Marketing funnel

What a funnel is

A funnel maps the steps a visitor takes up to the purchase. The name comes from the shape: the group is large at the top and shrinks with every step. The value lies not in the chart but in the split. A single conversion rate only says that two in a hundred buy. A funnel says that ninety percent reach the basket but only twenty percent of those finish the checkout. That makes clear where work begins.

Which stages matter in online retail

Five stages have proven themselves. The first is visiting a product page. The second is adding to the basket. The third is opening the checkout. The fourth is entering the shipping details. The fifth is the completed purchase.

What matters is that every stage is countable and the transitions are defined unambiguously. If a step is counted twice, for instance because the customer jumps between shipping and payment method, figures appear that do not add up.

How the drop off is calculated

Two values matter for each stage: the share of visitors who reach it and the share who leave it. Their ratio produces the drop off of the stage. An example: of 10,000 visitors on product pages, 1,200 add something to the basket, so twelve percent. Of those 1,200, six hundred open the checkout, so half. Of those six hundred, three hundred buy. The overall rate is three percent, but the weakest stage is the transition from basket to checkout.

Comparing stages with each other says more than comparing with other shops, because the structure of your own assortment and advertising shapes the ratios.

Where the biggest problem usually sits

• Product page to basket: weak when images, dimensions or prices do not convince. The lever lies in content, not in design.
• Basket to checkout: weak when shipping cost or delivery time only become visible late. In many shops the largest loss sits here.
• Checkout to purchase: weak with too many fields, a forced account or a missing payment method.
• After the purchase: strictly outside the funnel, but the return belongs to it, because it takes the revenue back.

What follows from the analysis

Three rules keep the value high. First always work on the weakest stage, not the one that is most enjoyable. Second make every change in isolation, because changing two stages at once allows no statement about the cause. Third split the funnel by source. Visitors from an ad behave differently than visitors from search, and a combined funnel shows an average that nobody experiences.

Frequent questions

• How many stages make sense? Four to six. More make the mapping harder.
• What is the difference from the marketing funnel model? None, it is the same term in two professional languages.
• Is the funnel enough without session recording? It shows the place, the recording explains the cause. Both together work.