Why are Funnels so useful?

Funnels represent the steps a user takes to achieve your goals for your website. Funnel analytics can provide useful insights into your user experience. They can help to identify where visitors drop off and potential improvements.

Optimising earlier stages of your funnel should also have flow-on effects for later stages of your funnel. The more people that enter the later stages of your funnel – even with the same conversion rates – the more goal completions you should receive. Thus improving your Goal conversion rates and revenue. From version 5.1.0 of the Funnels plugin, users have the flexibility to set up a funnel without linking it to a specific goal. In this configuration, the last step of the funnel represents the desired action for visitors. Optimising the preceding steps remains advantageous, ensuring a smoother visitor journey towards the intended action.

Funnel reports give you actionable insights for growing your business:

  • Identify user bottlenecks: If you notice an unusually high drop off at a certain stage, it deserves attention. High drop-off rates could mean something is hindering progression from that stage. Are there visual bugs on the page? Are there elements which may be reducing trust?

  • Reveals confusing steps: It should always be clear what action a user needs to take next. If it isn’t, they may simply exit your site and this will show in funnel reports. When optimising for conversions, you want to make it as easy as possible for users to travel through each step of your conversion funnel.

  • Aids with discovering bugs: If you have consistent funnel conversion rates over time, and they drop off at a specific stage, it is likely a new problem. This could be a broken page, missing buttons or links, or something as simple as a drop in trust or clarity due to visual or content changes made on the page.

  • Act as a trigger for deeper analysis: If a certain stage of the funnel has a low conversion rate, it might inspire further analysis. For example, looking at the page performance report may reveal a page within your funnel is slower than others after adding a new widget. This would imply removing the widget could help improve your conversion rate on that stage of the funnel.

Overall funnel analytics are a key diagnostic tool to help you improve your entire goal conversion path to ensure better results.

Previous FAQ: What is a Funnel?