The Page Flow Sankey diagram lives on the Journeys tab of your website dashboard. Open the website's dashboard, then select the Journeys tab. The Sankey visualises the most common paths visitors take through your site. It looks like a river splitting into tributaries, which is useful for spotting unexpected exits, dead-end pages, and the natural shape of your site's navigation.
The columns
The Sankey reads left to right, with each column a step deeper into the journey. The legend above the diagram colour-codes the columns:
- Entry pages (left, green) — the pages where sessions started.
- Intermediate (middle, multi-coloured) — pages visitors passed through on the way to somewhere else. Wide, deep flows can span several intermediate columns.
- Exit pages (right, amber) — the pages where sessions ended.
Each node is a page on your site, and the ribbons between nodes are the transitions from one page to the next.
Use the depth stepper above the chart to control how many columns are shown (3 to 7). A higher depth surfaces longer journeys; a lower depth keeps the picture simple.
What the band thickness means
The thickness of each band reflects how many sessions took that path out of the source page: a path that carries most of a page's onward traffic draws as a thick band, while a rarely-followed path draws as a thin one. To compare exact numbers, hover a band (see below) rather than eyeballing the widths. The total session count for the current window is shown in the top-right of the diagram.
Hover any band to see:
- The transition it represents (source page to target page).
- The exact session count.
- The percentage of all sessions in the window.
Hover a node to see the page and its total session count.
Reading common patterns
A thick band into the exit column
This is normal, because most sessions end somewhere. But if a large share of sessions exits from a page that's supposed to lead somewhere (for example, your homepage), that's a warning sign worth investigating. The top exit page is also summarised in the stat cards above the diagram.
A surprising entry page
The Entry pages column sometimes reveals a page you didn't realise was funnelling traffic, for example an old marketing page that's still ranking. Use this to find under-the-radar entry points worth optimising. The top entry page is summarised in the stat cards too.
A loop back to an earlier page
A path that returns visitors to a page they already saw usually means they're clicking related links or navigating back. That's healthy on a content site but suspect on a checkout flow.
Filtering the diagram
Use the Filters control above the diagram to narrow it down. You can filter by dimensions such as:
- Country — see flows for one geography only.
- Device — separate mobile flows from desktop.
- Channel — only sessions from organic search, or only from a specific source.
Filtered diagrams need enough sessions in the slice to be meaningful. The node and band labels show the absolute count, so you can spot thin slices.
Plan limits
The Page Flow Sankey diagram is available on the Pro plan and above. The data window also follows your plan's retention: Pro retains 2 years and Scale retains 4 years, so higher tiers can analyse longer-window flows.