What is a Funnel in Google Analytics?

Ever wonder why so many visitors browse your products but never make it to the checkout page? Setting up a funnel in Google Analytics is the best way to answer that question. It shows you the exact steps users take on their way to a purchase - or any other goal - and, more importantly, where they give up and leave.

This article will explain what a conversion funnel is, why it's so important for understanding user behavior, and how you can build one step-by-step in Google Analytics 4.

What Exactly is a Conversion Funnel?

Imagine a real-world funnel you'd use in a kitchen. You pour a large amount of liquid into the wide opening at the top, and a smaller, more focused amount comes out of the narrow spout at the bottom. A marketing or sales funnel works the same way: a large number of people start at the beginning of the journey, but only a fraction of them finish by taking the action you want them to take.

In the context of your website or app, a funnel visualizes this journey. It’s a series of required steps a user must take to achieve a specific goal, like making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or booking a demo.

A classic e-commerce funnel might look like this:

• Step 1: Views a product page (Top of the funnel)
• Step 2: Adds the product to the cart
• Step 3: Starts the checkout process
• Step 4: Completes the purchase (Bottom of the funnel)

By mapping out this path, you move beyond simple metrics like pageviews and bounce rates. Instead, you get a clear, visual report showing you exactly how many people move from one step to the next and, critically, the exact percentage of users who drop off at each stage.

How Do Funnels Help Your Business?

Without funnels, you're flying blind. You might see that your overall conversion rate is low, but you have no idea why. Is the problem on your product pages? Is your shipping form too complicated? Is a technical bug preventing people from adding items to their cart? A funnel report helps you stop guessing and start making data-backed decisions.

Key benefits of using funnels:

• Pinpoint Friction and Drop-Offs: The primary benefit is finding the "leaks" in your user journey. If 80% of users who add a product to their cart never start the checkout, you know precisely where you need to focus your optimization efforts.
• Improve User Experience (UX): High drop-off rates often point to poor user experience. Maybe a button is hard to find, a form is too long, or a page loads too slowly on mobile devices. Fixing these friction points makes your site work better for everyone.
• Increase Conversion Rates: By identifying and fixing the biggest leaks in your funnel, you guide more users toward completing the desired action. Even small improvements at each step can lead to a significant increase in overall conversions and revenue.
• Understand Different Audience Segments: In Google Analytics 4, you can break down your funnel data by dimensions like device, country, or traffic source. This can reveal powerful insights, such as discovering that users from paid search ads convert at a much higher rate but mobile users are abandoning their carts.

Funnels: Universal Analytics vs. Google Analytics 4

If you've been using Google Analytics for a while, you might remember how funnels worked in Universal Analytics (UA). In UA, funnels were somewhat rigid. You defined them as part of a "Destination Goal," where you'd list the specific page URLs a user had to visit in a set order.

Google Analytics 4 threw that model out the window for something much more powerful and flexible: the Funnel Exploration report. Here's why it's a huge upgrade:

• Based on Events, Not Pageviews: GA4 is event-based, meaning you can build funnels from any tracked action - not just page loads. This could be a button_click, a form_submission, a video_play, or any custom event you've set up.
• Historical Data Analysis: Unlike UA, which only started collecting funnel data after you created the goal, GA4's Funnel Exploration reports are retroactive. You can create a funnel today and analyze user behavior from weeks or months ago.
• More Flexibility: You are not locked into a single user path. You can create "open" funnels (where users can enter at any step) or "closed" funnels (where users must start at step 1). The interface also makes it easy to add segments, breakdowns, and trended views on the fly.

The bottom line is that GA4’s funnels give you a much more accurate and sophisticated tool for analyzing user journeys.

How to Create a Funnel Report in Google Analytics 4 (Step-by-Step)

Ready to build one? It can seem intimidating at first, but once you understand the logic, it's pretty straightforward. Let’s create a sample funnel for a B2B SaaS company trying to track demo requests.

Our Example Funnel Goal: User books a demo. The Steps We Want to Track:

1. User visits the landing page.
2. User clicks the "Request a Demo" button.
3. User submits the demo request form.

Step 1: Navigate to the Exploration Hub

In the left-hand navigation menu of GA4, click on Explore. This will take you to the Exploration hub, where you can build custom reports. Click on the Funnel exploration template to start.

Step 2: Configure Your Funnel Steps

This is where you'll define the journey you want to track. In the "Tab Settings" column on the left, you'll see a section called Steps. Click the pencil icon to edit them.

Now, let’s define each step based on the events GA4 tracks.

• Step 1: Visited Landing Page We'll base this on a built-in event. Select the event: page_view Add a parameter (also called a filter): page_location + contains + /your-landing-page-url This tells GA4, "Start with anyone who viewed our specific landing page."
• Step 2: Clicked "Request a Demo" Button This will likely be a custom event that you or your developer needs to set up using Google Tag Manager. Let’s assume you’ve created an event called request_demo_click. Add a new step. Select the event: request_demo_click
• Step 3: Submitted Demo Request Form This is your conversion moment. Again, it’s usually a custom event. Let’s assume it’s named demo_form_submit. Add another new step. Select the event: demo_form_submit

Once you've defined your steps, click Apply in the top-right corner.

Step 3: Analyze and Refine Your Funnel

Instantly, GA4 will generate a bar chart visualizing your funnel. Now you can get to the good stuff: analysis.

• Choose Your Breakdown Dimension: Want to see if mobile users struggle more than desktop users? Drag the Device category dimension from the "Variables" column into the "Breakdown" box in the "Tab Settings" column. The funnel will instantly split into different series, showing you the journey for each device type side-by-side. You can do the same for Session source / medium to compare traffic from different channels.
• Change The Visualization: By default, you’ll see a "Standard funnel," which tracks how many people move to the next step. You can also switch to a "Trended funnel" view to see how the completion rate of each step has changed over time.
• Make it Open or Closed: Look for a toggle that says “Make open funnel.” A closed funnel (the default) requires users to enter at the very first step. An open funnel allows users to enter the journey at any step. Open funnels can be useful if, for example, a user bookmarks the "checkout" page and starts there instead of on a product page.

Interpreting Your GA4 Funnel Report: What to Look For

The report you just built is full of insights. Here’s how to read it:

• The Numbers Over Each Bar: This shows the total number of unique users who completed that step.
• Completion Rate: The percentage shown below the top number is the amount of users who moved on from the previous step. A high completion rate is good!
• Abandonment Rate / Drop-off: The inverse of the completion rate. If Step 2 has a completion rate of 25%, that means the abandonment rate is 75%. This is the metric that points you directly to your biggest problems.

When you see a significant drop-off between two steps, that's your cue to investigate. Ask questions like:

• Is the call-to-action on this page clear?
• Does this page have technical errors or slow load times?
• Are we asking for too much information in our form?
• Is there a discrepancy between what our ad promised and what the landing page delivers?

Applying different breakdowns (like device, country, or traffic source) can help narrow down the cause and prioritize your fixes.

Final Thoughts

Creating a funnel in Google Analytics 4 is one of the most effective ways to understand how users interact with your digital properties. It helps you move beyond vanity metrics and pinpoint the exact moments of friction that are costing you conversions, allowing you to focus your attention where it matters most.

As powerful as GA4's Funnel Exploration reports are, we believe getting insights shouldn’t require navigating a series of complex configuration menus just to ask a simple question about your business. Getting answers to questions like, "Show me my conversion funnel from paid ads last month," should take seconds, not hours of report-building. With Graphed, we connect directly to your data sources like Google Analytics, so you can build dashboards and reports by simply asking for them in plain English.