As an eCommerce business owner, you probably want your customers to interact with your brand in specific ways — usually with a purchase at the end of the journey. But, how do you know what stage each customer in your conversion funnel is at and how close they are to converting.

The key is to invest in conversion funnel tracking.

Keeping track of your website conversion funnel analytics gives you much better insight into where your customers are in their lifecycle. This way, you know the marketing strategies that are most effective and likely to help you get your prospects past that conversion stage (usually purchase).

Not to worry, we can help!

This blog post walks you through what conversion funnel tracking is and how you can use Google Analytics to keep track of customer progress through your sales funnel. Finally, we also highlight some of the advantages of conversion funnel analytics for eCommerce owners.

So, let’s get into it!

What is Conversion Funnel Tracking?

First off, a conversion funnel describes the journey a customer takes from the moment they encounter your brand (say through your website) to how they interact with your business and when they finally buy from you (or perform your conversion goal).

That said, website conversion funnel tracking is the process of keeping tabs on the flow of users on your website through some specific funnel web pages that result in your desired conversion.

In other words, this tracking process helps you map out the actions of visitors to your website to measure how many users make it to each stage of your funnel.

You see, website conversion funnel analytics helps you identify high-exit web pages on your website. 

This way, you know what pages you need to optimize so you can send more customers down your sales funnel and boost your conversion rates.

Furthermore, conversion funnel tracking also highlights how you can improve your website user experience and the customer journey of users that eventually make it to the web pages that matter and buy from you!

Of course, you’d also increase your revenue along the way!

Why Your eCommerce Needs to Track Your Conversion Funnel

Now that you know what conversion funnel tracking is, here are some reasons you need the date it provides:

Performance identification

By keeping track of your website conversion funnel analytics, you gain insight into how well your website (design, user experience, web pages, etc.) is doing to get you those coveted conversions.

In other words, you’ll discover which of your web pages effectively push customers along your sales funnels and which ones need more work.

Improvement in conversion rates

Getting consistent conversions is the ultimate goal of all eCommerce businesses. However, getting your prospects to take that final step can be quite the challenge without an effective conversion funnel.

Thankfully, website conversion funnel analytics gives real-time information about how you can improve your website sales funnel and boost your conversion rate!

Better decision-making

Conversion funnel tracking helps paint a clear picture of how your eCommerce is doing — both where you’re excelling and areas you need to improve.

This way, you have the necessary data to make essential management decisions regarding funnel optimization, marketing methods, website adjustments, and more.

How to Set up Conversion Funnel Tracking

We’ll walk you through setting up your website conversion funnel tracking using Google Analytics in a few moments.

Here’s what you need to do:

• Log into your Google Analytics account and navigate to the Admin panel at the bottom of your screen. This is where you can carry out management activities on your account.

Next, you want to choose a goal for your conversion funnel so that the system knows what to track.

• Click on View in the Admin menu.
• Then, click on Goals.
• To create a new goal for your website conversion funnel analytics, select ‘New Goals’.

Google Analytics offers eCommerce owners the option of tracking various conversion goals for their funnels such as account creation, sign-ups, downloads, purchases, etc.

For the purposes of this guide, we’ll set the conversion goal to be a purchase.

• So, set ‘Place an Order’ as your goal. You’ll find this under the Revenue dropdown.
• Next, you’ll need to enter a description of the specific goal you set. The system will require you to input the following information:
• Name of the Goal: Identifies the goal in your Analytics account
• Goal-ID: defines a storage location for the data of your defined goal
• Type: describes your type of goal — acquisition, engagement, revenue, etc.

• Then, you need to add more specific details regarding your customer conversion funnel analytics. Here are some of the parameters you’ll need to enter to complete your tracking command:
• Goal: This contains the URL to your website target page
• Value: This gives your registration a number description
• Trichter: This shows your conversion funnel
• Destination: Here, you enter the destination page from the current web page
• Value: A monetary value
• Funnel: A toggle switch for whether the tracking is in the on or off position

• Finally, you need to click on Save, and Google Analytics becomes receptive to your recipient web pages.

Website Conversion Funnel Analytics: What Your Metrics Mean  

There are five key metrics you want to pay attention to when it comes to conversion funnel tracking:

Leads

Leads are at the core of your customer conversion funnel. After all, your sales funnel only exists because you can acquire. Therefore, it makes sense that you should track your leads as a business.

Pro Tip? Don’t stop at tracking the volume of your leads (or prospects). Also, measure the quality of your leads and their cycle time — how long it takes them to move through the funnel stages.

Conversion Rate

As an eCommerce, leads that eventually convert to a sale (or takes your desired action) are more important than those who do not.

So, keeping track of your conversion rate gives you data on how efficient your sales funnel is.

If your conversion rate is not as high as you’d like, your customer conversion funnel tracking results can help you highlight where you need to make changes.

Acquisition Costs

Your website customer conversion analytics should gear towards eventually helping you increase your ROI and boost your revenue.

Therefore, by tracking your customer acquisition cost, you can determine whether the sales you generate put you in a good place in terms of returns.

Customer Lifetime Value

Do you want to know how efficient your eCommerce business model is? Then, tracking your customer lifetime value can give you the answers you need!

Your customer lifetime value compares the total amount a customer spends on your products with their acquisition cost. This value then helps your decision-making in terms of your customer acquisition costs.

Cycle time

Another essential metric you should track is your customer cycle time. Your cycle times tell you how long a lead takes to move from one stage to another within your funnel.

This gives you essential insight into how efficiently your sales team processes leads and encourages conversions.

Wrapping up

Customer conversion funnel tracking is a sure-fire way to gain insight into how you can finetune the quality of your sales funnel and create a smooth journey for your buyers — from discovery to conversion.

Hopefully, we helped understand how you can set up a website customer conversion analytics that works.

Do let us know how it goes!