How to Create a Google Analytics 4 Funnel Exploration

Tracking how users navigate your site is crucial for finding and fixing roadblocks in their journey. A funnel exploration report in Google Analytics 4 is your best tool for visualizing this process, pinpointing precisely where potential customers drop off before converting. This article will walk you through, step-by-step, how to build and analyze these essential reports in GA4 to improve your conversion rates.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

What is a Funnel Exploration in GA4?

Think of a funnel exploration as a map that shows the specific path you want users to take to complete a goal, like making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter. This report visualizes each step of that journey and shows you how many people advance to the next step versus how many leave. It answers critical business questions like:

• What percentage of users who add an item to their cart actually start the checkout process?
• Where in our multi-page sign-up form are we losing the most people?
• Do mobile users drop off at a different stage than desktop users?

By identifying the "leakiest" parts of your funnel, you can focus your efforts on improving those specific pages or experiences to guide more users toward your goal.

Open vs. Closed Funnels

Before building your report, it's important to understand the two types of funnels you can create in GA4:

• Closed Funnel: Users must enter at the very first step of your defined path to be included in the report. This is useful for analyzing strict, linear journeys where you don't expect users to jump into the middle of the process.
• Open Funnel: Users can enter the funnel at any step. For example, if your second step is visiting the cart, a user who bookmarked that page and visits it will be included on that step going forward. This is great for analyzing behavior when users might not always follow the "perfect" A → B → C path. As of Fall 2022, GA4 made new templates closed for every exploration, making step 1 a “gate” unless you manually switch over. This seems to be the most desirable condition for marketers and analysts.

First Things First: Solid Event Tracking is Everything

Your funnel exploration report is only as reliable as the data it’s built on. In GA4, funnels are defined by a sequence of events. If you aren't tracking the specific actions that define each stage of your user journey, you won't be able to build an effective funnel.

Make sure you have events configured for every critical step. For many common funnels, these events might be automatically collected by GA4's enhanced measurement or standard e-commerce tracking. For others, you may need to set up custom events.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Example Funnel Events

E-commerce Purchase Funnel:

• Step 1: Views a product detail page (Event: view_item)
• Step 2: Adds a product to the cart (Event: add_to_cart)
• Step 3: Begins the checkout process (Event: begin_checkout)
• Step 4: Adds shipping information (Event: add_shipping_info)
• Step 5: Submits payment information (Event: add_payment_info)
• Step 6: Completes the purchase (Event: purchase)

Lead Generation Funnel:

• Step 1: Lands on a specific campaign page (Event: page_view with a specific page_location)
• Step 2: Clicks the CTA to open the form (Custom event, e.g., cta_click)
• Step 3: Successfully submits the form (Event: generate_lead)
• Step 4: Views the thank you page (Event: page_view with a specific thank you page URL)

If you haven't defined custom events for your unique user journeys, pause and set those up first in Google Tag Manager or your site's code. Clean data means valuable insights out.

How to Create Your GA4 Funnel Exploration Report: A Step-by-Step Guide

With your event tracking in place, you're ready to build the report.

Step 1: Get to the Explore Section

In the left-hand navigation menu of Google Analytics, click on Explore. This brings you to the Explorations hub where you can build custom reports. Either choose the Funnel exploration template from the gallery or click on Blank exploration to start from scratch. Using the template is the fastest way to get started.

Step 2: Define Your Funnel Steps

Once you're in the exploration canvas, the right set of tools for modification will be “Tab Settings”. Find the Steps section in the Tab Settings panel on the right. This is where you’ll define the user path you want to analyze.

Click the pencil icon to edit the steps:

1. Give your first step a name (e.g., "Viewed Product").
2. Choose the event that corresponds to this step from the dropdown list. For our example, select view_item.
3. Click Add step to add the next stage of your funnel. Name it "Added to Cart" and choose the add_to_cart event.
4. Continue adding steps for your entire funnel, like begin_checkout and purchase.

You can also add more granular parameters to each event. For instance, instead of just the page_view event for a landing page, you can add a parameter for page_location and specify the exact URL you want that step to be about.

Step 3: Make it an Open or Closed Funnel

At the top left of the Steps configuration panel, you'll see a toggle to choose between a Closed funnel and an Open funnel. By making this selection, you opt into one group of analysis out of two. An open funnel will bring in users who meet the criteria of, for example, adding payment information, but do not satisfy the prior cart addition criteria, etc. Select your desired setting, knowing this will fundamentally change how to read this report.

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

Step 4: Breakdown Your Data with Dimensions

Viewing the overall funnel is helpful, but the real power comes from segmenting the data. The Breakdown section allows you to slice your funnel by a specific dimension to compare performance across different user groups.

In the Variables panel (left sidebar), click the "+" next to Dimensions to import any dimensions you want to use. Then, drag a dimension from the Variables panel over to the Breakdown box in the Tab Settings panel. Common breakdowns include:

• Device category: Compare drop-off rates for mobile vs. desktop vs. tablet users.
• Session source / medium: See if users from Google organic search convert better than users from a paid Facebook ad campaign.
• Country: Understand if your checkout process has issues in specific geographic regions.

Step 5: Right Click Options

Say you see interesting trends for one of your breakdowns, such as traffic source. You could right-click in any portion of bars within your funnel report to “Create segment” out of a specified set of users. If desktop is 2x faster, has ½ completion rate but double purchase value, one might examine desktop users who reach that step by building into a user segment. This lets you chain reports in the same exploration tab for endless customization and deeper diving.

Step 6: Use the ‘Next Actions’ Table to See Where Users Go

The standard visualization is great for seeing drop-offs, but it doesn't always tell you why people left. This is where 'next actions' shines. Beneath the main funnel chart, you'll find the Next Actions table.

To use this, hover your cursor over the abandonment block for a particular funnel step (the white part of step's total users bar indicating abandonment), and a tooltip reveals what a user’s most common next action (if any) is. Knowing where that subset of abandoning users next go is vital: perhaps 25% of users go back to shipping. Is a lack of payment information preventing future purchases?

Graphed

Still Building Reports Manually?

Watch how growth teams are getting answers in seconds — not days.

Watch the Demo

How to Read and Analyze Your Funnel Report

Once your report is configured, you need to interpret the story it's telling you.

• Focus on Abandonment Rate: The space from the end of completed users to the edge of the bar shows how many people leave your process completely. Huge changes in color in one step indicate something needs to change fundamentally for better performance. For each step, note the drop-off percentage vs successful users moving on. A high abandonment rate means you've found a "leak" in your funnel that needs attention.
• Look for Trends in Your Breakdowns: Don't just look at the overall abandonment rate. If you added a breakdown like Device category, scan the bar charts or table to see if one segment performs significantly worse than others. This helps you narrow your focus - for example, you might realize an issue in your checkout process only impacts mobile users.
• Use 'Next Action' Steps to Form a Hypothesis: After a user selects a shipping method, do they more-so go to ‘Promotions’? Well, did your promo banner display properly enough or often enough? This kind of questioning can build up to A/B testing or better. The strongest ideas for improving your conversion rates don’t come from best practices, but rather from YOUR data on problem spots to make better for YOUR user next time.
• Keep an Eye on Elapsed Time: GA4 shows time elapsed to gauge the gap between step 1 completing and step 2, etc., down the line. Is it taking users unusually long or multiple sittings according to your marketing automation data? Perhaps a long video keeps them engaged longer, but it’ll ultimately be telling to see your data from this time angle.

By putting these pieces of data in front of your internal web designers and marketing campaign managers, these insights turn into action. Better decisions, driven by facts and performance data, will move you closer to overall improvement with less guesswork. That is how optimization should continue throughout any website’s existence, so it's best to keep funnels around to monitor progress.

Advanced Tips for Your Funnel Explorations

• Building Audiences from "Leaks": If a cohort of users, for instance 25-34 males, just aren’t engaging: right-click where that part of the report is visualizing to build an audience. By opting people into these for use across the Google Marketing Platform, you can retarget them in your audience section, creating a new touchpoint. Perhaps users get served with an informational ad on trust-building, better return policy, or other reasons to overcome sticking points. It’s a popular way to connect GA4 user behavior analytics into marketing that can automatically change ROI for you.
• Using Follow Up Logic Constraints: For more specific funnels, each step can have “is indirectly followed by” (your event happens after but not necessarily next) versus your default “directly” next one in place. This can allow users' other interactions to not cause a ‘break’ in funnel continuity that may show what a typical user path through your property may actually encompass instead.
• Save and Rename Explorations: GA4 "Explorations" can serve you and your team best by using a clear naming structure so they don't all look the same. Make each report as clearly tied to specific goals or departments you would share this with! Save time and headaches for you again in 3 months when you try looking deeper by organizing on the main sections page up to today!

Final Thoughts

Setting up and analyzing a funnel exploration in Google Analytics 4 is one of the highest-impact activities you can perform to understand and optimize your website. By taking the time to define your user journey with events, build the visual report, and systematically analyze drop-off points, you can make data-driven decisions that lead to real improvements in conversions.

While diving into GA4's Explore reports is powerful, we know that recreating reports often and connecting sales data next to site behavior can bring back marketing headaches. At Graphed you can automate this process. You can connect all your data sources without hassle or technical know-how in minutes. Tell our generative AI dashboards what KPIs from each data source you need to combine for that perfect angle of all your company’s information. Graphed builds these dashboards for everyone’s use so they keep on watching the right data points as markets change with our constantly-refreshed data every time.