Analysing the Conversion Funnel: Where You Lose Visitors

Imagine your website like a shop with several rooms. Lots of people come in at the front, but in the end only a fraction actually buy something. The interesting question isn't "how many come in?", but "in which room do most of them turn back?". That is exactly what a conversion funnel makes visible: it shows the path from the first visit to the enquiry as a staircase with several steps, and reveals on which step your visitors slip away.

In this post I'll explain, without jargon, how such a funnel is built, how you measure each step and how you find the one leak that costs you the most money.

What a conversion funnel actually is

"Funnel" simply means a shape that's wide at the top and narrow at the bottom, just like your visitor numbers. At the top land everyone who opens your page. On each further step, a portion falls away, until at the bottom only those remain who really enquire, buy or call. This last step is called a conversion, the desired goal a visitor fulfils.

A typical funnel for an SME has four or five steps. For example: homepage visited, service page viewed, contact form opened, form submitted. Each of these steps you can measure, and that's exactly the point. As long as you only know the total number of visitors and the number of enquiries, you know that you're losing people along the way, but not where.

Why the effort is worth it

Most businesses try to get more enquiries by attracting more visitors, through advertising, social media or search engine optimisation. That's expensive and slow. But if half the people drop off at one step in your funnel, it's far cheaper to plug that one leak than to bring in twice as many visitors.

An example: out of 100 visitors, 30 open your contact form, but only 6 submit it. That means 24 out of 30 abandon at the form. There's obviously a problem here, maybe the form is too long, asks for too much or doesn't work properly on mobile. Bring those 6 up to 12 and you've doubled your enquiries, without putting a single franc into advertising.

Defining the steps of your funnel

Before you measure anything, you should know which steps you even want to track. Sketch the ideal path a visitor takes to the enquiry. For most SME websites it looks something like this:

• Entry: the visitor lands on your page, no matter which channel.
• Interest: they click further, for instance to a service or about-us page.
• Intent: they open the contact form or the phone number.
• Conversion: they submit the form, call or write an email.

Important: keep it simple. Three to five steps are plenty. A funnel split too finely just confuses instead of helping.

Making each step measurable

For the funnel to come alive with numbers, your analytics tool has to capture each step. Google Analytics sees page views out of the box. For the decisive actions, form opened, form submitted, phone number clicked, you need so-called events. These are small markers that fire the moment someone does something specific.

In modern tools like GA4, such events can be set up without programming knowledge, and this data then feeds your funnel report. The funnel report subsequently shows you, for each step, how many visitors reached it and how many continue to the next. The percentage in between is your early-warning system.

Finding and plugging the leak in the funnel

Now look at which two steps have the biggest drop between them. That's where your main leak is. With a sharp drop, this honest self-questioning is worth it:

• Are many already bouncing on the homepage? Then maybe the message doesn't match visitors' expectations.
• Does hardly anyone click through to the service page? Then the next step is too invisible or unappealing.
• Is the form opened but not submitted? Then it's too complicated, too long or arouses distrust.

Always change only one thing at a time and observe for a few weeks whether the step improves. That way you know for sure what worked. This patient approach is more boring than a big relaunch, but it reliably brings more enquiries.

Start small

You don't have to build the perfect funnel overnight. Begin with the two most important steps: how many open the contact form, and how many submit it? These two numbers alone say more about your business success than any pretty visitor chart. Over time you add more steps, until you have the whole path in view.

If you're unsure how to set up these steps cleanly or interpret the numbers correctly, I'm happy to help. Get in touch with no obligation via the contact form, I'll set up the conversion funnel for you in an understandable way and show you where your greatest potential lies. You'll find more tips on websites and visibility in further posts here on the blog.