5 Ways Startups Can Use the Umami Journey Report

The Journey report visualizes how users navigate through your website or app based on a starting point and an ending point. The Journey report shows you all the hops a user takes between point A and point B. By mapping out the steps visitors take, the Journey report helps you identify popular routes, drop-off points, and opportunities for optimization.

The Journey report is also really helpful because, in the early stages of a startup, you don’t always know the exact paths users take. You might have a general sense of where they start and end up, and the Journey report can help you validate your hypothesis.

There is a ton of flexibility with the Journey report, so we’re going to walk through five examples to give you a sense of how this report works as a tool to drive growth and enhance user experience.

Journey Report Primer

The Journey report comes standard with all Umami plans and it’s located in the Umami dashboard. Here’s how to find and use it:

1. In your Umami dashboard, navigate to the Reports section and create a new Journey report (the Journey report comes standard with all versions of Umami).
2. Choose your desired website and date range for analysis.
3. Select the number of steps you want to analyze (between 3 to 7 steps).
4. Optionally, define specific start and end points for the journey.
5. Run the report to view an interactive visualization of user paths.
6. Analyze the results to understand where users start, where they drop off, and where they end up.

For maximum benefit, it's recommended to have custom events set up on your product or website. While you can create journey reports using just URLs, custom events allow for a more granular and specific analysis of user actions.

For detailed instructions on setting up and using the Journey report, please refer to our documentation.

Now, let’s explore five examples of how you can use the Journey report.

Optimizing the Conversion Path

For startups focused on growth ( which startups aren't?), understanding and optimizing the path to conversion is obviously critical to understand. The Journey report can provide valuable data into how users navigate from their entry point to key conversion actions.

Create a journey report starting from your main entry points (e.g., homepage, landing pages, product pages, paid search landing pages, etc.) and analyze the paths users take to reach conversion points (e.g., sign-up page, checkout page).

You might find out that users who visit your pricing page before your features page have a higher likelihood of converting. This insight could prompt you to make your pricing more prominent on the features page or to adjust your site navigation to encourage this path. By continually refining your conversion path based on actual user behavior, you can significantly improve your overall conversion rates.

Improving Content Strategy and Navigation

Just about every startup is going to be creating content, and the Journey report can help optimize your content strategy and site navigation.

Create a journey report focusing on your content pages (e.g., blog posts, resource pages) and analyze how users move between different pieces of content and to key conversion points. For technical products, make sure to create Journey reports for your docs.

You might find that users often read multiple blog posts or knowledge-base articles before visiting your product pages, but certain topics are more likely to lead to product interest. This could inform your content strategy, perhaps leading you to create more content on high-performing topics or to adjust your internal linking strategy to guide users more effectively toward your product pages.

Identifying and Addressing User Pain Points

The Journey report can help uncover user pain points or areas of confusion in your product or website. Or, as we just discussed above, confusion in your marketing website copy, docs, knowledge base, etc.

Create a journey report for a key process in your product (e.g., user onboarding, feature adoption) and analyze where users commonly deviate from the expected path.

For instance, you might notice that many users repeatedly visit your help center during the onboarding process, indicating potential areas of confusion. This data could lead you to improve your in-app guidance, refine your UI for problematic steps, test out a chatbot, or create targeted help content for common sticking points.

Personalizing User Experiences

By understanding common user journeys, you can create more personalized and effective user experiences. Different starting URLs or starting events can help you create journeys for different segments of users. For example, if you are targeting Enterprise prospects and sending them email and directing them to a specific landing page, use that landing page as the starting point in your Journey report to help understand how Enterprise prospects engage with your website.

Use the Journey report to identify common paths for these different user segments or use cases. Then, use these insights to tailor your product experience or marketing messages.

For example, you might discover that users from different industries tend to follow different paths through your product. This could inform your product development, perhaps leading you to create industry-specific onboarding flows or feature recommendations based on common usage patterns.

Informing Feature Development and Prioritization

The Journey report can provide data to guide your product roadmap and feature prioritization. Analyze journeys involving key features of your product. Look for patterns in feature discovery and adoption, as well as how feature usage relates to overall product engagement.

You might find that users who discover and use a particular feature have significantly higher overall engagement retention or upgrade their subscription to a higher tier. This insight could justify prioritizing improvements or expansions to this feature in your product roadmap. Conversely, if you notice that a feature is rarely discovered or used in typical user journeys, it might indicate a need for better feature promotion or UI improvements to make it more accessible.

Getting Started

The key thing to remember with the Journey report is that you can use it to test expected user journeys and uncover user journeys if you really don’t have a sense of what is currently happening. If you have questions, need some help setting up a Journey report, or for more general information on how to make the most of the Umami Journey report, don't hesitate to contact our support team at [email protected].