Custom Funnels from Google Analytics – great ammo for marketers!

Funnels help marketers see the buyer journey – that is the process people go through while attempting to sign up for your online service, or purchase a product from your website, through a visual representation of the conversion data between each step.

So marketers will be able to see what step causes any confusion or trouble proceeding further, or see if there are any browser issues or bugs and also if there was anything about the content that might affect customer behavior, keeping him from buying or signing up. Or see how the process works.

Funnels are even better than goals. By tracking the funnel, marketers are able to find and deal with problems at any point in your customer’s buyer journey, so they can optimize it for the best conversion.

While just about every marketer uses Google Analytics to understand their customer journeys, there have been several challenges that they have had to face as well. Some of these include -

Google has been working on enhancing its Google Analytics and the latest GA4 promises marketers, Custom Funnel Reports.

Custom Funnel reports can be created using funnel explorations, which you create first and save as a report. Google Analytics will then use this exploration as a template to construct your custom report. You need to have Editor or Administrator privileges to create this. The report will be saved in the report library and marketers can add this to the left navigation for quick access.

If for some reason the original exploration has been deleted, it is possible to recover it by opening the funnel report in the section “Explore”

Understanding the customer journey is very important for marketers – only then can the bumps be spotted and smoothened for a better experience. Marketers then will be able to make decisions that are data-driven.

When a marketer runs a campaign, it is very important that he understands how the said campaign would influence the customer. By tracking the various stages of the customer journey, a marketer will be able to optimize the campaign so it addresses the bumps in the journey for the customer.

Marketers will be able to tell very clearly about the drop off points in the journey – is it some form that flummoxes and exasperates the customer enough to drop out? Is the buying process too complicated? If too many customers drop off at a certain point, marketers can be sure that there is a problem there that needs addressing.

This report will point out the various areas that need improving. This is of great use to the marketer who can work on those areas so customers engage better and better still, convert.

Marketers will be able to understand user behavior. He will be able to spot the exact spots in the process that seem to cause friction in the user’s interaction with the brand, and do what it takes to rectify and smoothen things out.

Marketers will be able to create great experiences for the customer that engages with his brand. The evolved customer of today expects a seamless and smooth journey as he moves through the various stages of his journey with a brand. It is important that the brand provides this for him to prevent him from switching to the competition, or changing his mind simply because the journey was not smooth.

Doing this will help a marketer increase conversion rates – as they will be able to find out where exactly the problem is and do what it takes to fix it. This will boost engagement, which will impact conversions to a very large extent and also increase ROI.