Analytics | Reading the Conversion Funnel

Every sale climbs a ladder: visit → view a product → start checkout → pay. Customers fall off at every rung. The funnel view of your analytics shows the fall-off per step — and each step has its own medicine.

Reading the steps

• Big drop before product views — traffic quality or homepage/categories failing to engage. The problem is merchandising or ad targeting, not checkout.

• Big drop at product pages — photos, price presentation, missing information (sizes, delivery times), or weak reviews. Work the product page (see Products | Media and Plugins | Product Reviews).

• Big drop at checkout start — shipping shock is the classic. Check rates against expectations with the Rate Tester, and look at your free-shipping threshold.

• Drop during payment — friction or fear: payment methods missing, errors, or a checkout that feels off-brand. The abandoned-checkout list shows the casualties (see Orders | Abandoned Checkout Recovery).

Working the funnel

1. Find the single biggest percentage drop — that's your bottleneck.

2. Fix that one step. Re-measure next week. Only then move to the next step.

Tips

• A small improvement at the worst step beats polishing the best step — the compounding runs through everything downstream.