We know how essential data is for improving your conversational flows. The Flow Heatmap gives you detailed insights into how conversations move through your flows, allowing you to identify error-prone steps, see which steps result in high user abandonment rates, and understand the most and least used conversational routes. Use these insights to optimize your flows, increase conversions, and create a great user experience!

In this article:

• How to find Flow Heatmap data
• How to filter and customize Flow Heatmap Data
• Types of Flow Heatmap insights and how to interpret them

How to find Flow Heatmap data

To be able to see the heatmap data for a flow, the flow needs to be published and have had at least 1 conversation or ‘invocations’ run through it. Of course, the more conversations the flow has completed, the better the data will be!

There are three ways that you can access a flow’s heatmap: 

• From the Flow Builder overview page
• From a flow’s setup page
• From a flow’s logs

From the Flow Builder overview page

First, make sure you’re logged into your MessageBird Dashboard, then navigate to Flow Builder. To jump straight to a flow’s heatmap, click the Heatmap icon on the flow card.

From a flow’s setup page

If you’re already working in a flow,  click the cog icon and select Heatmap from the menu.

From a flow’s logs

If you’re working in a flow’s logs, click on the Flow Heatmap graphic.

From a specific invocation's logs

Sometimes you'll need to focus on a specific invocation to fully understand an individual user's journey. To access the heatmap for a specific invocation, click the heatmap icon next to the invocation that you want to explore.

How to filter and customize Flow Heatmap Data

As you create more iterations, add extra steps, and increase the amount of traffic moving through a flow, the data that appears in your heatmap will also become more complex. Filtering your heatmap will allow you to focus on the data that you need. 

Filter by date range

The simplest way to get started with filtering your data is to select the period of time that you would like to analyze. 

To do this, click on Data filters and select a date range. Your heatmap will automatically update to show you data from the date range that you have selected.

Filter by version

Filtering your heatmap data by version is a great way to understand how changes you’ve made to your flow has affected error rates, abandonment rates, and conversational routes. 

To do this, click Select version and choose a version from the list that appears. Every version of your flow will be saved to this list, so we’ve clearly labeled the versions that were live.

Customize heatmap layers

If you have a particularly complex flow with a lot of traffic moving through it, your heatmap might be too complex to understand at a glance. Layers allow you to simplify the heatmap by customizing the visible data.

To do this, click on the Heatmap layers icon at the bottom left-hand corner of the screen. By default, all options are visible. To de-select options and clean up your heatmap, just untick the box next to the type of data you want to hide. Use this tool to hide or unhide incoming, successful, failed, or expired traffic data, or to show or hide label and line elements. 

Drill down into specific steps and branches

Do a deep-dive into specific steps and branches by clicking on them in your flow. Any available traffic data will be displayed. This will allow you to see insights such as which routes are most and least popular with your customers and is particularly useful if your flow contains multiple branches!

Get real-time insights with Live data

To see analytics data “as it happens”, toggle the Live data switch to ON. When switched on, the heatmap data will refresh every 10 seconds. This is useful in situations where you’re rolling out a new version of your flow and would like to monitor the impact of your changes on your user experience in real-time.

Types of Flow Heatmap insights and how to interpret them

The Flow Heatmap will show you three types of information:

• The errors report
• The expiration report
• Additional traffic from flow loops

The errors report

Error data is displayed in red and shows you the number of errors that occurred at each step, and the error rate of the step. If no errors have occurred at a step, no information is displayed.

Click on the information to see a more detailed breakdown.

The expiration report 

Expiration data is displayed in black and shows you how many people abandoned the flow at a particular step. If no abandonments have occurred, no information is displayed.

Additional traffic from flow loops

If your flow contains ‘jumps’ or ‘loops’ where traffic skips steps, this traffic will be displayed in green as additional traffic. The exact amount of additional traffic will be displayed at the source of the jump.