Conversion Funnels

See the Real Conversion of Your Website

The Visitor Funnels feature allows you to actually check how many visitors reach a certain page guided by a defined process, and also how many drop outs you had at any specific level. It is a very powerful tool, which makes it possible for you to easily check whether your visitors actually follow the paths you want them to follow, and actually reach the page you want them to reach. This feature is fundamental in tracking conversions, which is why it can also be referred to as a conversion funnel

 

  1. Counting Visits as Funnel-Conversions
  2. Creating a Funnel
  3. Overview and Main Tile Structure
  4. Detail View of a Funnel

Some General Hints

  • A lot of elements contain additional information. Just let your cursor run over various elements and discover more features.
  • Almost all views and some single elements have a little "i" icon in the upper right corner, giving you yet more information about the element. Just move your cursor there and you will see more information.
     

Having a funnel set for a certain flow on your site, can be of great help to identify possible improvement possibilities on your website and much more. Please see the following example on what a funnel may look like:

Home -> Shop -> ProductX -> Cart -> Thank you

     A -> B -> C -> D -> E         

For every created funnel, visitors will be counted as converted, even if they visited other pages of your site in between navigating from funnel level to funnel level. Even repeating the steps is allowed. The only thing which really matters is that a visitor must visit the funnel levels in the exact order during the session. As long as the funnel level order is respected, the visitor is counted as converted.

Hence, the following user journeys will be counted as converted for a funnel:

  • A   >   B   >   G   >   C    >   I    >   D   >   E
  • F   >   A   >   H   >   B    >   A   >   C   >   D   >   E
  • A   >   B   >   B   >   C    >   D   >   E   >   E

If a visitor skips one of the steps, the conversion will not happen:

  • A   >   B   >   D   >   E (missing funnel level "C")

In this case, the visitor will be counted as a dropout at level "B".

For help in creating your first funnel, more details can be found below at Creating Funnel section.

 

Funnels are the best tool to retrace why visitors (potential customers) drop out of certain processes while navigating through your website. 

With Visitor Funnels you can simply set up a path of websites in a certain order to reconstruct a process you want your visitors to reach (e.g. buying a product: Homepage → Products page → selection of product → purchase item).

The Visitor Funnels sub-menu can be found under Visitor Behavior.

In order to set up a new funnel, you have to click on the button “Create funnel” in the upper right corner of the overview of funnels. The steps are  structured as follows (compare screenshot):

  1. Funnel Name: Here you can choose whatever name you think is suitable for this funnel and which allows you to find it easily in the overview.
  2. Funnel Visits Limit: The maximum amount of visitors that the new funnel should track.
  3. Expected Conversion Rate: This is an optional setting you can add yourself for overview purposes. It will just later show in the funnel detail page. You will be then able to compare the actual conversion rate and the one that you added as the expected one here.
  4. Funnel Level: This is the amount of levels that the newly created funnel currently has. The information is filled out automatically while you add more and more levels to the funnel. Do not forget, that the maximum amount of levels a funnel can currently have within the application, is 8. If you select the arrow button you have 2 options at the Funnel level:                                                                                    -Level with “Select Page” Option: You can name each level (i.e. “homepage”). Secondly for defining which page/URL this level should refer to, you can choose between the options “Select page” and “Define URL pattern”. The option “Select page” will give you a dropdown of all pages that the application detected for your website. It shows the html-name and the URL.                                               -Level with “Define URL Pattern” Option: If you want to choose a more advanced way of setting a level up for your funnel, the option “Define URL pattern” will help. A new dropdown will appear, containing the following options for you to select:
    1. Simple Match: this targeting model includes all elements of the page URL. Including any fragments or query strings, protocol or the addition of “www”.
    2. Exact Match: only targets a specific URL with its protocol. The URL can also contain a fragment or query string.
    3. Starts With: only targets URLs that start with the value you entered.
    4. Ends With: only targets URLs that end with the value you entered.

Contains: only targets URLs that contain the value you entered.

Important Hints:

  •  Further information about each of the URL patterns, can be found here.
  • Make sure that when defining a URL pattern, the URL filled in is still part of the selected domain and not a different one (unless the other domain has been whitelisted within your settings).

For instance, you cannot have a page of www.website-one.comdomain on level 1 and a page of a differnet domain www.website-two.comon level 2, unless the other domain has been whitelisted and it is tracked accordingly.

  1. “Add new level”: Here you can add another level to your funnel, following the same options as described above.

As soon as you have filled out all the information needed and added all the levels you wanted, you can either “Create & activate Funnel” directly or “save it as draft” and activate it later. 
 
After you have set up a funnel and data has been collected you will be ready to do some funnel analytics, by seeing how many of your visitors dropped out at each step. This will allow you to analyze why the visitors left the page and thus improve your UI in order to achieve higher conversion rates and increase the amount of visitors going through an intended process entirely and reaching goal completion.

Important Hints: 

  • For each created Funnel, the visitors will be counted even if they visited other pages in between, as long as during their session, they get to visit the pages/levels you set in the funnel, in the exact order they were set. Hence, visited pages in between the set steps and even repeating the steps, are allowed if their order is respected. 
  • Even so, if a visitor skips one of the steps, the conversion will not happen.
  • You can currently add a maximum of 8 levels per funnel.

 

The main overview of funnels is the core of the module. It gives you a view of all created funnels as tiles for the website and it consists of the following elements:

 

 Time Bar

Just above the table on the right you see a bar which enables you to choose a certain time range which the data below should correspond to. In order to do meaningful funnel analytics, it is important to constrain the displaying of data to certain dates or periods in which you ran campaigns or took other measures in order to measure how successful these actions were for future planning. 

 

 Funnel Status Overview

There are three statuses for a funnel in the application. All funnel detail views can be accessed at any time.

Active: A funnel which is currently gathering further data until the set visitor limit is reached. Unlike for heatmaps, there is NO possibility to pause the collection of data. You would have to create a new funnel for this.All: The sum of funnels with active and draft statuses.
Draft: A funnel which has just been created but not activated yet. It can be activated at any point in time. 
All: The sum of funnels with active and draft statuses.

 

Create New Funnel

With this button you will be forwarded to the menu in which you can create a new funnel, with a new conversion path, to add to your overview.

 

Funnel Tiles

Every time you create a new funnel, a new funnel-tile will appear in your overview. Each tile gives you basic information about a funnel:

  • Funnel Name: In the top part of each tile you will find the name of the funnel as you set it while creating it.
  • Levels: This line shows you the URL of the first and last level you added
  • Visitors: here you see the amount of visitors that were already tracked for this funnel. The higher the number, the more relevant the information is.
  • Conversions :  Allows you to see the amout of converted visitors.
  • Conversion Rate: Displays the procent-wise how many visitors have been converted.
  • Visitor Limit : View of the limit imposed for the funnel.
  • Your Expected Conversion Rate: This si the conversion rate that you have set as a refference when creating the funnel. The closer, the better.
  • Actions: Here you can select one of two actions: The first icon will show you the funnel details when accessed and the second icon ( the three dots) gives you the possibility to edit the funnel name, copy the link of the funnel or delete the funnel. You can also delete a funnel by selecting an idividual tile as shown in the second example.

 

Once you have entered the detailed view of a funnel, there is a lot more valuable information available. This acts like a funnel report. Remember that a funnel represents a certain process that you have defined yourself in the access of your website. From a birds eye view you will now see exactly the shape of a funnel that is constructed out of the number of levels you have added for it. The first level is always shown in green and at the top while the last layer is always shown at the bottom. The coloring is dependent on the conversion rate (low (red), medium (yellow), high (green)). The greater the horizontal width of a level, the more visitors have reached this level. In 99% of the cases, the last level will be way less wide than the first level.

 The view is structured by the following main elements (compare with the screenshot above):

Timebar: Using the timebar you can filter the results of a funnel based on a certain period of time. The funnel could be different in the first weeks in comparison to the weeks after (maybe you did a change on the corresponding pages to improve your conversion rate). The options are “Today”, “Last 7 days”, “Last 4 weeks” etc.

Important Hint: Of course, the funnel can only show data since it was activated (not created, but activated).

Visitors: The amount of visitors received.

Actual Conversion Rate: The true amount of conversions.

Visitors Converted / Overall Funnel Visitors: Displays how many of the visitors have been converted plys the overall amount of visits from the funnel.

Funnel's Visitor Recording Limit:  This has been set when creating the funnel but can be edited.

Expected Conversion Rate: This is the number of conversions set when creating the funnel. It can also be edited.

Funnel Name: The name given to you funnel.

Total Funnel Levels: Reprezents the total amount of levels you selected when creating the funnel.

Created On: Shows you the date and time when the funnel was created.

Created By: Shows you the name of the person whom created the funnel.

On the left side of the funnel diagram you also have the option of viewing the levels of the funnel toghether with the drop-outs recorded for them. This is an important aspect since here you can monitor where, at any given level, vahe the visitors dropped out.

Important Hint: As mentioned above, other visits in between levels are allowed, as long as the order of the steps set in the funnel, is followed as such.