To reach a conversion goal on a website, say completing checkout or registration, a user must pass through several intermediary pages. A funnel is a graphical way of displaying the dropout rates over the series of pages through which the user must navigate to reach the goal.

The purpose of funnels is to see how efficiently your pages direct visitors to your goal. It allows a website owner to see how users leave the site and make the necessary changes to improve the conversion rate. If any page in a conversion funnel is overly complicated or not designed to be user-friendly, you will see a significant drop-off. The page can be redesigned to improve the conversion of the entire process.

In the example above, over 50% of users do not continue from the Cart to Billing and Shipping. By redesigning this process, the website would significantly improve its sales without spending more money on advertising.

Filtering and Segmenting Data

Removing Irrelevant Data by Filtering

Your reports are only as reliable as the underlying data, so it is essential to ensure that your reports include only valid data. You might, for instance, wish to exclude information from visitors to your website from within your organisation.

Filters can remove certain information from your web analytics reports by excluding IP address or reporting on specific subdomains. You could find, for example, you receive a lot of data from a particular location that never converts. This could be a bot, and by excluding this data, your metrics will be more accurate.

Segmenting Data to Analyse Trends

Web analytics packages enable users to slice data along many dimensions, including location, demographic and channel. Segments let you separate out and analyse subsets of data so you can examine and respond to the trends in your business. For example, if you find that sales have dropped from users from a particular location, you can investigate the underlying reason. Maybe shipping rates are incorrectly configured?