Flow Visualisation, segments, pathways, visits

Flow reports are a little strange.. they basically use their own metric called "Path View" that you cannot access outside of the flow diagram.

When I use my home page in my data, and pull that into the "Starts With" column in the flow config (making sure I use Visits and not Visitor scope on the Flow)... and then I create two comparative tables:

Flow column 1: X

So, the First step of the Flow (X) does not match the Entry Page by Visits or Entries, nor does it match the Page by the Entries metric (yet, all three of the Freeform table value do in fact meet). X in my case is about 20K higher than the freeform values.

I believe this is because, the way the flow is working, is it's limited to flows that start with my home page, but in those flows if the user returns to the home page in the same visit, then that subsequent view is also counted... and where users went from there is also shown in the flow. (So its a bit cyclical).

It's interesting that in your example, you indicate that your Path Views is less than your Entry Page visits... That seems strange to me, as I would expect the Flow to always be higher because of the nature of revisits to the page in the same visit.

However, if I understand correctly, you applied a segment onto the panel? This would reduce the Flow Diagram's value, since you are cutting out the additional views of the same page within the visit... However, if I do this with the following segment:

HIT

Entry Page equals home

And apply it to the panel, my freeform tables don't change, but now my Flow diagram is significantly lower than the freeform tables, by almost 600K.

Honestly, I don't tend to use the Flow Diagrams much, because I find the way that the data is calculated seems odd... I cannot explain why my values dripped so low.. they shouldn't have (I would expect them to now match my freeform tables, but they don't)...  the calculations are a bit of a black box... 

As for using a segment to restrict based on an eVar, that should  work, but again, I can't necessarily explain why the flow would show the way it does...

However, when dealing with eVars, you have to consider the scope of the eVar (when does it expire, is it a hit based expiry, does it expire after visit, etc). Also, what is the scope of your segment?

Now, while you can't really breakdown a flow; you can add different dimensions as columns (basically start with "Page" and then show the URL in the next column, etc). But that isn't too helpful for diagnosing what is happening.

You can however create a segment from a path, by right clicking on a path column and choosing the option from the right click context menu. You can use this in a freeform table to try and breakdown what you are seeing to try and get context around what is being presented to you.

Just note, that segments created this way will appear in your components > segment area as permanent segments, so if you do pursue this, I suggest making sure you clean these up by deleting them when you are done, so you don't have a bunch of very specific, one time use segments cluttering up your list.