Set up goals and funnels to see where visitors give up
A conversion rate says how many convert; a funnel says where the rest stop. How to pick goals, build a funnel, add your own events, and act on it.
A conversion rate tells you how many visits end in a sign-up or an order. A funnel tells you where the others stop: on the pricing page, halfway through the sign-up form, or in the cart. You need both. Goals define what success is, and a funnel built from them shows the step where most visitors give up, which is the step to fix first.
Step 1: Choose your goals
A goal is what counts as success: a sign-up, a demo request, an order. Pick one to three, not twenty. GeoEngage counts goals in several ways (Goals and conversions):
| Goal type | Completed when | Good for |
|---|
| Page visit | A visitor reaches a page you name | Thank-you, welcome and order confirmation pages |
| Element click | A visitor clicks something you name | Sign-up, demo and add-to-cart buttons |
| Form submit | A visitor submits a form | Contact, demo-request and newsletter forms |
| Conversion from code | Your code reports it | A sign-up your server accepted |
| Revenue | Your code reports a purchase with an amount | Orders and paid plans, with their value |
For an Element click goal, label the button in your HTML, such as data-ge-goal="start-trial", rather than describing where it sits. A label survives a redesign; a position doesn't.
Step 2: Build a funnel
A funnel is a sequence of steps on the way to a goal. GeoEngage builds it from visits you've already collected, so a funnel you create today shows the past straight away (Funnels). Each step is a page view, a goal, or a custom event your code sends.
A software company's funnel might be:
- The pricing page: Page view of
/pricing
- The sign-up page: Page view with the path starting with
/signup
- The account created: your sign-up goal
A store's might be:
- A product page: Page view with the path containing
/products/
- Add to cart clicked: your goal
- The cart: Page view of
/cart
- The order: your purchase goal
Steps count in order, within one visit. A visitor who wanders off between two steps still counts, as long as they get there.
On Shopify, checkout runs on Shopify's own pages, where your theme's code doesn't load. End a Shopify funnel at the last step your theme shows, such as the checkout button.
Steps only your code can see
Some steps never show up as a page view or a click: a sign-up wizard that stays on one address, a video played, a filter applied. Send those from your code with trackEvent:
GeoEngage.trackEvent('signup_step_completed', { step: 'company' });
Then add a Custom event step with that name to the funnel. Keep names short, stable and lowercase, and put the detail in the properties (trackEvent). The Custom Events report lists each name with how often it arrives and which countries and devices send it.
A custom event never counts as a conversion. For a step that is success, such as the account being created, call trackConversion and make a Conversion from code goal with the same name.
Step 3: Find the biggest loss
The report marks the step that loses the most visits, counted in visits rather than percentage: a step that loses 900 visits matters more than one that loses half of 20. Start there.
Then narrow the funnel to one group with the filter bar: phones, a country, a channel, new or returning visitors. A sign-up form that works on desktop and collapses on phones looks like a mild drop until you filter.
Step 4: Act on it
- Watch the visits that left there. With session replay, open recordings of visits that reached the step and stopped (Sessions and replays).
- Change the page. When a step names one exact page, Personalize this page opens the rule builder with a rule for that page.
- Test the change with an A/B test judged on the funnel's goal (A/B tests).
Common questions
My funnel shows zero. What's wrong?
Usually the first step. A Page view step set to equals must match the path exactly, without the query string: try contains. Also check that no step points at a goal you deleted.
Goal or funnel step?
A goal is success: it drives conversion rates and test results. "Visited the pricing page" is a funnel step, not a goal.