User Journeys
User Journeys show you the exact steps visitors or users take through your website or product. This helps you identify the most common conversion paths, where users get stuck, and how to optimize their experience.
What is a user journey?
A User Journey is the series of steps a person follows to reach a goal on your site—such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or completing onboarding. In Usermaven, you can visualize and analyze these steps to see how users navigate your site or product over time.
Why are user journeys important?
Identify drop-off points: Pinpoint where users are leaving your site or abandoning a process (like a form or checkout).
Optimize Conversions: Understand which steps lead to higher conversion and what behaviors drive users toward a goal.
Improve user experience: See if users take unexpected or “detour” paths that signal confusion or inefficiency.
Compare different segments: Understand how different user segments (e.g., new vs. returning, small business vs. enterprise) navigate your product.
Typical use cases
You can use User Journeys in Usermaven to answer questions like:
What do users do right after signing up?
Do they update their profile, watch a tutorial, or browse features?How do users discover key features?
Which paths do they take before using a core feature for the first time?Where do users drop off in an onboarding flow?
At which step in the onboarding sequence do they lose interest?Which marketing campaigns lead to the most engaged users?
Compare journeys by campaign source to see which drives better engagement.How do users navigate from trial to subscription?
Understand the steps successful (and unsuccessful) trial users take.
Creating a New User Journey
To create a User Journey:
Navigate to Analytics → Journeys.
Click the + button in the top-right corner.
Configure your journey using the available settings.
Journey Flow
Select how you want to analyze user behavior:
After – Shows the actions users take after the selected starting point.
Before – Shows the actions users performed before reaching the selected starting point.
Anchor Type
Choose the type of anchor that will be used as the starting point for the journey:
Event – Analyze paths based on a tracked event.
Page URL – Analyze paths based on a specific page URL.
Pinned Event – Analyze paths based on one of your pinned events.
Analysis Level
Choose how the journey should be calculated:
Session – Tracks actions within a single session.
User – Tracks actions across all sessions for a user.
Pinned Events
Enable Include pinned events to display pinned events alongside automatically captured events in the journey visualization.
Grouping
Grouping helps simplify journeys by combining similar URLs.
Ignore Query Parameters
Enable this option to treat URLs with different query parameters as the same page.
Example:
/pricing?utm_source=google
/pricing?utm_source=email
Both URLs will be grouped as:
/pricing
Regex Rules
Use regex-based grouping rules to combine multiple URLs into a single journey step.
To add a grouping rule:
Click Add rule.
Enter a regex pattern.
Save the rule.
Exclusions
Exclude events or URLs that are not relevant to your analysis.
To add an exclusion:
Click Add under Excluded events or URLs.
Select an event or enter a URL pattern.
Save the exclusion.
The journey visualization will update automatically to reflect your selected configuration and display the most common user paths.
Analyze the user journey flow
Once created, your User Journey report appears as a flow chart illustrating how users progress from one step to the next. Here’s how to read it:
Inner Circle (or Leftmost Step): The first step in the journey (e.g., “Signed Up”).
Subsequent Circles (or Columns): Each ring or column represents the next step in the user’s path.
Hover for Details: Hover over a step to see the number of users who reached it, as well as the drop-off and conversion rates from the previous step.
You can adjust the Interactive Depth Level to show more or fewer steps, ranging from 2 to 12 levels.
This allows you to drill into details or keep a high-level overview.
Tip: You can set a minimum conversion rate threshold for each step in the journey; any step that falls below this threshold will be automatically grouped into "Others," keeping your chart concise and easier to interpret.
Most commonly taken paths
Below the flow visualization, you’ll find a table summarizing the most frequently traveled paths. Each row in the table represents a sequence of steps, and you’ll see:
Completion Rate: The percentage of users who moved from one step to the next.
Number of Users: The raw count of users who reached that step.
Drop-Off Rate: The percentage of users who abandoned the journey at this point.
Use this table to quickly identify:
High-Conversion Paths: Which paths are most effective at moving users forward?
Major Drop-Offs: Where are users most likely to exit the journey?
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