Workshop: Ecommerce Funnel

The Digital Analytics weekly workshop on the 28th May 2021 was on the topic of the Ecommerce Funnel. This is a tool I have used for many years with ecommerce websites. The power of it comes from your performance against a set of targets so you can identify the stage of the funnel with the largest performance gap. Your business should focus your efforts on improving this stage as that is where you can have the biggest impact on your bottom line.

It is so easy too, with only six numbers needed to create your own Ecommerce funnel.

The video below is the recording from this workshop. I talk through the concept of the Ecommerce Funnel, how to get the numbers to create your own funnel and what the targets are. Once you identify the stage of the funnel where you have the biggest issue, I talk through potential causes and how to find which is impacting your business. Throughout I answer question from the attendees.

The original blog post for the Ecommerce funnel can be found on the Ecommerce Guide website.  My answers to audience questions are provided below the video. And there is a button at the bottom of the screen to download a PDF of the deck from the workshop.

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Audience Questions

Do you know if the key stats you nominated are possible/easy/accurate to pull out of Shopify specifically? Avoiding the need for Google Analytics wrangling.

Unfortunately not something I know. These are only six numbers and they are the six key numbers for any website using Shopify (in my opinion) so I would like to think so. My cynical side says it is unlikely.  I would also suggest that it shouldn’t be thought of as GA wrangling but instead of setting GA up to the minimal standard necessary to do analytics properly. Once the set-up is in place, extracting the data takes minutes.

Hi! I didn’t get what “shop on website” means. Apparently it’s not the same as “place order”. Where do you get that number? 

Not everyone who visits a website (& not everyone who walks into a retail store) is a potential customer. Some people are there to return a product, to send through their CV, to speak to the manager or to read a blog post. The visitor intent of being on a shopping visit is inferred by visiting any ecommerce page e.g. product list, search results, product details, basket, checkout process. So this data point is the number of session where a visitor views any of these pages.

Not able to get all stats but one question for me – should you expect different standards in B2B vs B2c?

This is a very important question. The targets I use were quoted off the top of the head of my boss from many years ago Matthew Todd. I do not adjust for different sectors or types of retail business – obviously they would be different, especially for B2B vs B2C businesses. 

I do think they are useful even without being customised. They are intended as stretch targets (not benchmarks) so you can calculate performance gaps and compare between stages. The point isn’t to get an accurate performance gap by stage but to know which stage should be focused on first. The targets used should be good enough for that purpose.

Would you recommend using something like Hotjar to diagnose drop-off problems once flagged in analytics?

Definitely. With the Ecommerce funnel, you can identify the stage where the most work is required. With web analytics tools, you should be able narrow down the cause (occasionally identify it). Then you will need other tools to identify the WHY – user testing, session recording, user surveys, etc. But the web analytics tools will make it a much faster process by (hopefully) pinpointing the stage of the visitor journey or website where the drop off is occurring.

Any More Questions?

Get in touch in the comments with any questions you have yourself. I would be happy to have a discussion if you would like our advice & support to build your own Ecommerce funnel and how to use it to improve your business performance.

Don’t forget to follow along for future Digital Analytics weekly workshops – held in your lunch hour if you are based in Europe (1pm CEST).