Build and Analyze Visitor Paths with Flows Reports in Journey Analytics

Overview

A Flows report in Wingify Journey Analytics is a visual report that maps the actual paths visitors take through your website.

When you build a Flows report in Journey Analytics, you plot these paths in one of two directions: forward from a starting event, or backward from a converting event. Once you plot these paths, instead of reading raw event logs, you see a flow diagram that shows which pages and actions lead visitors toward a goal, where they branch off into other content, and where they abandon the flow altogether.

For example, 

• For a forward flow, consider a content team that just published a new guide and wants to know what it leads to. If you build a Flows report starting from a visit to the /blog/seo-guide page, it might show that most readers move on to related blog posts and never venture further into the site. While a smaller group clicks through to the /pricing page. That smaller group is the signal worth chasing: it suggests the new guide can drive intent, and the team might test a more prominent call-to-action within it to grow that path.
   
• For a backward flow, consider an e-commerce team investigating a drop in checkout completions. If you build a Flows report to end with the Order Confirmed event and work backward, you might see that most visitors who convert, pass through the /cart page and then straight to the /checkout page. However, a sizable share detours through the /shipping-policy page first, and a large portion of that group never returns to complete the purchase. That detour is the actionable insight. It points the team toward a specific friction point, unclear shipping costs, which could be worth fixing before they touch anything else on the page.

This article covers how a Flows report maps visitor paths, how you can plot flows in Journey Analytics, and how you can build a Flows report. It also outlines how to filter and configure events, and how to read the resulting flow and path data to identify drop-off points and optimization opportunities.

Understand How a Flows Report Maps Visitor Paths

Every Flows report is built around an anchor event, which is a single page view or interaction that acts as the fixed reference point for the report. For example, a specific page visit, a button click, or a form submission. From that anchor event, you choose a direction that determines how the rest of the path unfolds: forward, to see where visitors went after the anchor event, or backward, to see how they arrived at it.

Plotting a path forward from an event shows everything visitors did after they performed the event, which suits questions such as ‘where do visitors go after landing on the homepage?’ Plotting a path backward toward an event shows everything visitors did before it, which suits questions such as ‘what path do visitors take before requesting a demo?’

Once a direction and an anchor event are set, the path unfolds step by step. Each step is made up of the following elements:

• Segments: each event visitors perform appears as a separate segment, sized by the number of visitors who reached that step.
   
• Drop-off: visitors who didn't continue to the next step.
   
• Others: lower-frequency events that fall outside the defined paths, grouped together.
   
• Flow started (backward-plotted flows only): marks where Wingify began tracking the visitor's path toward the anchor event.

This article further explains how to configure each of these elements and build a Flows report.

Build a Flows Report

Prerequisites

• Wingify SmartCode: Install Wingify SmartCode on the website or application you want to analyze. Flows cannot track visitor paths without it.
• Access permissions: Ensure your platform-level permissions in Wingify are Design or above. You need these to build, configure, or save Flows reports to shared dashboards.
• Data360 setup for custom events: Standard interactions, such as page visits, clicks, and form submissions, are tracked out of the box. If you want to plot a flow around a custom event, define it in Wingify Data360 first.

To build a Flows report in Journey Analytics:

Step 1: Navigate to the Flows tab in Journey Analytics

1. Log in to your Wingify account.
2. From the left navigation panel, go to Journey Analytics > Overview. 
   The Journey Analytics dashboard opens, listing your existing boards and reports.
3. From here, you can open an existing board and create a Flows report within it, or click Create to create a new standalone Flows report. For more information, see Create a Report.
   
   Either action opens the report builder. The report builder offers three report types as tabs: Metric, Funnel, and Flows.
4. If it is not already selected, click the Flows tab to switch into flow mode.

The report builder is split into two areas. The left panel contains all the controls you need to configure the flow. The right panel displays the flow diagram, where you can read and interact with the flow visually. For more information, see Read, Interpret, and Analyze the Flows Report.

Configure the controls as explained in the following steps.

Step 2: Choose whether the flow starts or ends with an event

On the report builder, directly below the three tabs, the Flow control is set to starts with by default. This control determines whether the journey starts or ends with an event.

1. Click the Flows dropdown.
2.  Select:
   1. starts with to build the flow forward from an event
   2. ends with to trace it backward from an event

Based on your selection, the rest of the panel updates its labels to match:

• Starting Event and Steps to show after the starting event for forward flows, or 
• Ending Event and Steps to show before the ending event for backward flows.

Step 3: Select the starting or ending event

This is the anchor event that determines how every path in the report is measured.

For example, selecting Page Visit as the starting event plots every path that begins with a page load, while selecting Click as the ending event with a Text filter of Request Demo plots every path visitors took on their way to clicking that button.

To select a starting or ending event:

1. Click Select Event. This opens a panel listing every event available for your account, grouped into Standard Events, Custom Events, System Events, and Behavior.
2. To use a standard event, select one. For example, Page Visit, Click, Form Submission, Page Unload, or Engagement.
3. To use a custom event, scroll to the Custom Events section of the same panel and select from the events created for your account. All custom events created for your account appear here.

4. To track a platform-generated event, scroll to System Events and select one. For example, Campaign Variation Shown, Session Started. Or, select one from the Behavior section. For example, Rage Click, Dead Click, Error Clicks.

   Tip: Hover over an event to preview its description and who created it. This is useful for distinguishing between similarly named custom events.

Once selected, the event becomes the anchor for the entire report: every step, percentage, and path in the flow diagram is calculated relative to it. Simultaneously, the flow is plotted in the right panel.

Step 4: Apply filters to the selected event

Filters keep the flow focused on the exact event you care about, rather than every occurrence of that event type. For example, without a filter, a Click event matches every click tracked on the site, from navigation links to footer icons. However, adding a Text filter for Request Demo narrows it to visitors who clicked that specific button.

To apply a filter to the selected event:

1. Click + filter next to the selected event.
2. Choose a property to filter on. Available properties depend on the event type you select. For more information, see Working with Events in Wingify.
3. Set the match condition, such as URL matches or URL matches pattern, and enter the value. For example, to filter a Click event down to a specific button, choose the Text property, set the match condition to Equals, enter the value Request Demo, and click Apply. In this case, the flow only tracks clicks on that exact button rather than every click tracked on the page.

With the anchor event filtered down to the exact interaction you want to track, the next step is to define how much time visitors get to complete the flow from that event.

Step 5: Set the conversion window

The Conversion Criteria section controls how long Wingify waits for a visitor to complete the flow before treating it as abandoned. This window matters because it decides what counts as part of the same path. If a visitor performs the starting event on Monday and takes the next action a month later, whether that later action belongs to the same flow depends entirely on this setting.

A shorter window suits high-intent actions such as checkout, where visitors either convert quickly or leave. For example, an ecommerce team tracking the path from Added to Cart to Order Confirmed might narrow this to 1 day, since a visitor who abandons a cart and returns three weeks later is behaving more like a new visit than a continuation of the same session.

A longer window suits considered purchases, where visitors may return across multiple sessions before completing the flow. For example, a B2B team tracking the path from a whitepaper download to a demo request might extend this to 30 days, since decision-makers often research over several weeks before reaching out.

To configure the conversion window:

1. Under Conversion Criteria, review the default Complete within 7 days setting.
2. Click the pencil icon to adjust the window if your typical flow is shorter or longer than a week.
3. Click the check mark to confirm the change or the cross mark to discard the change.

Step 6: Set the depth and breadth of the flow diagram using steps and paths

The Configuration section in the panel controls how much of the flow is visible at once in the right panel. It controls two counters: 

• Steps - the number of sequential actions plotted after the starting event or before the ending event 
• Paths - the number of distinct events shown at each of those steps

Together, they determine the depth and breadth of the flow diagram that gets plotted in the right panel. Steps set how far the diagram extends, and Paths set how wide it branches at each point along the way.

To configure these details:

1. Use the Steps counter to control the diagram's depth. This ranges from the default of 3 up to 20. 
   
   For example, a flow mapping a quick two-click checkout only needs a depth of 3 to 5 steps, while a flow mapping a multi-page content-to-signup flow might need a depth of 10 or more to capture the full path.
2. Use the Paths counter to control the diagram's breadth. It defines how many distinct events appear at each step. This ranges from the default of 3 up to 10. Events beyond that number are grouped into Others. 
   
   For example, setting Paths to 3 on a high-traffic homepage shows only the three most common next actions visitors take, while raising it to 10 reveals smaller but still meaningful branches, such as a segment of visitors heading straight to a support page.

Step 7: Choose which events appear in the flow diagram

The Events dropdown, located directly above the flow diagram, controls which event types populate the flow diagram. By default, all event types are selected, so the diagram plots every kind of visitor action following the starting event. Narrow this selection when you want to focus the diagram on specific kinds of visitor actions rather than the full mix.

For example, a flow starting from a Click shows all subsequent event types by default, including page visits, form submissions, and other clicks. Narrowing the selection to only Page Visit filters the diagram down to the pages visitors landed on between those clicks, removing other interaction types from view.

To broaden or narrow down the display of events on the flow diagram:

1. Click the Events dropdown above the chart, labelled with the event types currently selected.
2. Uncheck the event from the event selector.
3. Click Apply to apply the selection.

The flow diagram displays the events in the flow diagram based on your selection.

Step 8: Apply Date Range and Visitor Segment filters

The Date Filter and Visitor Segments controls apply to all report types, not just the Flows report. Changing them here also affects the Metric and Funnel reports.

To filter your Flows report:

1. Click the Date Filter to set the reporting period. The diagram recalculates every step, path, and percentage to reflect only the visitors and events that fall within that window.
2. Click Visitor Segments to restrict the flow to a specific segment instead of the default All Visitors.
3. Click Filter to apply your changes.

Use a visitor segment to compare how a specific audience moves through the same starting or ending event differently from your visitor base as a whole. For example, segmenting the same ends with Order Confirmed flow by New Visitors versus Returning Visitors might show that returning visitors convert through a short, direct path. While new visitors take several extra detours through product pages before completing the same flow, a sign that first-time visitors need more reassurance before they buy.

Read, Interpret, and Analyze the Flows Report

Step 1: Interpret the Flow Diagram

The default flow diagram view renders the flow as a Sankey-style flow chart. It is a diagram where the width of each connecting band represents the number of visitors flowing through that path. This chart makes it easy to spot where the largest groups continue versus where they drop off or diverge.

• Each column header shows the step number, the percentage of visitors who reached that step relative to the starting or ending step, and the visitor count.
• Each colored bar is one event. Hover over a bar to see the event type, the page or action detail, and the percentage and number of users from the starting or ending step.
• The Other events bar groups events that did not rank within the number of paths you configured. As you increase the number of paths, more of these events get pulled out of Others and are displayed individually.
• The grey Drop-off bar shows how many visitors did not continue past that step.
• For flows configured to end with a specific event, a Flow Started node also appears, marking where visitors entered the flow relative to that ending event.

Step 2: Investigate a step with relative Session Recordings, Heatmaps, and User Lists

The flow diagram tells you what visitors did at each step, but not why they did it. Journey Analytics closes that gap by linking every bar in the diagram directly to the tools that show visitor behavior in detail. So you can move from a data point straight into the underlying evidence without leaving the report or rebuilding filters elsewhere.

This is most useful when a number in the diagram raises a question that the diagram itself can't answer. A high Drop-off at a particular step tells you visitors are leaving, but not what's driving them away. A small but unexpected branch of visitors clicking into an unrelated part of the page might signal a UI issue rather than genuine interest. In both cases, the fastest way to find out is to look at the exact visitors behind that number.

To investigate a step:

1. Click any bar in the flow diagram. A shortcut menu opens, scoped to the visitors and event represented by that specific bar.
2. Choose one of three actions:
   1. Session Recordings: to watch recordings of visitors who reached that step.
      
      This opens all the session recordings relative to that step. Use this when a step shows unexpectedly high drop-off, and you want to see, moment by moment, where visitors hesitate, mis-click, or leave. For more information, see Using Session Recordings Dashboard in Wingify and Interpreting Session Recordings in Wingify. 
   2. Heatmaps: to understand where visitors clicked, moved, or how far they scrolled on the page, tied to that step. 
      
      This opens the heatmap dashboard. Use this when you suspect a layout or design issue, such as a call-to-action being overlooked or a banner obstructing content. For more information, see Using Heatmaps Dashboard in Wingify and Interpreting Heatmap Reports in Wingify.  
   3. View Users: to view the list of individual visitors who reached that step.
      
      This opens the list of users who completed that step. Use this when you want to segment further, export the list, or manually review specific visitor profiles. For more information, see Working With Profiles in Wingify.

For example, if the Clicked 'Allow Cookies' step shows a disproportionate share of visitors dropping off immediately after clicking the button, opening Heatmaps for that step might reveal that the cookie banner overlaps the primary navigation. Opening Session Recordings for the same step might show visitors repeatedly tapping the obscured area before abandoning the page. Together, the two tools turn a single drop-off percentage into a specific, fixable interface problem.

A Flows report is diagnostic rather than prescriptive. It shows you where visitor behavior concentrates and where it disperses, so you can decide where to focus further investigation. A high Drop-off percentage immediately after the starting step usually points to a page or step that fails to hold visitor interest. A large Others bucket across every step usually means visitor behavior is highly varied, and the starting or ending event may be too broad to yield a clean, actionable path.

Troubleshooting