With many visitors to your website every day, why does there seem to be a lack of conversions and sales?
Funnel analysis can help you optimize your website so that it has fewer people leaving the site without converting.
In this post, we’ll explain how you can identify the points of funnel analysis where people are having trouble in your funnel and how to spot popular pages. You’ll also learn how to integrate funnel reports with other analytics insights, which will give you an idea of where to focus your marketing efforts according to user behavior.
What is exactly Funnel analysis?
Basically, funnel analysis is the process of mapping the flow of website visitors to a specific conversion step.
Businesses use funnel analysis to see which parts of their website are working and which are not. They can use it to optimise the site and measure user behaviour.
A “website funnel” is designed to narrow to the end, just like a real funnel, so the number of visitors coming at the top is higher than the number of visitors at the bottom.
Drop-off and conversion rate in a funnel analysis
Funnels are traditionally used to measure conversion rates and identify the barriers before a conversion point. These data points can be applied to any marketing function focused on various user segments.
Real-life showcase: some users will visit the homepage but only a few will see the after-purchase thank you page.
The traditional model of conversion in e-commerce follows a certain flow. First, you would start on the homepage and navigate to the category page. Next, you would view some product pages before going to the cart. Lastly, you go to the checkout and thank you page.
Funnel analysis allows you to see how many users are making it through each step of the funnel and highlights areas for improvements in our customer journey. You can use this analysis example with the goal of increasing conversion rates and revenue.
Advantages of using funnel analysis
With a funnel analysis, you can understand which website components need improvements and prioritize your work on those steps.
a) First, find pages that are high in traffic and high in exits
With the help of visualization tools, you can figure out where your potential customers are leaving your website. Using your funnel visualization tool will show you the drop-off rate and conversion rate of your main pages.
To find the biggest opportunity, you need to know where users drop off. Utilizing the funnel metaphor, you need to plug up the holes in order that more people get through to the “funnels’” end.
b) Do you know where your high-converting traffic comes from?
Funnels are not only helpful in finding things to fix, but they can also help you see points of high success that you can continue to use. For example, if a conversion funnel analysis shows where your best converting traffic is coming from, you can double down on it.
Using Google Analytics, you will be able to visualize your funnel analysis and see which parts of it are more desirable for conversions. This can be accomplished by setting goals, then filtering the goal flow from that point on.
By figuring out what most users of website who convert are looking for, you can tailor your marketing funnel towards that and increase the number of likely conversions and the ultimate goal to expand conversion windows.
c) Understand funnel analytics to help your team
A conversion funnels allows you to analyze where your online business is succeeding and what improvements need to be made.
Funnel reports are a compelling way to present your metrics and KPIs to other users and stakeholders who may not otherwise understand your data. This can smooth the process of getting buy-ins for upcoming in depth optimization campaigns and show off successful projects.
There is nothing as good as seeing a drop-offs alert to move people to take action.
How to run advanced funnel analytics?
Conversion funnel analysis helps you understand the user journey on your website. By combining conversion funnels with another UX tool, you can gain a clearer understanding of what is enticing users and how they convert to a purchase and how to increase conversions.
After you identified problems in your conversion funnel, you can see what users are interacting with right before they drop off. In that direction, you can use funnel analysis tool like heatmap, or session recordings.
A heat map is a funnel analysis tool that can show you which elements are relevant and would benefit from being changed. Furthermore, it will show how much more users are focused on each element.
Increasing engagement on your website can be easier by adding a heat map, which will show you all the flaws that need to be fixed.
Session recordings provide a more detailed representation of how users interact with the website. You can use them to see hotspots and pathways on the site, as well as how users browse through your e commerce website.
Find the pages with unacceptable exit rates, and learn about what people are doing before they leave. These funnel metrics are crucial.
Help your users by spotting any issues in their customer journey to the end goal. Get more visual data to help you design for better UX and build a successful conversion funnel.
User behavior
You must find out what’s going on by surveying visitors on the page.
You’ll have gained some hypotheses from analytics data, along with design changes from heat maps and recordings. At this stage of funnel analysis, you should be collecting feedback from your users.
Qualitative data and feedback on-page surveys are an invaluable part of advanced funnel analytics.
Rather than guessing about why visitors bounce off your landing page and don’t convert, you can talk to your visitors and let them tell you why. These valuable historical data will help you to increase conversions.
The more you know about your visitors and their needs, the better the experience they will have with your website.
Find and Fix Conversion Problems with Google Analytics
A conversion funnel is probably the biggest component of any e-commerce platform.
There’s a magical thing happening: visitor turns customer. But marketing is very aware that not everything that comes out of the cart is purchased.
Just minutes after visiting the landing page and committing to a purchase, they have second thoughts, distractions or they go on to a competitor.
Waiting for an empty wagon to arrive.
Potential customers are not buying due to several factors and historically it was difficult to predict the cause of cart abandonment.
Thanks to Google Analytics, it is easy to find the places where these people have stopped working.
Conversion Funnel Analytics: Measure monthly
In some cases you must track performance in real time. We compare monthly funnels to determine whether we are retaining incoming users, and converting them into paying customers. We demonstrated our ability to keep people in their marketing funnel.
We need marketing to increase our customer list and increase the revenue from our website. Before you get into bar charts, make sure that your process have a few goals before jumping into them. How can we improve our funnel analyses?
User segments
Discovering segments that perform better in specific tasks can tell you if they are more successful at achieving their goals.
Use cohort analyses for deeper insight into why people are not getting converted.
Are there other apps that crashed in recent versions? What was the longest time people used this application? Are people searching online rather than browsing products? How does the consumer rate products?
Perform tests on the segments of your conversion funnel for optimal performance. Is there an opportunity for upsells? Upon a user adding a particular item to his/her cart, will your website suggest related items.
Strict vs. loose funnel
- When constructing a funnel you should decide on a strict funnel.
- The funnel measures users following a certain direction.
- Loose funnels enable the user to perform another action in the funnel as long as he completes the step in the correct order.
What is the optimal funnel? It’s all dependent upon the measurements.
In some cases, checkouts or payments are required in a strict funnel. The user is responsible for following this procedure as described above.
Time-bound trends
Do you have the optimum times of day to use website or app? Or are these windows where most customers make their purchases?
What is the time it takes for the user to load products into their cart? Duration for buying from here on?
Using the data above shows you how efficiently you can communicate through the website
Naturally, it takes more time for customers buying a $2,000 wallet to decide whether to buy a $20 t-shirt. But providing accurate information on product descriptions, photos, and reviews helps customers make better decisions.
Setting Conversion Windows
Measure the length and number of users moving across a customer journey is a useful tool to determine whether or not you need to improve in-app messaging and conversion.
How do you know how much time it takes for people to go through their funnels?
You have to take into account what the funnel is.
Some funnels may take longer: funnels with multiple stages may take multiple sessions and days to complete. Shorter funnels, such as onboarding, are usually completed in single sittings.
It is important to understand the funnel before starting it so that you can estimate how long it will take to finish it. This will help you plan your time and budget accordingly.
Identify the key touch points that lead to conversions
How can users get their goals from their apps and how can they navigate them?
Typically, the journey of the user is cyclical.
Some retailer app users may look through new website pages and some may look through certain types of merchandise.
During the onboarding process, some app users can create an account. Other users may opt-out, view content on the website, or log in again after a few sessions. Describe the various options for conversion for users.
Get deeper insights by segmenting users and comparing funnels
Not every single user has a conversion rate.
Are American and European customers different from the ones from Asian countries when converting?
Are women more likely to convert?
Does the user conversion rate change with the varying duration of the user journey?
Some older customers who are more likely than younger to convert may take longer to convert but they are more prone to become repeat clients.
This information is critical if we need to inform our growth plan.
Your focus should always be on high drop-off points
Depending on how the greatest decline occurs between the top and middle, chances are that it starts from there. But repairing this hole isn’t doing anything for your business.
You want to convert more users and then increase your marketing efforts to attract more people. Plus, high dropoffs can sometimes be hard to overcome.
It is often simpler to fix small friction points for incremental gains (still impacting conversion costs) than to aim for big drops.
Bottlenecks
Are there huge drops that happen unexpectedly?
When entering a credit card number, you’ll find that the user is completely dropped. But the moment the user enters their shipping details there is some potential problem with this. It might be that the format of their phone number or address is unclear or unintuitive, and prevents the person from completing a task at a quicker pace.
A step-by-step guide to creating your first funnel analysis
Step 1: It’s all about the steps of your funnel
If you want to know how many specific funnel steps you need, I would say to come up with four to eight. If it’s any more than that you may get lost in the data- if it’s any less, then you don’t really have a funnel.
With micro-funnels, you can always identify where the funnel needs to be changed or see where it is effectively working. This entails running a marketing funnel analysis across the whole website and then specific procedures, which are registration steps, to analyze them separately.
Step 2: Tools for tracking funnel steps
There are a variety of tools with built-in funnel analytics, such as:
- Google Analytics
- Hotjar
- Mixpanel
- Etc…
Step 3: Funnel visualization
Do not overthink it. The simplest and best way to depict a funnel visualisation is through a bar chart.
Conclusion
This is all you need to know about using funnel analysis.
Funnel analysis is a great tool for understanding customer journeys. By defining four to eight steps and setting up the flow, you can create a visual representation that communicates important data about customer behavior. You can use it to find where customers get lost and if any segments of your audience are stronger than others.
And of course, if you have a hard time with any segment of Funnel analysis or funnel visualization, our expert funnel team at Diggity Media is always ready to help.
Make the first step and schedule a call with us.
