How to build Funnels in GA4

Funnel Exploration Report in Google Analytics 4

A funnel is a path that your website and/or mobile app users follow to reach specific goals (purchase, form submission, etc).  Funnels allow you to analyze problem areas on your website and find opportunities to improve it. It is also helpful for understanding users’ behavior and such kind of analysis lets you define specific users for future remarketing campaigns.

 

In Google Analytics 4 you can create funnels using the Explorations tab.

Let’s walk through the process of creating a funnel in GA4.

After clicking to create a new report you will see the report menu and preselected metrics, dimensions, and steps.

Funnel steps

In order to create your own steps, you need to click the pencil icon.

Then you can add or edit funnel steps.

I will show you how to create an example of ecommerce funnel in GA4.

 

We can keep “Session Start” as a previous step in our funnel. Or we can narrow this condition using filters under the “And” button in case we want to include users that started sessions on the home page, for example. If we need to filter by custom parameters we can use the “Add parameter” button.

We also can extend the step by adding conditions under the “Or” button. I need to say that filters are really flexible here and you can create even very specific conditions for analysis.

You can remove or edit unnecessary steps. To create the next funnel step, click the “Add step” button.

For the second and the next steps, you will see two new options: “is indirectly followed by” and “Within 5 minutes”.

In the left dropdown list, you can select whether the second step must directly follow the first one or not.

In the right-side menu, you can activate a checkbox and define the time frame during which users need to make this step-in order to be included in the funnel.

Other settings are the same as for the first step. You can define different conditions using built-in and custom parameters, “And”/ “Or” conditions.

So, for my eCommerce funnel, I can select the view_item event as a second step,

then add_to_cart event as a third step, begin_checkout as a fourth one, and the purchase will be the last one.

Example of ecommerce funnel in GA4

Now we can see how many people start a session on our website, saw the product page (view_item event), then how many of them added the product to the shopping cart (add_to_cart), start the ordering process (begin_checkout), and finally, how many of them did make a purchase.

Under red arrows, we see the drop-offs for each step, and near the step name, we see a percentage of users who proceed to another step.

Table and breakdown

In addition to the funnel chart, we also have a table at the bottom of the report. In this table, we also can see absolute values, completion rate, and abandonment rate split by breakdown dimension. By default, the breakdown is the Device category, but you can remove it or add your own dimension.

Next action

If you activate the “Next action” feature, you will see some additional information in the report. By hovering over the bars in the chart you can analyze the Top 5 next events after the step.

Make open funnel

We can turn on the “Make open funnel” toggle and make our funnel open. What it means. In an open funnel the user can enter the funnel at any step. In the closed funnel the first step is mandatory, and the user must follow funnel steps order.

So, depending on this small toggle your funnel can have a completely different look.

Show elapsed time

We can turn on the “Show elapsed time” toggle to display how much time users spend proceeding from one step to the next one.

Segments

You can use up to four segments in order to analyze specific sets of users. There are some popular built-in segments and also you can have your own segments. As a result, the chart and the table will be split into the selected segments.

Filters

If you want to restrict data by some criteria, you can use filters.

Trended funnel

All screenshots that were showed below are examples of classic standard funnel. But in GA4 you can also analyze how the data is performing over time. You can switch from Standard to Trended funnel in settings and chart will display data in dynamic.

When you have a lot of steps it is not a clear chart, but you can switch between specific events and see them over time:

Some restrictions

Here some restrictions that I saw in this kind or report in GA4:

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