Analyzing the customer journey is pivotal when you are trying to optimize the conversion. But, how you track users’ journeys for non-transactional conversions (i.e. non-Ecommerce goals which are not part of a purchase funnel) in Google Analytics is anything but straightforward.
The simple answer is – through Funnels. Funnel tracking in Google Analytics is one of the best ways to identify where you’re going wrong in your website mapping.
Here, we discuss five funnel features in Google Analytics that can help boost your conversions by understanding where prospects falter in their journey.
But first, let’s define what is a funnel in Google Analytics and explain why it matters
Google Analytics Funnels, and why are they important?
Whenever visitors come to your website, they usually take specific paths from start to finish, and every site has a goal for its visitors. Google Analytics funnels help track this visitor’s journey so that you can optimize your website and ensure visitors hit your goals.
For example, you have built a website to attract your prospects. Now, you may want them to:
- Navigate to the category page
- Visit a specific landing page
- View their cart
- Add an item to their cart
- Visit the promotional offer page
- Make a purchase
- See the confirmation page
By analyzing how users browse your website, you can optimize their experience. For example, a channel analysis that shows a high exit rate on product category pages suggests that prospects are not changing what they want, which could be because product filtering is clunky or unhelpful.
Eventually, your thing is to increase transformations. Analytics tubes help you home in on the exact stage in the journey that’s causing the most dropouts.
Before we do the types of Google Analytics funnels, we need to understand the difference between strict and flexible funnels.
What is a goal in Google Analytics?
An important principle in marketing activities: No marketing activities and analyses without a concrete goal.
The target action in Google Analytics is a useful functionality that helps you check the goals of your marketing projects and to fine-tune them if required. They are therefore the prerequisite for the success and control of your goals.
Possible goals can be:
- Increase the reach of your website
- Increase in the number of contact form fillup
- Increase the number of newly registered users in your web or mobile app
- Increase the number of subscribers to a newsletter
Goal tracking helps to understand how often your users perform certain completed actions from your website or Web App. The completed action is often called Conversion.
What is a conversion funnel?
A conversion funnel visualizes how a user goes through multiple stations or phases until conversion. The conversion funnel helps analyze and optimize the website or web and mobile app processes.
Strict funnels vs. flexible funnels
In a strict funnel, a user follows an exact sequence of direct ways — they can not skip or add steps. An example of a strict channel is
Homepage> Product Page> Cart> Checkout
Still, a strict funnel is useful substantially as a model to highlight likely drop-off points in an idealized journey. In the real world, the user path inescapably varies. ( Harvard Business Review has talked about the “ death of the linear channel. ”) To regard this reality, you can use a flexible funnel.
In a flexible funnel, the user journey is fluid. Not everyone follows the same path before they come to a lead or buy a product. Some users may find the cheapest product they can and instantly place an order; others may review multiple product pages or the About Us Page before purchasing anything.
Flexible funnels regard these variations. Users aren’t confined to specific pages or a specific order. However, flexible funnels are better equipped for the real-world user journey.
A visitor may still satisfy a flexible channel’s criteria in their journey as long as they hit defined runners on the point. For example, consider this path:
Homepage> About Page > Story Pager> Product Page> Category Page> Product Page> Cart> Checkout
At some point in their journey, users must visit the way in bold, but they can still fulfill channel conditions no matter which pages they visit in between.
When should you use a strict or flexible funnel?
Prospects are just learning about your products at the top of the marketing funnel. They may or may not follow a specific path. After all, you can’t expect your prospects to follow the same pages during an initial research phase.
When your prospects have decided to buy – when they are near the bottom of the funnel – you can expect a more specific guided sequence of steps to completion.
If they are skimming through any other pages when they have already started the checkout process, you should consider this journey a dropout (even if they end up purchasing). It may happen that a page or other site element is likely to distract the prospect from the end goal.
The funnel analysis helps you identify the dropout points and start work on solutions. A funnel won’t give you the “why” behind the dropout, but you can certainly get the answer from polls, surveys, and other qualitative analyses.
Users may like to see your brand page and the value you provide before purchasing your product, so you will incorporate that content into the funnel. Or you may also find that a miscellaneous Facebook link distracts users from taking the desired action.
Google Analytics funnel visualization reports
Here we will discuss five Google Analytics funnel features that track prospects’ journeys to show how to improve conversion optimization.
1.Goal Funnels
To use a Goal Funnel, you have to set up a goal in Google Analytics and specify the funnel path.
Why choose this funnel type? If you want to have an accurate report that can make more granular analysis for you then this is the right funnel for you.
Now, follow these easy steps:
- Go to Admin > Goals > New Goal > Choose a Goal (e.g. Place an order).
- Select “Destination” Goal > Goal Details.
- Turn on the “Funnel” switch.
- You have to name each step of the funnel and add a URL.
Once you enter the necessary information, you’ll see the results under “conversion” in Google Analytics. Under the “goal” section, you can pierce numerous reports to learn about user behavior, like “Goal Flow. ”
There’s one major limitation: You can not apply segments in your Google funnel reports. Goal funnels include all point visits from that view. However, device, or any other segment, If you need to create a custom horizontal funnel.
2.Ecommerce Shopping Behavior Report
This funnel is only for Ecommerce and needs you to turn on Enhanced Ecommerce.To see the data from the funnel, go to:
Conversions> Ecommerce> Shopping Behavior
Why choose this funnel type? This specific funnel type delivers specialized data for Ecommerce sites.
This Google Analytics counts the number of user sessions for each step in the funnel. It also gives a visual display of the chance of users who arrived at the current step from the previous one.
You can also drill down to specific criteria or pages. To illustrate, you can see how numerous sessions turned into deals by clicking
All sessions> Product Views> Add to Cart> Check- Out> Transaction
Focus on optimizing the page with the loftiest percentage drop-off. For example, a fashion accessory client of ours facing a huge drop-off between the home page and the product page.
With this insight, you can set up a great opportunity to improve their navigation menu. The navigation menu was too small and put away; it didn’t showcase the products and product orders we had to offer, especially on mobile.
The Ecommerce Shopping Behavior report is great for showcasing your funnel’s performance at a macro position. Shopping behaviors show how numerous people view each product and indicate which pages are least conclusive — a great starting point for optimization efforts.
3.Checkout Behavior
This Google funnel visualization feature is a funnel within a funnel.
Why choose this funnel type? This funnel delivers more specific, and sophisticated data for checkout form fields.
You can also check out within the Ecommerce section the Checkout Behavior where you can see users drop off within a checkout process, grouped by form field (e.g. email, phone, address, credit card number).
4.Reverse Goal Path funnels
Why choose this funnel type? This channel is a unique way to reverse conversion problems and openings.
Simply put, reverse goal funnels trace a prospect’s path backward through your site — from conversion back to entrance. This unique pathway identifies common gateways to conversion and highlights uninvited ways along the way.
Once you have at least one thing set up, go to
Conversions > Goals> Reverse Goal Path
You’ll see a count of Completions and the page and prospects visited leading up to that goal.
5.Custom Funnels in Google Analytics 360
Available only for Google Analytics 360 users. This custom funnel helps you create a funnel for any trackable user action and behavior. You can see and use pageviews and events as stages of a funnel – the possibilities are endless.
Why choose this funnel type? This funnel offers robust customization to your funnel and showcases data by almost any variable.
To create a Custom Funnel, go to:
Customization> Custom Reports> +New Custom Report
The report also lets you decide if users:
- Can enter at any stage.
- Must enter at a certain stage.
- Complete the funnel in one session.
- Complete the funnel in multiple sessions.
The Custom Funnels report also helps you create reports showcasing remarketing to engage users who drop off during a specific step. You can also create an advanced segment for that same audience.
Conclusion
When you can patch the holes in your user journey and tweak it in a way that can provide your audience with more flexibility is always a huge opportunity to increase sales. But to patch those holes, you need to know exactly where they are. A strict funnel is an outline you can use to create a more flexible funnel that can help your users actually follow. Growth Nirvana helps data from multiple sources such as Databases, SaaS applications, SDKs, and Cloud Storage, and simplifies the ETL process. It supports 100+ data sources such as Google Analytics, etc. It’s an automated pipeline that offers data to be delivered in real-time without any loss from source to destination. Book your free demo today.
