Journey canvas troubleshooting

The Journey canvas visualization allows you to analyze and gain deep insights on the journeys that you provide to your users and customers.

To learn more about Journey canvas, see Journey canvas overview and Configure a Journey canvas visualization.

The following information can help you troubleshoot unintended outcomes you might be seeing, such as nodes that come later in the journey that show a higher percentage or number count than nodes that come earlier in the journey.

Nodes with a higher percentage or value than previous nodes

It is possible in Journey canvas for nodes that come later in the journey to show a higher percentage or number count than nodes that come earlier in the journey.

In other words, unlike in Fallout visualizations, which are always funnel-shaped (with participation decreasing with each step), Journey canvas visualizations can have higher participation in later steps of the journey than in previous steps.

This can occur in the following scenarios:

The journey uses a primary metric other than People or Session

Because Journey canvas allows you to use any metric as the primary metric, this can result in nodes that come later in the journey to show a higher percentage or number count than nodes that come earlier in the journey.

The journey used in the following scenarios is configured with these settings:

Scenario 1: User A follows the journey path in the first session. In a subsequent session, the user has an event that matches only a later node.

Suppose that User A visits the site and completes the journey (Node 1: “Visit site” > Node 2: “View Product A” > Node 3: “Check out”). Because User A had an event that matched each node of the journey in order, an event is counted on each node of the journey.

Now, suppose that User A visits the site again in a later session. Because User A already completed the journey in a previous session by following the journey path, this means that any time User A has an event that matches any node in the journey–even if User A has not followed the path of the journey in their current session–an event is counted on the relevant node in the journey. For example, if User A checks out, then an event is counted on the “Check out” node. This can result in a higher percentage and number on the “Check out” node than on the preceding node, “View Product A.”

In this example, the journey’s container setting of “Person” plays a critical role in determining that the event on the third node (“Check out”) is counted in the subsequent session.

Alternatively, if the container setting had been set to “Session,” then the event that took place only on the third node in the subsequent visit would not have counted in the journey, because the statistics shown in the journey would be constrained to a single defined session for a given person. To learn more about the container setting, see Begin building a Journey canvas visualization in the article Configure a Journey canvas visualization

Scenario 2: User B falls out of the journey

Suppose that User B visits the site and does not complete the journey (visits the site, views Product B, and then checks out). In this case, an event is counted for the journey’s start node, “Visit site,” but an event is not counted for the remaining nodes, and User B falls out of the journey. Even though User B checked out, an event is not counted on the third node (“Check out”) because User B did not complete the journey by viewing Product A prior to checking out.

This is because events are counted for each node only when people follow the journey’s “eventual path.” This means that events are counted only if the person eventually moved from one node to the other, regardless of any events occurring between the 2 nodes.

The journey has multiple paths converging into a single node

Journey canvas allows you to include multiple start nodes in a single journey, resulting in multiple paths. These paths can converge into a common node, resulting in nodes that come later in the journey showing a higher percentage or number count than nodes that come earlier in the journey.

Journey percentages

While the numbers shown on each node of a journey remain constant regardless of what is selected in the Percentage value field, the percentages themselves can change.

The following sections show how the percentages can change for the same journey, depending on which of the following options is selected in the Percentage value field:

Compatibility between the container metric and the primary metric

You can configure the Journey canvas container to be Person (which uses the People metric) or Session (which uses the Sessions metric).

Make sure you choose a primary metric that is compatible with the container metric that is currently selected. Most metrics are compatible with the container metrics that are available. However, some combinations of container metrics and primary metrics should be avoided.

For example, using Person as the container with Session as the primary metric can result in unintended outcomes.