Funnels

A funnel is a path you expect people to take, broken into steps. You list the steps in order, and leadmaps shows you how many people reach each step and how many fall away between one step and the next. It answers a simple but important question: out of everyone who started, how many made it all the way to the end, and where did the rest give up?

Think of it like a real funnel in a kitchen. You pour a lot in at the wide top, and only some of it comes out the narrow bottom. The funnel page shows you exactly where the flow gets stuck on the way down, so you know which step to fix first.

What you see

From top to bottom, the page is built from a few clear parts.

A page title that reads “Funnels”, with the date range you are looking at shown nearby, for example “Last 30 days” with the two calendar dates spelled out.
The step builder. This is where you list the steps of your funnel in order. Each step is one thing a visitor does. A step can be a page visit (someone opened a certain page) or an event (someone did a certain action, like clicking a button you named). You can have just two steps or many. The order matters, because a funnel is about the path from first to last.
The funnel chart itself. Each step is drawn as a bar or a block, stacked in order from the first step at the top to the last step at the bottom. The first step is the widest because everyone starts there. Each step below is a little narrower, because some people did not continue. The shrinking shape is the story.
For each step, leadmaps shows three numbers: how many people reached that step, the conversion rate from the step before (the share of people who continued), and the drop off (the share of people who left at that point). The biggest drop off is the spot that is costing you the most.
An overall conversion rate for the whole funnel, which is the share of people who started at step one and made it all the way to the final step.

A “conversion” just means a person moved from one step to the next. It does not have to be a sale. It is any step you decided to measure. “Conversion rate” is the percentage of people who kept going.

How to read it

Read a funnel from top to bottom, and look for the step with the biggest drop.

Here is a worked example. Say you run an online store and you build this four step funnel for the “Last 30 days”:

View product page: 10,000 people.
Add to cart: 4,000 people.
Start checkout: 3,200 people.
Purchase: 2,400 people.

Now read the gaps between the steps.

From step 1 to step 2, you went from 10,000 to 4,000. That is a 40 percent conversion, and a 60 percent drop off. Six in ten people who looked at a product never added it to the cart.
From step 2 to step 3, you went from 4,000 to 3,200. That is an 80 percent conversion. Most people who add to cart do start checkout, which is healthy.
From step 3 to step 4, you went from 3,200 to 2,400. That is a 75 percent conversion. One in four people who started checkout did not finish.
The overall conversion, step 1 to step 4, is 2,400 out of 10,000, which is 24 percent.

What does this tell you? The biggest leak is between viewing a product and adding to cart, where you lose 6,000 people. That is where to focus first, because fixing the widest leak helps the most. The checkout steps are leaking too, but less. A good habit is to fix the biggest drop, wait a week, then look again to see if the shape improved.

One thing to keep in mind: people move through your funnel one step at a time and in order. Someone has to reach step 2 before they can count toward step 3. So a later step can never have more people than an earlier one. If the numbers ever look the other way, double check that your steps are in the right order.

Customize it

You shape the funnel with the controls on the page. Here is each one and when to use it.

Add a step. Use the add button to put a new step at the bottom of the funnel. Add a step when you want to measure one more stage in the path. For example, if you only had “view product” and “purchase”, add an “add to cart” step in between so you can see where the drop really happens.
Remove a step. Delete any step you no longer want. Remove a step when it is muddying the picture, or when you want to compare a shorter path. For example, drop the “start checkout” step to see the plain “cart to purchase” rate on its own.
Reorder steps. Drag steps up or down to change their order. Reorder when you got the sequence wrong, or when you want to test a different expected path. The funnel always reads top to bottom, so the order is the path.
Choose a page or an event for each step. For every step you decide whether it is a page visit or an event. Pick a page when the step is “someone landed here”, like a pricing page or a thank you page. Pick an event when the step is “someone did this”, like clicking “Add to cart” or submitting a form. Use events for actions that can happen on many pages, and use pages for clear destinations.
Set the time window to finish. This is how long a visitor has to complete the whole funnel and still be counted. Set a short window, like one hour, when you expect people to finish in one sitting, such as a checkout. Set a longer window, like seven days, when the journey naturally takes time, such as researching a product over several visits before buying. If the window is too short, you will undercount people who came back later to finish.
Set the date range. Use the calendar to pick the period the funnel covers, such as the last 7, 30, or 90 days, or a custom start and end day. Every number updates to match. Use a short range to check a recent change, and a longer range to smooth out daily ups and downs and get a stable read.
Scope to one website. If you track more than one website, you can narrow the funnel to a single site so its numbers are not mixed with the others. Use this when a step, like a certain page, only exists on one of your sites, or when you simply want one site’s path on its own.

Use cases

Checkout drop off in an online store. Build the funnel view product, add to cart, start checkout, purchase. Look for the step with the biggest drop. Action: if most people leave at “start checkout”, your checkout may be asking too much, so try removing a required field or showing shipping cost earlier, then check the funnel again next week.
Signup completion for an app or service. Build the funnel visit signup page, enter details, confirm email, first login. Action: if many people enter details but never confirm email, your confirmation message may be landing in spam or the link may be confusing, so fix the email and watch the confirm step recover.
Onboarding for a new user. Build the funnel account created, complete profile, take the first key action (for example, create a first project), invite a teammate. Action: if people create an account but stop before the first key action, your getting started flow is too steep, so add a guided first step or a sample to copy, then see if more people reach that action.

Tips

Start with two or three steps, not ten. A short funnel is easier to read and the biggest leak usually shows up right away. Add more steps only once you know where to look closer.
Fix the biggest drop first. The widest leak is where you lose the most people, so a fix there pays back the most. Chasing a small 5 percent drop while a 60 percent drop sits above it is wasted effort.
Pick the time window to match real behavior. A checkout that people finish in minutes wants a short window. A considered purchase that takes days wants a longer one. The wrong window makes a healthy funnel look broken.
Use events, not just pages, for the steps that matter. A button click is a much stronger signal of intent than simply landing on a page, so measure the action itself where you can.
A brand new funnel on a brand new site can look empty. People have to actually walk the steps before numbers appear, so give it some real traffic first. An empty funnel on a fresh site is expected, not a fault.