A data funnel is like a treasure map of your website. In order for users to accomplish the goals you’ve set out for them, they need to follow a trail of web pages before they eventually reach that goal.

If your goal is to sign people up for an email, they’ll need to visit a page with a button that takes them to a sign up page (dotted line), then the sign up page (dotted line), and then a thank you page (big, red X) that verifies that they’ve signed up.

I briefly touched on data funnels last week when I talked about the importance of goals. Funnels and goals go hand in hand because a goal means you want your users you wind up doing something specific on the site or winding up somewhere.

So think of funnels as a map of where your users are in the process of getting to that elusive goal. For those users that don’t make it to the X on the map, a funnel can show you where they are getting stuck and if enough people are getting stuck that you should do something about it.

Here is what a typical funnel looks like:

In it, you can see that 853 users hit the home page, 126 reached the RegisterLogin page, and 21 made it to the Account Success page. That means 21 of your 853 users managed to follow your map and reach the goal. That’s a 2% conversion rate and depending on what exactly your goal is, is not too bad.

What the funnel lets you do is attack each step in the process individually. Let’s say you change your homepage around and add blinking lights and flashing arrows that point to the sign-up box.

In theory, more people should notice your sign-up box now. But instead of just checking how many people have created an account and seeing if that number has gone up, you can check the funnel conversion for that first step to see if it’s made it better or worse.

Funnels give you a more nuanced look at how each part of your site is performing. Instead of just having one big gauge telling you how the overall site is doing, funnels give you a more detailed look at the different parts of the site.

Once you’ve nailed down where there are problems and opportunities for improvement, then you can tackle them exactly where users are having the toughest time and make adjustments.

Image by cameronparkins