Adobe recently brought the Journey Canvas from Customer Journey Analytics into Adobe Analytics, giving us a great deal of flexibility with analyzing and visualizing user paths. Traditional Fallout and Flow visualizations quickly reach their limits when you're trying to depict particularly complex paths, various dimensions or events, or have multiple branches, so it's especially good for use cases like these.
In this post, I’ll be sharing the basic features and use cases of the Journey Canvas, covering:
What can you do with it?
When does it make sense to use Journey Canvas?
When is it better to use a different visualization?
How does the Journey Canvas differ from existing diagrams?
Note: The Journey Canvas in Adobe Analytics has been available since June 5, 2026, but only in the Prime and Ultimate plans.
While fallout diagrams or simple dashboards are often designed specifically for management and marketing stakeholders, the Journey Canvas is primarily a deep-dive tool for analysts to examine complex issues in detail.
To access it in Workspace, go to Visualizations → Journey Canvas.
Once you’ve dragged the Journey Canvas into a workspace, you’ll see the following selection screen:
Here, you select your Primary Metric. You can also add a Secondary Metric and a segment. You can choose from Visitor, Visit, or Product as the container.
The primary and secondary metrics are then displayed directly in each node. In the next step, simply drag and drop the desired dimension items, metrics, or segments onto the canvas.
You can freely combine everything on the canvas.
Here’s an example from Adobe’s documentation:
You can use this to clearly visualize click paths by flexibly linking metrics, dimension items, and segments. It allows you to create parallel paths as well as merge different strands back together. As a fun little feature, the arrows can be animated or displayed as dotted lines, and you can also customize the labels of the individual nodes.
How does Journey Canvas compare to the existing Fallout and Flow visualizations?
Focus: Predefined, linear workflows and the measurement of conversion rates and drop-offs (fallout & fallthrough).
When to use the fallout diagram:
Purchase & checkout processes: Analysis of step-by-step funnels (e.g., Homepage → Product view → Shopping cart → Checkout → Purchase).
Form and registration flows: Identifying bottlenecks where users abandon the process.
Segment comparisons: Comparing two target groups (e.g., mobile vs. desktop or existing customers vs. new customers) within the same predefined funnel.
Paths: Primarily function as predefined sequences; you’ll usually use the “Eventual Path,” meaning the next step doesn’t necessarily have to be the immediate subsequent click but can also occur later in the process.
Focus: Exploratory path analysis for immediately consecutive interactions
When to use the flow diagram:
Ad-hoc & exploratory navigation: When you want to find out how users navigate through the website or app without rigidly defining the path in advance.
Analysis of entry and exit pages: What do users do immediately after landing on the homepage or right before leaving the website?
Dead-end detection: Identifying loops, unexpected paths, or disorientation on the website.
Paths: Strictly limited to immediate subsequent steps.
Focus: Complex, non-linear, multi-channel customer journeys with multiple entry points, branches, and convergence points.
When to use the Journey Canvas:
Complex cross-channel & multi-entry journeys: Use to visualize paths with different starting points that converge at a common destination node.
Synthesis of predefined and exploratory paths: Linking fixed conversion nodes with flexible path flows.
Metric flexibility: Analyses that require primary metrics other than just 'session' or 'visitor'.
Paths: Flexibly connects free nodes (events, dimensions, segments) with arrows and can map multiple start and destination nodes simultaneously.
| Visualization | Path type | Main focus/Best used for |
| Fallout | Predefined, linear | Measuring conversion and drop-off rates in clear stages (purchase process, registration). |
| Flow | Exploratory, step-by-step | Discovering spontaneous navigation paths and direct click sequences from node to node. |
| Journey Canvas | Flexible, branched, multi-entry | Holistic customer journeys with multiple start and end nodes |
Since each visualization is based on its own path logic, the metrics across Fallout, Flow, and Journey Canvas often can't be compared on a 1:1 basis. It’s best to first define the specific question you're analyzing and then select the appropriate chart type to avoid misunderstanding the results.
The Journey Canvas is perfect for comparing different marketing channels within the same user journey. Instead of creating separate reports or segments for each channel, you can visualize and compare the journeys side by side on a single screen.
1. Define entry points: Drag your marketing channels or campaigns (e.g., paid search, email, display) onto the canvas as starting nodes on the far left.
2. Link subsequent steps: Drag the target events or pages (e.g., Product page → Shopping cart → Thank you page) onto the canvas as additional nodes.
3. Connect the paths: Use arrows to connect the starting nodes of each channel to the target steps. This allows you to create parallel paths for each channel.
4. Compare the performance: You can see directly from the connecting lines and nodes which channel has the highest drop-off rates or the best conversion rate.
Although the Journey Canvas offers tremendous flexibility, try to avoid mapping out too much at once. If you create too many parallel paths, you’ll end up with a diagram that just looks like spaghetti and doesn't really tell you anything. Less is usually more when it comes to depicting the core story of the user journey.
The Journey Canvas is a really great addition to Adobe Analytics. It bridges the gap between rigid funnels and purely exploratory click paths. As always, which visualization you ultimately choose depends on the question you're trying to answer with your analysis and your target audience.