Know where customers fail to convert - Measure your wins using Custom Funnels

Editor's Notes

• #2: Hello everyone! Good Evening and Welcome to Tatvic’s webinar series or as we call it #Tatvinars. While we start this webinar in a couple of minutes, please make sure you’re able to listen properly.   Hello, guys! I am Jyot Patel. I lead the Customer Success Manager team at Tatvic. *Pause* My team is responsible for generating insights for various Google Analytics 360 clients which include ecommerce retailers, publishers and lead gen companies. And I’d like to use this platform to share the knowledge that we’ve gathered with you. Because, what good is knowledge if you don’t share it! *Pause* Now, jumping to the topic that we’re going to cover today - “Know where customers fail to convert”
• #3: Hello everyone! Good Evening and Welcome to Tatvic’s webinar series or as we call it #Tatvinars. While we start this webinar in a couple of minutes, please make sure you’re able to listen properly.   Hello, guys! I am Jyot Patel. I lead the Customer Success Manager team at Tatvic. *Pause* My team is responsible for generating insights for various Google Analytics 360 clients which include ecommerce retailers, publishers and lead gen companies. And I’d like to use this platform to share the knowledge that we’ve gathered with you. Because, what good is knowledge if you don’t share it! *Pause* Now, jumping to the topic that we’re going to cover today - “Know where customers fail to convert”
• #4: Before I begin, let me share with you - key takeaways that you’ll get in next 30 minutes. In next 30 minutes, we’ll discuss Funnels and difference between marketing funnels and product funnels *Pause* (2) We’ll quickly understand Funnels in Google Analytics & their limitations. *Pause* (3) Then, we will check-out a very cool feature of Google Analytics 360 – “Custom Funnel” & see practical examples of using them *Pause* (4) In the end, I’ll share a “Secret” – on how to create Unlimited Magic Funnels in Google Analytics & show you the insight generation process using Magic Funnels. *Pause* (5) We’ll also understand couple of examples of how Magic Funnels can help identify UI/UX Errors
• #5: So, let’s dive in straight to the topic. This is an outline for today’s session.
• #7: Let me start with a question. How many marketers understand their customers completely? *Pause* We deal with more than 150 marketers every month. And going by those numbers, only 20% of the marketers actually understand their users, their context and are able to design a marketing strategy that pays-off. One of the very basic steps and a pre-requisite to engage users is to understand them. And to understand them you need funnels. Funnels remain one of the top insight generators for most Google Analytics users. I’ve seen people asking for city-wise funnels, source-wise funnels, *add more* Let’s have a look at a Marketing Funnel. It has 4 steps: Awareness – where you let people know about your products, *Pause* Interest – where users get some more inclination towards your product. *Pause* Desire – when interest turns in to a strong will to have the product & *Pause* Action – where users purchase your product The same marketing funnel also applies to your products as well. I’m sure all of you have created such funnels. For example, user visits Home Page * Pause* Then Browse Products Then Adds Products to Cart & Finally Purchase the product. If you’ve not created funnels, Google Analytics is the best place to start with this.
• #9: Let me show you a sample checkout funnel in Google Analytics – which starts from Billing Address > Shipping Adress > Payment > Order Completion You can use Page – that is Page URL for Web Funnels or Screens for App Funnels - to build such funnels.
• #10: How about actionability of these Funnels ? Some people use it to understand the drop-offs. Some of them use it as a reporting mechanism to report data to Senior Management! But, there is a problem! Do you remember when you last took an action based on Funnels? Have you ever changed your UI/UX based on Funnels? – A majority would say No Have you used insights from funnels for Marketing Optimizations? – Again, No! Sadly, Google Analytics funnels don’t have the capability to remarket dropped users. You can’t even segment the funnel with specific details like source or city. *Pause* So what is the solution? The solution is “Custom Funnels”
• #12: Custom Funnels, a GA 360 feature, is a MUST feature for any marketer or analyst out there. It solves lot of problems that exist with traditional GA funnels. For example, (Press & Show) However, *Pause* they’re not the best tools for UI Changes, Understanding User Journey & your users! – For these points, we’ll use Magic Funnels. Stay with me to see some magic!
• #13: Let’s quickly check-out Custom Funnels quickly. First > Go to your GA account > Select customization tab & click on the custom funnels tab. Let’s give it a good name “My First Custom Funnel” You can select an Analysis Type based on your analysis requirement : Different stages can occur in different session or all stages must occur within a session You can also select a funnel type as Closed if you want users to only enter at beginning of the funnel else, choose Open Funnel There are two metrics available based on which you can build funnels – Users & Sessions Another option called, sequent stage is very useful in deciding, if users should follow only a pre-defined path or can follow the steps in random order as well. Now is the time to define the stages! You can use almost all GA dimensions while creating a funnel. And we’re done!
• #14: And now for the important part! Let us quickly jump in to the use cases of Custom Funnels to understand how they can be useful to you while analyzing user journey! You can use “Events” as a part of funnel. One such example is shown here, Home Page to Category Page then used Filter to get the right product & Converted. Wait…can you create custom funnels for historical data as well? The answer is - “Yes”.
• #15: You can also use segments on custom funnels. For example, I’m using two different segments – 1. Facebook/cpc & 2nd Google/cpc to compare the results. *Pause* Such comparison between channels, device category can really be very insightful.
• #16: Now is the time for some action. You can actually create a remarketing list for dropped of users & start re-marketing them.
• #17: Another Good use case is sequences. Let’s take an example of a Publisher website, where people consume content. When we compared users coming via Paid search & organic to sports page & their conversion rate, you get lot of good insights. *Pause* Like, there is a high traffic from Organic, but low conversion rate. Now, isn’t this something you’d like to discuss this with your SEO team? And get the next steps of identifying lower performing urls?
• #18: However, Custom Funnels are not the complete solution. – We always expect much more from Google Analytics, right?
• #19: Like, At times, it becomes really hard to decide, which steps to include in funnel & which one to not! Custom Funnels are good, but at times it restricts you to go in to more details easily. You’ll have to do lot of iterations to find a very basic UI insights. *Pause* Even After spending long hours on Custom Funnels, you may NOT be sure that you now know the most followed journeys. Practically, there are also limitations on even creating goals that restrict you from analyzing even in more detail. So what is the solution? We call it “Magic Funnels”.
• #20: Let me share the trick here with you that you can use with your tracking. (1) We all know about the dimension called source/medium. What you need to do is to use Pagetype / User_Action as a proxy to source/medium. So, that means, every click of user becomes a new session in Google Analytics *Pause* (2) Now send this details to Google Analytics with a virtual pageview in a separate property using GTM. Also, you’ll have to define your Goals in Google Analytics. *Pause* (3) Your “Magic funnels are now ready in Top Conversion Paths report! Let’s have a look at the GTM configuration for this kind of advanced tracking.
• #21: It looks like a virtual pageview in GTM, however, we’re now passing the actual details in “Source” & “Medium” dimensions. *Pause* Let’s have a look at the report & insights that you can generate using data.
• #22: We worked with one of a lead generation client, which provides a way to sell cars online. Based on your car you select > you’ll need to provide more details & then you can generate an online quote & appointment for selling it.
• #23: This is a user journey recorded in Top Conversion Path report. Majority of the users were following the expected pattern, however, when we dive deeper, there were some unexpected patterns as well. *Pause* Users were actually coming back to the details page to change the values of the drop-downs to evaluate their cars. *Pause* Wow! May be to get another evaluation with different parameters? We’re now working with them on a Single-page form AB Test so that users don’t need to come back.
• #24: Another, very insightful stuff in this slide. This is a normal form completion flow – like dropdowns, text fields, email & then submit. Again most users were following the flow designed by product team, but some users were not willing to fill their email address & directly jump to submit the form. In such scenarios, they’d get errors & not be able to submit the form & may exit the site. *Pause* As a next step, we’ll try some creative ways to ask for emails & may be put email an optional field some day! Magic Funnels are the best way to understand the details on the journeys that actually convert!
• #25: We strongly encourage everyone, to use magic funnels to get insights & share your feedback on the idea. In case you require any help feel free to reach out to me on jyot@tatvic.com With this we end this webinar, but wish you all a very insightful year 2017. We’re now open for any questions.