User paths

[jamesefhawkins]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I am a developer that wants to work on features that make a difference.

A simplified example for many newer projects is "if someone comes into my app, do they go somewhere weird then leave". If in this case I know as a developer, I need to either improve the "somewhere weird" page OR I need to stop them going there in the first place. That will mean my work actual helps users stay in the application.

Describe the solution you'd like
I want to be able to visualise a flow diagram:

Initial landing page -> next page(s) -> next page(s) -> next page(s) -> etc. It should perhaps go 5 items deep, then is expandable further optionally.

The list of 'next page(s)', should be a list of every page people then go to, with the size of the box based on the percentage that follow that path. It should show the percentage and the actual volume.

• It'd be nice to do this as a series of ANY action, not just URL visits. That'd make it more powerful than anything else available.
• It'd be awesome to be able to hover over the step of the flow diagram to see the actual users that followed a particular path. That'd mean you could then answer "and WHICH users followed this path', to lead to a deeper understanding
• Nice to have for now: I need to be able to segment the above flow by user properties (specifically, by UTM tag)
• If the volume of "next page(s)" is very big - as users could go into hundreds of different directions, then we need to limit how many are visible so the diagram doesn't become unwieldy, then offer a click to expand button vertically (see google analytics for a nice way to do this)

Describe alternatives you've considered
Very complex SQL would be the only way.

Additional context
Google Analytics does a great job of this, but lacks the ability to view the actual users and it lacks the ability to create a series of actions/events - it is only page view based.

[allan-simon]

The SQL query does not necessarily needs to be complex, I think here that's the same kind of problematic as with doing a pivot table , doing it in SQL is quite complex , but if your sql only gives raw data (i.e 3 columns , x , y , value ) and you let your view layer handle the representation, the problem becomes pretty simple.

More specifically, you can certainly modelize this like a linked list, where each event has a previous_event_id ? and you let your view build the graph.