Mixpanel Flow – Track Your Users’ Movements

Where are your online visitors going when they’re on your site, and which pages or features are causing them to leave? If those are questions you’ve ever pondered, then Mixpanel’s latest tool, Flow, is worth checking out. Flow follows online traffic and provides developers with visual diagrams that show exactly how people are using their sites.

Start tracking the behavior of your online visitors by creating a free account with Flow and copy/pasting a few lines of code onto each page you’d like to track. To learn even more about your visitors, Flow encourages you to add a badge to the footer of your site. Next up, it’s time to invite members of your work team to use Flow. Enter the email addresses of any colleagues you’d like to get involved, and Flow will automatically send an invitation on your behalf. Once Flow starts receiving data from your site, you’ll be able to see where users are entering, where they’re exiting, and what pages they’re viewing while they’re there – all in real-time.

Flow also offers tools to monitor conversions and drop-off rates, which can be helpful when you’re trying to decide which pages should be nixed from your site. All this data is presented in a visual diagram that’s straightforward, customizable, and easy to understand.

Practical Uses:

• Learn more about how visitors are using your website
• View a diagram showing what path people are taking when they view your site
• Find out which page is the most popular on your site
• Make adjustments and improvements to your website based on the data from Flow

Insider Tips:

• Copy/paste the Flow code onto each page you wish to track
• Flow can collect even more data when users add a badge to their site footers
• All data from Flow is delivered in real-time
• Multiple coworkers can access Flow with their own logins

What we liked:

• Flow shows both user percentages and actual raw data numbers
• Developers can get detailed data for any page on their sites
• Visual diagrams make it easy to understand each user’s path through your site
• Flow offers a chat feature for developers who get stuck during the setup process

What we didn’t like:

• Flow doesn’t offer information about the source of incoming traffic

Alternatives:

• Google Analytics – http://www.google.com/analytics
• KISSmetrics – http://www.kissmetrics.com
• Omniture – http://www.omniture.com/en

Company Info:

• Launched: March 2012
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Founded by: Suhail Doshi and Tim Trefren
• Web site: https://flow.mixpanel.com

Costs:

• Free