The marketing funnel is a tool used in analytics, to determine what percentage of the users landing on a webpage navigate towards other pages that represent steps to reaching a conversion goal. In short, it is a more advanced tool for tracking conversion rates and identifying problems in the customer journey.

1. Tracking campaign success:
conversion funnel examples
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2. Some time ago, when the internet was still in development and the first attempts at
e-commerce were being made, website owners and digital marketers did not have all the
functionality of the analytics tools that we have today. Tracking precisely what had led to the
sale of a product was very difficult.
I remember working with website owners who were confused about why they had many visits
to their websites, but very few sales of their products. Most of the time, it was because their
websites were convoluted and were confusing customers. Visitors got lost somewhere between
the product page and the actual checkout.
But where? And how could we better analyze this?

3. Nowadays, the problem is solved. Most
experts use a tool called funnel (or
conversion funnel, or marketing funnel) to
get an overview of that exact process. It is
called a funnel because it looks and acts
exactly like a funnel that you would use to
pour liquids into a bottle with a tight neck.
Instead of liquids, in website analytics you
work with visitors that land on your page.
In this parallel, the inside of the bottle is
the last step of the conversion process,
whether that is the checkout page, or a
sign up page or similar.
In both cases, some of that liquid may
inevitably be “spilled” and will not make it
to the inside of the bottle. In translation,
that means that not all of the visitors make
it from the top of the funnel to the point of
conversion, at the bottom.

4. What is a marketing funnel?
The marketing funnel is a tool used in
analytics, to determine what percentage of
the users landing on a webpage navigate
towards other pages that represent steps
to reaching a conversion goal. In short, it is
a more advanced tool for tracking
conversion rates and identifying problems
in the customer journey.

5. It uses a simple graphical representation
in the form of a funnel, where the top level
represents the number of users visiting
the landing page, while the next steps
display the number of visitors that took an
action to get to the next logical steps of
the funnel. The bottom of the funnel
represents the number/percentage of
visitors that made it to the conversion
page.

6. In order to be able to work with this tool, you
need to carefully set up a goal, and design the
stages of the funnel, up until goal completion. A
simple conversion funnel example would be the
next one, consisting of 5 steps.
1. Visitors landing on homepage
2. Visitors going to website shop
3. Visitors reaching a product or service page
4. Visitors adding product to cart
5. Visitors going to checkout
It is recommended to limit the steps of the
funnel to the minimum necessary. If a
customer needs to navigate to 10+ different
spots before making an acquisition, it is more
likely that he/she will drop out along the way.

7. If we were to correlate the above funnel with assumptions about the user attitudes and
intentions, a classical model would look like this:
● The first level represents awareness. Potential customers reached your website, so it is
safe to assume they are aware of your existence.
● The second and third steps represent interest. Visitors have not left your website, but
want to see your list of products.
● The fourth step represents desire. The product has been added to cart.
● The fifth step represents action. The user has paid for the product.
The basic marketing funnel: awareness, interest, desire, action

8. Funnel Analytics
Having the funnel in place is useless
without an analysis of the data. Here
are some of the things you can
discover.

9. See where you are losing
customers
Ideally, the funnel should not be very
“steep”. If you see big differences
from one step to the other, it means
potential customers are dropping out
before buying something. Identify
the place where the difference
between steps is the biggest.
It means you may have a problem on
the funnel step prior to drop-off. It
might have something to do with the
design of the page or the information
on it. See the next point on this list.

10. Find the reasons why
some steps lead to high
drop-offs
The funnel itself can’t help you understand why
visitors abandoned the conversion process.
Fortunately, there are funnel tools that correlate
with visitor session replays. This means that, at
every step, you can see the actual recordings
of the user interactions with the page.
This way, you can try to find a behavior pattern to
explain the drop offs. Are some of the users not
scrolling enough to reach the CTA button? Are
they not even hovering the mouse in the area
that leads to the next step? Is there an error on
the way the page is displayed or is functioning?
Find the error, fix it and reset the funnel
visitor data to see if results improve.

11. See which pages perform
better in terms of
conversions
You may be running several
marketing funnels at the same time,
with small variations to the steps you
use. Compare the data and see
which pages lead to a higher
conversion rate. Learn from that and
try to replicate those pages in the
future.

12. Offer your team or your
clients clear conversion
measurability
Successful business is based on data, not on
guesswork.
A marketing funnel provides percentages at every
step of the way. You can even set yourself a
conversion goal during planning. Some funnel
tools, like the one from Visitor Analytics will use
that as a standard and provide data to show you
whether your performance is good or not.
Are you reaching your goals?
By how much have you missed the mark?
After some adjustments, how have the
percentages changed?

13. Visitor funnel optimization
Take all of the data in and use it to
improve. If you notice after some
visits to the landing page that the
funnel is not showing acceptable
conversion rates, make changes to
the steps or even to the entire funnel
logic. After funnel analysis, you may
want to remove a step, change some
page layouts, rearrange the order.
You will need to set up a new,
optimized marketing funnel.
Hopefully, the results should show.

14. Case study 1
In this funnel, you see a big drop-off
between the homepage and the shop,
right at the first hurdle.
Then there is also a significant drop at the
last step.
It is safe to say that the shop is not
visible enough on the homepage.

15. Case study 1
2 interventions on the homepage:
- the color and layout of the shop button
in the menu was changed to make it more
prominent.
- a banner with a CTA encouraging users
to go to the shop for the latest deals and
sales was added.
Recordings of the drop-offs after “add
to cart” consulted.
It turns out that in some browsers there
was an error and the cart page didn’t
display correctly. The error was fixed.

16. Case study 2
In this funnel, there are a total of 8 steps.
There are not that many drop-offs at a
single stage, but by the time we reach the
bottom of the funnel, the conversion rate
is very low. This suggests that there may
be too many steps, some of them
unnecessary.
If we take a closer look, we can see that we
are focusing on some specific product
here, to which you can apply a discount.

17. Case study 2
Instead of dragging customers through
the entire shop and to an entire category
page promote the specific products
on the homepage, with direct links to the
product pages eliminate steps 2 & 3.
We place the voucher anywhere else in the
process we can then also eliminate
steps 6 & 7.
We move from 8 steps to 4, which will
drastically increase the chance of
getting a good conversion rate.