What is a Google Analytics Funnel? (and Why Should You Care)

If you have not yet been introduced to the Google Analytics funnel, let me do the honors. The Google Analytics funnel is a way to see what parts of your website sales funnels have holes in them.

Don’t think your website has sales funnels? If you’re running a business, you absolutely do. The funnel is any set of actions that lead your visitor to a desired completed action. These do not have to be actual sales.

Still don’t believe me that you have a funnel? Let’s see – do you have an email sign up form? or a contact form? Yes? I thought so! Congratulations – you, my friend, have a sales funnel – one you can measure in Google Analytics.

Why should you care? To optimize, of course! (more on that later)

How to Set Up Your First Funnel in Google Analytics

1 – Have the End Goal in Mind. Think the VERY end of your process here. Seriously. The very very last page your visitor sees when they’ve completed your desired action on your site. Often something like www.yoursite.com/thankyou or www.yoursite.com/confirmation.

Make sure you have this goal set up in Google Analytics (Don’t have goals configured yet? Check out my Google Analytics goals how-to).

2 – Now Think About the Step Before the Last Step. And the step before that, and the step before that. The trick here is to ONLY consider steps that are MANDATORY for your visitor to take before getting to your end page.

Good to include: Order Form page before the Order Confirmation Page.

Also good to include: “Please check your email to confirm your email address” page before the “thank you for subscribing” page. (You use a double opt-in service provider like MailChimp, right?)

Bad to include: Your homepage as a step in the email sign-up process (assuming you have more than one page with your email sign-up box on it, this won’t work well with the funnel). It is RARE that your homepage would be an appropriate step in any funnel. Think carefully about your actual required steps here.

3 – Set Your Steps Up in Google Analytics

Pretty simple to set this up but let’s walk through it:

a. Once logged in to your Google Analytics profile, head to Admin – Goals Tab – select the goal for which you’d like to configure a funnel.

b. Scroll down to Goal Funnel. Check “Use Funnel.”

c. Take your list of steps you just developed, and add each as a step here. Fill out each required step by adding the end of the URL to the URL field (example: for www.yoursite.com/emailconfirmation you would just enter “/emailconfirmation”).

d. Click +Goal Funnel Step as necessary. Do not add your goal page as a step (even as your last step) – Google Analytics already knows this is the last step since you entered that as your goal when you set up your Google Analytics goals.

e. Give each step a name that will let you know what actual page on your website this step is referring to (“Step 1” would not be so good – “Confirm Your Email” or just the name of your URL may be more helpful).

f. Check “required step” after each of your required steps here.

Click Save – and done!

4 – Start Optimizing Your Funnel

Your funnels should start gathering data after a day at most (assuming your visitors are visiting the designated pages that day).

Where can you see how your funnels are doing? Check out the Funnel Visualization or Goal Flow in Standard Reporting-Conversions-Goals. You’ll be able to see exactly how many customers are completing your process and how many are dropping off and where. (This how you learn where your holes are and start plugging them.)

Have a page that’s losing more visitors than you like? First make sure there’s no error with the page (link is broken, text is all white on a white background, slow loading time, etc.) then maybe consider reviewing your website design for conversion.

What Google Analytics funnels could you set up for your business? Have you used Google Analytics funnels before? Did you find this post useful? Let me know in the comments!

photo credit: El Bibliomata via photopin cc