Analytics Products have adapted far beyond server logs.

They take us far beyond click stream data, and can detail how users interact with our sites.

Many marketers that first begin to work with these tools become enamored with information such as user path analysis and site overlays.

If you are one of these people listen to me now; Stop What You Are Doing Now!

Why does user path analysis as most approach it represent a dramatic waste of time?

1) What is the point of user path analysis? Most would answer to find out how people navigate your site in order to optimize it for conversion. If you have a site over 100 pages, how do you anticipate narrowing average user path down to any type of standardization? Each user is unique. If you want to optimize your site navigation, utilize the hours you would spend on path analysis and spend it on stong Information Architecture and heuristic evaluations of your conversion process with test subjects.

2) If you have an Ecomm site your customers are likely shopping around, clicking back and forth on product options, and even putting items in and out of their cart. The Internet consumer is in the end a consumer. Looking at the path that this process takes would make about as much sense as an architect following around a shopper in order to design the optimal brick and mortar shopping center.

3) A path does not show influence. You could look for a common page in user paths to boil down which pages are influence in your conversion process, but in the end this could differ for each individual user.

4) Most marketers do not segment their traffic when looking at the paths. You can not judge paid search traffic the same as direct type-in traffic. You can’t even judge organic search traffic the same as paid search traffic. You have to segment and then analyze, or you are simply looking at an inconsistent data set.

(This of course goes out the window a bit if you are testing shopping cart functionality. This user path is relatively linear, and analyzing user fall off can give you a great idea of user end issues with your cart.)

The concept of over analyzing user paths gave rise to site overlay tools.

They are fun and colorful, but if used incorrectly are pretty useless.

Does this mean that they are overtly useless?

No.

But it is important to look at the flaws in user path analysis when trying to figure out how to effectively utilize site overlay tools. If you are just looking at where users are clicking on your page, you are wasting your time. You can look at your log data and find out what pages people are going to. Perhaps you have multiple calls to action on a page and want to differentiate usefulness of each, but most are utilizing their overlays to simply analyze navigation.

It goes back to segmentation.

It is important when using a site overlay tool to be able to segment information from each click. Crazy Egg, and in particular its Confetti offering, offer segmentation that can really make a difference. With this tool you can see not only which referrers led to which clicks, but also narrow it down to keyword level. This is the kind of data that you can use to make real changes on your site that will effect conversion.

Through segmentation you can make a site overlay into a useful tool.

Through segmentation you can make user path analysis a functional part of your analytics routine.