Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
analyst, understanding structures of supply and demand and flow of goods
and services can be essential to evaluating and managing financial health.
The flow of information can also be important in some industries, in
addition to financial flow. For example, in cyber security, analyzing patterns
of data flow can help to spot potentially nefarious activity by computer
hackers. Or, in criminal investigations (such as the Enron scandal), the flow
of e-mail and phone calls between employees can create a telling story.
Sometimes it's actually the flow of people that is of interest, rather than the
flow
between
people. For example, in a sales process, the goal is to persuade
people from one purchasing stage to another, with the final goal of sales
conversion. Analyzing conversion rates through different sales channels and
customer paths can provide valuable insights into which sales tactics are
working and which are not. A website, for example, has the distinct
advantage of being able to track movement of prospective customers
through the site at a detailed level without any investment of effort.
Google Analytics provides a means to track visitors to a website and enables
you to define related goals such as visiting a particular page or purchasing,
in order to analyze success rates. As shown in
Figure 12-2
,
one of the most
useful visualizations available uses an interactive Sankey diagram to show
paths that visitors took through the site. The height of each green block here
reflects the number of visitors to that page. Gray links to left of each indicate
how they arrived there, and links to the right indicate where they went next.
Red exit arrows indicate visitors who left the site at that page.
