GA4 Funnel Report History:
The GA4 Funnel Report used to be a premier report locked behind GA360 for Universal Analytics. This meant if you wanted to use the native feature, you had to shell out ~$80,000 per year to build these custom funnels, or you could build a “Conversion Flow”, but it didn’t give you the customization available in this report.
When to use a GA4 Funnel Report:
The funnel reports are great analyses for viewing your users’ journey through your website. It does require some assumptions of how users use your website, but due to the ability to split by so many dimensions, it can be a great tool for reviewing different types of users. Device Type, Acquisition Channel or even Demographic information like Interests, Age and Gender are all great segments to explore.
Report Overview:
Technique:
Where you select the type of report. Select “Funnel Exploration” to get the funnel report.
Visualization:
You have 2 options for visualization:
1. Standard Funnel:
This is your default type of funnel report where it allows you to view the events and actions in aggregate. This should be your default type of report when just reviewing on a regular basis.
2. Trended Funnel:
The trended funnel segments out your stages by day, allowing you to view the change over time. This can be the “All” tab, where you can see all stages laid over one another, or you can review a single stage. This only counts new users in the visualization, so your mandatory steps like a checkout flow cannot be reviewed:
Make Open Funnel:
The you turn this setting on, the funnel will now allow users to join mid-journey. This can be important if you are reviewing an ecommerce flow that begins with viewing a list of items, as users could always join the funnel by joining the item directly. When disabled, a user must complete every preceding step to be counted. Below is Google’s explaination of how users are counted:
Funnel 1 – (Open Funnel):
| User | Counted in step |
|---|---|
| 1 | A, B, C |
| 2 | B, C |
| 3 | A |
| 4 | C |
Funnel 2 – (Closed Funnel):
| User | Counted in step |
|---|---|
| 1 | A, B, C |
| 3 | A |
Segment Comparison
The segment comparison allows you to filter down your users to just those that completed certain actions. This can be useful if you’d like to filters who bought a certain item or came from a certain channel, although I find it overlaps a fair amount with filters and requires additional steps. Unless you have a specific segment you always want to use, I would recommend using the filters as your default, exploratory reporting.
Steps:
Steps are your primary grouping of actions you want to track and view. Steps can utilize any dimension and parameter available, as well as combinations with the AND or additional dimensions using the OR. You are also able to categorize if you need it to directly or indirectly followed or if you would like to make it occur within set amount of time in milliseconds, seconds, hours, and days.
Breakdown:
Breakdown allows you to segment our your steps by an additional dimension. You can answer questions like:
- What channel drives the most users to complete a step?
- How does my user journey vary by device or technology?
- What demographic is responding most positively to my current website content?
These are all easily viewable by the breakout and allows for an robust exploration through Google’s plethora of dimensions.
Show Elapsed Time
The GA4 Funnel Report has a toggle to view the elapsed time between each step. This allows you to know how long each user takes before moving to the next step, and is especially useful in determining remarketing audience length.
As an example, here is Google’s Merch Shop in April 2023:
Based on the above, we can see that users typically view and item and add to cart within ~9 hours. This step only occurs 1% of the time someone views and item. Through all steps of the process, someone typically completes a purchase after 2.5 days from originally viewing an item. If you were running a remarketing campaign, you would not want to exclude someone before the 2.5 days has passed, but you also know that the journey is shorter than 30 days, the default remarketing length in Google Ads.
Next Action
Next Action allows you to view what event or page a user goes to after completing a step. This can be useful if you are building a funnel for the first time, or you are unsure where people go after completing a certain action. From the list available, you can see what common themes these users have and can build your funnel that way. You can also use this to figure out where users go when they drop out of the funnel you prescribed.
Filters
Filters are incredibly useful as you are diving into the funnel report. By adding a dimension or metric from your imported list, you can apply logic to get rid of users you might not be interested in. This is a great way to review users who add to cart, but do not buy or review specific demographics after identifying the trend in the breakout.
Summary:
The GA4 Funnel Report is an incredibly powerful tool for identifying user trends in your data. While it will not do anything for you, it is a tool to answer questions around performance of different segments, as well as proactively identify ways to improve your customer journey through things like remarketing and conversion rate optimization.
Read Google’s Documentation of the report.
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