Funnel analysis is a key part of ecommerce analytics, and being able to understand how your visitors move through your cart and checkout process (and where they leave) is a key part of optimizing any website.
Google Analytics has some good functionality in this area, letting you see how many users are moving through your funnels for a given date range, as well as the excellent Goal Flow visualization that lets you see where visitors are coming from and going to around your funnel pages.
However, there are a number of types of analysis that are simply not possible within Google Analytics itself.
Pushing the limits of funnel analysis by using the Google Analytics API
Introducing the advanced funnel query in Analytics Canvas.
- Define a funnel using events, custom variables, goals, pages
- Look at your funnel on a segment by segment basis
- See the evolution of exit rate by funnel step over time
- Eliminate sampling in many cases for high traffic sites
- Look at funnels accross multiple profiles and accounts at the same time
- Automate your funnel analysis and integrate the data into your enterprise systems
Analytics Canvas lets you configure a funnel using an easy graphical interface, and then automatically creates all the API calls needed to give you the insight you need.
This new query lets you define funnels using events, custom variables, goals and pages. The result is a much more powerful way to understand how your visitors are interacting with your funnel and to have much more sophisticated funnels.
Here is an example of a series of funnel steps defined using the new feature:
Once you define the funnel, you get all the details for each step in a clear dataset with the following values:
- The number of visits that entered the funnel at that step
- The number of visits that entered from a previous step
- The total number of visits that completed that step
- The number of visits that went to a later step
- The number of visits that exited at that step
Whats more, you can specify the period and frequency that you want to run the analysis, meaning you can analyze your funnel performance as it evolves over time.
Why would you want to do this? Because if you are making changes to your checkout process, or signup pages etc., then you want to know when the exit rate of a funnel step changes FAST, so you can fix any issues.
We’re looking forward to seeing the more sophisticated analysis that serious ecommerce sites will be able to do with this new functionality- give it a try on your funnel and discover the optimization you are missing.