Users Flow Diagrams

![Visualization pattern - Diagrams] (http://68.media.tumblr.com/76363c95dafcdf0c1de38a70bab5f309/tumblr_nq2xuilpPP1u864fwo1_1280.png)](http://journeyman-data-analyst.tumblr.com/image/122336408361)

Users Flow Diagrams

When we looking at data of a flow of actions (pages, steps, etc..), diagrams can be a useful way to visualize data, because they layout the original “real” flow in a very directly way.
For example the experience designers and developers of the flow can understand it easily, because it maps well to the way they have been working on it.

Great for Debugging a Flow

It allows to extract insight on each section of the flow individually, is in fact a deeper segmentation of the total conversion rate.Say that instead of the diagram we just see the total conversion rate and one week it changes drastically: was it for all flow? Or maybe a section of the flow got broken?  What happened ? With diagram we can look at individual segments of the flow easily and answer those questions.

Guidelines when building diagrams

• Flow: diagram flows from top to down (that is better than sideways)

• Arrow Connectors types: In branching (one step into multiple) the square (Elbow) corners arrows are better than simple straight ones, and avoid curved ones.

• On Colors: when representing data results, green relates to good, red = bad, yellow = so so, thus use colors with that in mind. The diagram itself should be a neutral color like grey.

• Put rates in a way it’s easy to read what conversion they represent (enclosing the start and end values used in the conversion calculation)

• As with everything make it as simple as possible to convey the needed into, this is not an exercise in art, neither in drawing skills, the point is to help understand information.

• Also have a look at already made diagrams from other sources to find good practices, check how Visio or Omnigraffle do it.