 pages long and 5 of those steps includes using the back button, I’m just not sure it’s possible to get any trend data out of comparing paths like this.

You can get actionable data, I think, by creating a funnel (specifying the specific pages through that *funnel*) and then analyzing at what point users get out of the funnel. But, I do think if the pages within the “funnel” have too many links on them, the actionable data from that funnel can diminish the more links are on those pages within that funnel.

As always, there are exceptions. If you run a short path analysis from an entrance page, you can get a trend on a bounce rate (when a user enters the site on a page and goes no further within the site) or possibly which links on that entrance page are the most popular. You can get those answers easier within other reports, though, in my opinion.

These are both great comments and I think I’m going to write a follow up post about what exactly “page funnels” are and how to create them.

Thanks Kyle and Ken!

I probably fall into the data analytics uninitiated category, so please humor me. It would seem to me that a full path analysis could help one focus more relevant or specific questions. That is, do you think that it could provide some useful information as part of some sort of stepwise approach to understanding major user trends in web site use?

Cheers – Ken

Then again it looks good on paper, I have yet to actually implement and test it to any degree.