Conversion funnel: What is it and how can it help?

A conversion funnel is a graphical report representing a series of steps or actions that a user must take in order to convert. The action of conversion could be anything from purchase to sign-up, login, subscribe to newsletter, try a demo, and the list could continue for a page or two.

Here are the steps that need to be done in order to setup a conversion funnel:

1. Think of the most important conversion action on your website. Let’s imagine it’s purchasing a product or service.
2. The page that says: Thank you for purchasing is the page that confirms that a conversion just happened. That page is the last step of a funnel.
3. Think of the most common way people get to that page. It might be something like this: Step 1: User signs up. Step 2: User confirms registration. Step 3: User adds payment info. Step 4: User verifies his data. These pages are the first steps of your funnel.
4. That’s it. :)

Here is how you setup a step of a funnel if using PadiTrack. It goes pretty similar with other services as well.

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What makes PadiTrack different from Google Analytics funnel tracking?

PadiTrack uses Google Analytics data to build up the funnels but it processes the data differently.

PadiTrack funnels are available retroactively and segmentation can be applied to them. The moment you build up the funnel you already have access to reports dating for as long as you have had tracked your website. Google Analytics does not offer this. As well, if you want to know how well your organic traffic converted through the funnel, you can get this only from PadiTrack.

Other differences: in PadiTrack funnels can be built on the fly and there is no limit on how many funnels you can build. However, there is a limit of 5 steps to each funnel. We believe it should cover most of the tracking needs out there.

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Why do I have different numbers in Google Analytics compared to PadiTrack?

The numbers of the Google Analytics funnels and the PadiTrack ones will not be the same, however they won’t be far one from the other either. They are simply calculated differently. When analyzing the reports, both PadiTrack and Google Analytics, the exact numbers don’t matter as much as the info of which steps give you the highest abandonment rate and for which segments. That’s where you need to take action on.

PadiTrack computes reports on session level. So, technically this is how one should read the following report:

233 visitors got to Homepage during a single visit session and 9% of them went between Homepage and Login form. Therefore, 21 visitors got to the login form during the same visit session while 23 entered the funnel directly through the login form.

If a visitor gets in the funnel in 2 different visit sessions (e.g. 2 different days) he will be counted as 2 and not 1.

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When to use conversion funnels?

Conversion funnels and conversion dashboard alike can be great monitoring tools for any online business out there. If you want to continuously be in touch with your conversion rate and the user behavior on your website when it comes to converting, there is no excuse for not having at least one funnel defined. There are a couple of free tools out there, PadiTrack being just one of them (we like to think it's the coolest :) ). Use any, but use one.

Conversion funnels are great reports which we consider A MUST before each conversion optimization campaign. If you are interested in taking actions to optimize your conversion rate, one of the first steps you want to do is to define a funnel and monitor the changes your optimization actions have on the visitors behavior within your funnel.

If you have anymore questions, write us or just create an account and give it a try. It’s free, no strings attached.

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