Funnel Vision: GA4’s Funnel Exploration Reports

Understanding how users navigate your website is key, for both conversion optimisation and working towards improving your users’ experience. One way to do this is through GA4’s Funnel Exploration reports.

What is a Funnel Exploration Report?

The funnel exploration report lets you visualise the steps your users take when completing a task or conversion on your site, for example, making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or completing a form. The funnel exploration report lets you see how well your users are completing each step, as well as where users enter your funnels drop off points and areas of friction, revealing valuable insights.

Changes from Universal Analytics

Those who have used Universal Analytics previously may remember that UA also had a funnel report available, however there are some key differences between the funnel in UA and GA4’s funnel exploration report. The funnels in UA were accessed through the conversions report with three types of funnels available – Funnel Visualization, Shopping Behavior, and Checkout Behavior, with the latter two only available with Enhanced Ecommerce. These funnels were built on pageviews and sessions rather than users, which could be hard to understand and easy to misinterpret. Furthermore, funnels in UA could only have five steps which were based on URLs.

In contrast, GA4 only has one funnel exploration tool but it is significantly more powerful than what was available in UA. GA4’s funnel exploration is Event based and can have up to 10 steps.

Benefits of Using the Funnel Exploration Report

The insights gained from the funnel explorations can be helpful to understand where visitors are dropping off your funnel which can indicate issues on the site, and ultimately help inform the actions needed to reduce the number of abandoned customer journeys on your site. 

You can also easily create audiences of users based on where they enter or exit the funnels you define, including creating remarketing audiences from your funnel steps to re-engage those users who have dropped off.

Limitations of the Funnel Exploration Report

The main limitation of funnel explorations is that you can only see where users are dropping off while on your site but not why they are exiting the funnel. This can make the report hard to understand if there are not any obvious issues on the site.

How to Create a Funnel Exploration Report

1. Navigate to Explore: Once you are in your GA4 property, go to the “Explore” section in the navigation on the left-hand side.
2. Select the Funnel Exploration Template: Choose the “Funnel exploration” template from the available options.

3. Select Your Dimensions: Select attributes of an event, product, transaction, user, etc from a list of available  dimensions. This report is based on users as a default so you cannot add metrics.

4. Define Your Funnel Steps: Specify the events that represent each step of your funnel by adding new steps and configuring the conditions. It’s crucial to define these steps in the correct order to accurately represent the user journey. You can add parameters to events here to be more specific, as well as choose whether steps are followed indirectly or directly, or within a certain time frame.

5. Configure Report Settings: Choose between a standard funnel visualization or a trended funnel visualization to see how funnel performance changes over time. 

Standard Funnel

Trended Funnel

6. Choose an Open or Closed Funnel: Funnels are closed by default in the exploration reports – if a user enters the funnel after the first step they won’t be counted. Toggle on the switch to make the funnel open if you would like to count all users regardless of what stage they enter the funnel.

7. Advanced Steps: Switch on elapsed time to show how long (on average) it takes for users to move from one step to the next, and see what actions users took after completing each step of the funnel by adding the event name dimension under the next action category.

 

8. Analyse the Report: Examine the funnel visualisation to identify drop-off points.

You can save and share your funnel exploration with users in the same property. Your funnel will now be available in the “Explore” section!

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