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Path Explorer Guide

The Path Explorer is your mission control for understanding how customers navigate your store, identifying where high-intent buyers encounter friction, and taking immediate commercial action on those insights.

Unlike generic web analytics that present disconnected pageview counts, Path Explorer reconstructs complete, chronological customer journeys from initial landing to final checkout.

Where things live​

Path Explorer has six tabs: Intelligence (the default), Funnel & Sessions, Checkout Journeys, Customer Insights and Chat Impact, plus Product Intelligence.

  • Sections 1-4 and 6 below are on Funnel & Sessions (sub-tabs Shopping Funnel, Customer Segments and Journey Heat Map).
  • Sections 8 and 9 are on Checkout Journeys; section 7 describes how to open an individual visit from there.
  • Section 5 is the Exclude bots checkbox in the filter bar, plus Customer Insights > Bot Traffic Analysis.

The other tabs have their own pages: Intelligence tab, Customer Insights, Chat Impact and Product Intelligence.

1. Segments That Matter (Customer CRM Sync)​

Path Explorer automatically groups customer journeys into four high-impact commercial segments. Instead of passively viewing metrics, you can directly activate these cohorts in your marketing stack.

How Customers Are Identified​

ShopGuide merges browsing journeys with real customer identities using these sources:

  1. Shopify Order Attribution: When a customer completes an order, their Shopify Customer ID, email, and order history link back to their full browsing journey.
  2. Any session where the visitor gave an email or logged in: Chatting with the AI assistant, signing up for a newsletter, entering contact details at checkout (even if they then abandon), or logging into a store account all count, and the identity is applied to that person's other sessions too, including earlier anonymous ones.
  3. Klaviyo email click-through: A visitor who arrives from one of your own Klaviyo emails can be recognized this way (your Klaviyo key needs profiles:read).

When a segment displays "Reachable" customers, these are verified shoppers with email addresses or Shopify Customer IDs ready for targeted outreach.

The Four High-Impact Segments​

  • Product browsers who didn't add to cart
    • Who they are: Viewed at least one product, never added to cart, no order this period.
    • Action: These visitors are mostly anonymous, so reach them on-site rather than by email. The card has a single button, Set up an on-site offer, which opens your discount settings. Proactive AI launch messages on high-traffic product pages can also address common pre-purchase hesitations.
  • Cart abandoners
    • Who they are: Added something to cart but no order was placed this period.
    • Action: Use Sync to Klaviyo to enroll them in a win-back email sequence, or Tag in Shopify to tag them in your customer list.
  • Searchers who left
    • Who they are: Searched the store but never opened a product, no order this period.
    • Action: The card shows the top searches with no product view. Use them to find catalog terminology gaps, missing inventory, or search synonym needs. The Greet searchers proactively button opens your proactive message settings.
  • Chat-assisted buyers
    • Who they are: Placed an order after using the AI chat this period.
    • Action: Use Tag in Shopify or Sync to Klaviyo to feed VIP loyalty programs and post-purchase replenishment flows.

2. Tagging in Shopify & Building a CRM​

When you click Tag in Shopify for a cohort, ShopGuide writes a tag to the matching customer profiles in your Shopify Admin.

How It Works​

  1. ShopGuide takes the identified Shopify customers from the selected segment (anonymous visitors cannot be tagged).
  2. It writes a tag dated with the first day of the range you are viewing, followed by the segment name, for example path-explorer:2026-09-13:cart-abandoners or path-explorer:2026-09-13:chat-assisted-buyers.

Each click tags at most 500 customers, and tagging needs the write_customers permission; if it is missing, the click tells you so. After tagging, the confirmation offers Copy Tag and Open in Shopify Customers.

Why This is Powerful​

In Shopify Admin, go to Customers, filter by Tagged with and pick the tag, then click Save segment.

This allows you to:

  • Track long-term Lifetime Value (LTV) and repurchase rates of chat-assisted customers.
  • Build native Shopify Email campaigns targeted to specific browsing behaviors.
  • Segment your customer base by verified shopping patterns.

3. Syncing to Klaviyo​

Clicking Sync to Klaviyo pushes reachable customers and a few behavioral properties into a Klaviyo list.

Before You Start​

In Integrations > Klaviyo, add your API key and choose a list. Your key needs lists:write and profiles:write. If something is missing, the click tells you what to fix (for example "Klaviyo is not connected" or "No Klaviyo list selected").

How It Works​

  1. Identifies verified emails within the cohort (duplicates are merged by email).
  2. Updates their Klaviyo profile with path_explorer_cohort, path_explorer_label, path_explorer_session_id, sg_chat_assisted, sg_traffic_channel and sg_converted.
  3. Adds them to the Klaviyo list you selected.

Each sync handles up to 500 profiles.

  • Cart Abandoner Win-Back: Send emails reminding customers of their abandoned carts.
  • Custom Ad Audiences: Sync your Klaviyo list to Meta (Facebook/Instagram) or Google Ads to create lookalike audiences based on your highest-converting shoppers.

4. Journey Heat Map​

The Journey Heat Map is a from-to table showing where shoppers go right after each page. Darker cells are more common moves.

  • Reading a row: Each row is a page; the columns are the page shoppers went to next, plus Left the store and Purchased. A page counts once per visit, repeated views in a row are collapsed, and pages beyond the top 12 are grouped as "Other ... pages".
  • Color toggle: Switch between Share of next steps (each row adds up to 100%) and Number of moves. Hovering highlights the row and column and shows the exact numbers.
  • Three insight tiles: the most common move between named pages, the page where visits end most often, and the most direct step to the cart.
  • Identify Friction: A row whose darkest cell is Left the store is a page where visits tend to end without a purchase.

5. Exclude Bots Toggle​

Web crawlers, price scrapers, and automated bots frequently crawl eCommerce catalogs. If unmonitored, bot traffic distorts store analytics, causing conversion rates to look artificially depressed.

Bot Traffic Analysis​

ShopGuide gives you transparency rather than hiding bot rows. Open Customer Insights > Bot Traffic Analysis (sub-tabs Overview and By country) to see how much of your traffic is automated. It includes:

  • Traffic quality: human vs. bot sessions, with a bot-dilution factor and a "true (humans only)" conversion rate.
  • By country: sessions per visitor country split into human and bot, the change versus the previous period, and a verdict of Likely bots, Watch or Normal. It needs Shopify Analytics access.
  • Machine-generated visitor groups: groups of single-page direct visits that share the same device, exact screen size and language and almost never add to cart, chat or buy. They are labelled as bots for analytics only and are never blocked. This is being switched on store by store; the card says so when it is not on for your store yet.

Verified Human Session Denominators​

When the Exclude bots checkbox in the filter bar is on:

  • KPI cards, journey funnel rates, and chat-impact conversion metrics are calculated against Shopify's human session count (the card shows "Shopify human: N").
  • If Shopify's human count cannot be read (no report access or no data for the period), the page shows "Shopify-verified human sessions unavailable" and falls back to all tracked sessions.

6. Customer Journey Funnel​

The Customer Journey Funnel ("Visualize conversion progression from first visit to purchase.") maps the critical milestones of eCommerce conversion:

graph LR
    A["Store Landing<br/>(100%)"] --> B["Product View<br/>(Discovery)"]
    B --> C["Add to Cart<br/>(Purchase Intent)"]
    C --> D["Checkout / Order<br/>(Conversion)"]
  • Chat-Assisted vs. Non-Chat: Tick Compare Chat Impact to show two funnels side by side, "Chat Users" and "Non-Chat Users". This is an observed difference among shoppers who chose to chat, not proof that chat caused it.

7. All Sessions Table​

Path Explorer no longer has a table of all sessions. Individual visits are opened from the Checkout sessions list on the Checkout Journeys tab (see sections 8 and 9) and from the customer drawer in Customer Insights.

  • Detailed Timeline: Click a row to open a step-by-step timeline of that visit, showing the landing page, products viewed, time spent per page, and any conversational turns with the AI assistant.
  • Exporting: There is no session export. See Export & reporting for the CSV downloads that exist.

8. Checkout Sessions​

The Checkout sessions list on the Checkout Journeys tab shows high-intent visits: shoppers who reached checkout or completed an order ("N sessions reached checkout or completed a purchase this period"). The cards above it show:

  • Checkout sessions
  • Purchase rate (completed an order)
  • Chat-assisted (used chat)
  • Avg. steps (pages before checkout)
  • Avg. duration (session length)

Path Explorer shows where in your store visits left before checkout. It does not track the individual steps inside Shopify's checkout. Comparing journeys that ended in an order with those that did not helps you spot common success patterns.

9. Path Flow Analysis​

The Checkout Journeys tab has three parts.

1. How shoppers move toward checkout​

A flow diagram of every human visit in the period: where it entered, how far it got, and where it left. Link width is the number of visits. Use All shoppers / Chat sessions and the Traffic channel select to compare. The chat comparison needs at least 20 chat sessions, the range is limited to the last 90 days, and a table or list version is available as a text alternative.

2. Stacked checkout journeys + AI Overwatch​

The 10 paths to checkout that the most shoppers actually walked. Click a row and AI Overwatch reads that route against the full cohort, plain-English observations on entry points and where shoppers drop off. The overlay also lists the entry-to-product paths that most often end in a purchase, and those that end without one.

3. Checkout sessions​

The list of individual checkout sessions described in section 8.