How to Create a Funnel in Google Analytics

Tracking how users move through your website isn’t just interesting data - it’s the key to understanding where they get stuck and drop off before completing a purchase or filling out a form. Google Analytics offers powerful tools to build a conversion funnel that visualizes this journey. This guide will walk you through setting up funnels in Google Analytics 4 with a quick look at how it worked in the classic Universal Analytics (UA).

What is a Conversion Funnel, Exactly?

Think of a conversion funnel as the series of steps a visitor takes on your website to accomplish a desired goal. For an ecommerce store, the classic funnel is the checkout process, for a B2B site, it might be the steps to download a white paper or request a demo. Each step represents a micro-commitment that leads the user closer to the final conversion.

By mapping this journey, you can identify the exact pages or interactions where users abandon the process. For example, you might discover that a huge percentage of users add items to their cart but never click the "Begin Checkout" button. This insight is gold because it directs you to the exact spot in your user experience that needs investigation and improvement. Is your shipping cost revealed too late? Is the button not prominent enough? A funnel report helps you ask these critical questions.

Funnels in Universal Analytics (UA) vs. GA4

Before we dive into the "how-to," it’s important to understand the significant differences between setting up funnels in the now-deprecated Universal Analytics and the current Google Analytics 4.

Universal Analytics (The Old Way): In UA, funnels were rigidly tied to “Destination Goals.” You had to pre-define a specific sequence of URLs that a user must visit. If a user skipped a step or took a different path, they were dropped from the funnel report. It was simple to set up but lacked flexibility.
Google Analytics 4 (The Modern Way): GA4 replaces this rigid structure with a much more powerful and flexible “Funnel exploration” report in its Analysis Hub. Rather than being limited to just URLs, GA4 funnels are based on a sequence of events (like view_item, add_to_cart, begin_checkout). This allows you to track user actions that don't necessarily involve loading a new page. You can also create “open” funnels (where users can enter at any step) or “closed” funnels (where they must start at the beginning), offering much deeper analytical capabilities.

How to Create a Goal Funnel in Universal Analytics (For Historical Context)

While Universal Analytics no longer processes new data, many businesses still have historical reports built with it. Understanding how these funnels worked can provide context, especially when migrating your reporting strategy to GA4.

In UA, funnels were always part of setting up a "Destination" Goal. Here was the process:

Step 1: Create a Destination Goal

The final step of your funnel was always a specific URL, usually a “Thank You” or “Order Confirmation” page.

Navigate to Admin > View > Goals.
Click +NEW GOAL.
Select a template (e.g., “Checkout complete”) or choose “Custom.”
Give your goal a descriptive name (e.g., “Completed Purchase”) and select “Destination.”
Enter the request URI of your confirmation page (e.g., /checkout/thank-you). A recommended practice here was to use "Begins with" instead of "Equals" to account for any parameters that might get added to the URL.

Step 2: Define the Funnel Steps

Once you defined the destination, you could enable the “Funnel” toggle. This revealed a section where you could define the preceding URL steps.

For a typical ecommerce checkout, it might have looked like this:

Step 1: Cart Page - Screen/Page: /cart
Step 2: Billing Info Page - Screen/Page: /checkout/billing
Step 3: Shipping Info Page - Screen/Page: /checkout/shipping
Step 4: Review Purchase Page - Screen/Page: /checkout/review

You’d mark a step as "Required" if you wanted to create a strict, closed funnel where users had to have come from the previous step to be included. After saving, you could view the results in the Conversions > Goals > Funnel Visualization report.

How to Build a Funnel in GA4 (The Modern Way)

Creating a funnel in GA4 is done within the “Explore” section and provides a much richer view of user behavior. Let's build a standard ecommerce checkout funnel.

Step 1: Identify Your Funnel Steps as Events

First, map out the user journey you want to track. Instead of pages, you’ll be using GA4 event names. For an e-commerce checkout, the standard enhanced ecommerce events are perfect:

Step 1: See an item - Event: view_item
Step 2: Add an item to the cart - Event: add_to_cart
Step 3: Start the checkout process - Event: begin_checkout
Step 4: Complete the purchase - Event: purchase

If you don't have custom events, you can still build funnels using page views. For this, your events would be page_view where the page_location parameter contains the specific URL of that step (e.g., page_location contains /cart).

Step 2: Verify Your Events Are Tracking

Before building the report, make sure GA4 is actually receiving these events. You can do this by going to Reports > Engagement > Events. You should see the events you plan to use in your list. If they're not there, you'll need to work with your website developer or use Google Tag Manager to set them up. Data can take up to 24-48 hours to fully populate, so don't worry if you don't see them immediately after setup.

Step 3: Create a Funnel Exploration Report

Now for the fun part. This is where you’ll actually build the visualization.

From the left-hand navigation, click on Explore.
This will open the Analysis Hub. Click on Funnel exploration from the template gallery to start a new report.
Under the “Settings” tab in the first column, you'll see a section called Steps. Click the pencil icon to edit them.

Here you will reconstruct the journey you mapped out in Step 1. For each step:

Step 1:
- Give it a name, like "Viewed Product."
- From the "Add new condition" dropdown, search for and select the event view_item.
Step 2:
- Click Add step.
- Give it a name, like "Added to Cart."
- Select the event add_to_cart.
Step 3:
- Click Add step.
- Give it a name, like "Began Checkout."
- Select the event begin_checkout.
Step 4:
- Click Add step.
- Give it a name, like "Purchased."
- Select the event purchase.

Once you've added all your steps, click Apply in the top right. GA4 will generate the funnel visualization in the second column.

Step 4: Customize and Analyze Your Funnel Report

GA4 gives you several powerful options right in the interface to deepen your analysis:

Open vs. Closed Funnel: At the top of the “Settings” tab, you’ll see a toggle to “Make funnel open.”
- Off (Closed Funnel): Users must enter through the first step (view_item). This is good for analyzing a specific, linear path.
- On (Open Funnel): Users can enter the funnel at any step. For instance, a user who abandoned a cart yesterday might return today via an email link that takes them directly to checkout. An open funnel will count them at the “Began Checkout” step, giving you a more holistic view of conversion.
Add Breakdowns: Drag a dimension like “Device Category” or “Session source / medium” into the "Breakdown" field. This will show you separate funnel bars for each value (e.g., desktop, mobile, tablet), allowing you to easily see if one segment underperforms. Are mobile users dropping off at a higher rate on the checkout page? This feature helps you spot that instantly.
See Elapsed Time: Beneath the funnel chart, GA4 shows the median time it takes for users to progress from one step to the next. A long delay could indicate confusion or friction at a specific step in your flow.

Interpreting Your GA4 Funnel Report

Once your report is built, the main goal is to identify the biggest drop-offs. The funnel visualization is a stacked bar graph where each segment represents a step. The number above each bar shows the count of users who completed that step, while the abandonment rate between steps is clearly displayed.

Focus on the largest percentage decreases. For example, if you see an 80% abandonment rate between “Added to Cart” and “Began Checkout,” that's a massive red flag. Now you can create a testable hypothesis: "I believe users are abandoning the cart page because hidden shipping fees are creating sticker shock. My proposed solution is to display estimated shipping on the cart page."

You can then drill down by applying different segments and dimensions. Does this drop-off mainly happen for users on a specific browser, from a certain country, or who arrived from a particular marketing campaign? Each layer of analysis brings you closer to a solution.

Final Thoughts

By mapping your conversion paths, you transform Google Analytics from a passive reporting tool into an active diagnostic one. Building funnels may seem a bit technical, but GA4's Exploration reports make it significantly more intuitive and powerful than it used to be. The insights you gain from spotting and fixing leaks in your customer journey are indispensable for growth.

However, spending hours building reports in Google Analytics can pull you away from the actual work of improving your business. If a native BI tool is too complex, we created Graphed to simplify the entire reporting process. You can connect all your data sources like Google Analytics, Shopify, and ad platforms in minutes. Then, using simple, plain English, you can ask for the exact chart or dashboard you need - like, "Show me a checkout funnel broken down by traffic source." We turn your questions into live, interactive dashboards automatically, freeing you up to act on insights instead of chasing data.