Comments on: Funnel Problems in Google Analytics

By: Steffen

Steffen — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 14:03:18 +0000

Hey there
Excellent article. Very helpful. However,I’m having similar problems as desribed in the final example. I can’t setup my funnel correctly, as step 2+3 shows the exact same numbers as the final step 5 (the confirmation page).
I’ve tried asking for help in the GA forum (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=6029d0ac4e9c91d4&hl=en), but no response. Maybe you’ll be able to point me in the right direction to solve the problem.
Here is an overview of the check-out at my site:

Step 1: /page1061.aspx
Step 2: /page1061.aspx?isbasket=1&pageid=1061&listid=-300050&orgorderid=0&action=order
Step 3: /page1061.aspx?isbasket=1&pageid=1061&listid=-300050&orgorderid=0&action=send
Step 4: (external pay window)
Step 5: /kvittering?ordrenr=54017575&rid=42822 (where “54017575&rid=42822″ is unique for every order).

Thank you.

By: Webmaster

Webmaster — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 02:15:21 +0000

@Michele — someone from LunaMetrics answered this question on the GA forum, right? If not here is the link
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Analytics/thread?tid=0a43159610e34441&hl=en

By: Michele

Michele — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 21:52:42 +0000

The problem I am having is that everyone ‘leaves’ after a particular step becasue we are using regex matching. But despite your examples I can’t figure out how to add to the step to keep track of them all. Here is the list of steps. 100% of the users ‘leave’ after Step 4 but at least 1/2 of them really are going on to the Step 5 url but it is not being tracked as being Step 5. Also the “Goal” has an order number in it but I thought that would be ok as it is a regex match, is that correct?

Step 1: /cover-editor/
Step 2: /Sign-In/
Step 3: /My-Covers/?ProjectId
Step 4: /Cart/
Step 5: /Cart/screen/registeraccount/checkout/true/
Step 6: /Cart/screen/checkoutshipping/dontupdateid/true/
Step 7: /Cart/screen/checkoutpayment/
Step 8: /Cart/screen/checkoutreview/paymentmethod/CreditCard/
Goal: /Cart/screen/orderconfirmation/ordernumber/100163/paymentmethod/CreditCard/

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:08:12 +0000

Monty — There are a variety of reasons why sometimes you see everyone exit and then re-enter. They could be related to the regular expressions — try those out in the filter at the bottom of the Top Content report and make sure you are ONLY matching the URLs you want for that step. If not, you may need to make them more specific.

Alternatively, sometimes it has to do with a code issue on the site and visitor’s cookies getting lost. If visitors change domains or subdomains (without setting those up properly in your Google Analytics code) or if the code on the final page isn’t set up the same way as the rest of the site, these can be causes.

Hope that gives you a few places to investigate.

By: Monty

Monty — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 17:40:14 +0000

Thanks Jonathan for this long-running thread!

Question on a non-working, but simple, regex. I’m trying to add funnels to a simple subscription flow, as follows:

Match type: regular expression match
Goal: funnel_G1/success

Step 1: not_logged_in_main_landing
Step 2: users/new

the Step 1 and Goal appear to be working fine (these are urls for the same main page, rewritten using an argument to _trackPageview).

However, the funnel report shows users coming into step 1, then exiting to “/www.foobar.com/users/new” — and entering the goal step from “/www.foobar.com/users/new”.

Any idea why our Step 2 might not be matching? I thought with regex we were fine matching any part of the url.

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 17:47:17 +0000

Rick — Unfortunately, that’s exactly what lookaheads do, and I can’t really think of another pattern that would work for you in this case.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 14:52:56 +0000

The negative lookaheads would have been perfect for what I need to do… are there alternatives? What I’m trying to do is add a funnel step which filters any URLs except one. E.g. urls not containing “/subdirectory1/”. Any ideas????

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 13:55:56 +0000

Reiner — Yes, you can certainly use virtual pageviews as goals or funnel steps. If for some reason you can’t differentiate the actual URLs, this is a decent workaround.

Cristina — If you have optional steps in your funnel, I would just leave them out. GA won’t show an exit and a re-entry for those, basically you show up leaving the funnel at the “lowest” place you got to in the steps (or achieving the goal, if you got all the way to the end). You can check the Top Content report to understand the use of the optional pages, but putting them in the funnel doesn’t really tell you anything.

Jens — As Robbin said, lookaheads (with ?!) no longer work in GA. The dollar sign is a good solution for those URLs, however.

By: Robbin

Robbin — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 01:49:03 +0000

Jens, that used to work. But then they took away negative lookahead. I would suggest that you end each regex with a dollar sign, like this: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1/Page 2$ — so that it can’t match to the pages further in the funnel. BTW, this would be a great contribution to my post on google analytics friendly design….

By: JensKSorensen

JensKSorensen — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 09:39:08 +0000

Hi Jonathan, a great post, but I have one issue which I hope you could explain.

I’m working on a huge site with long journeys, how would I go about adding regex’s so that I don’t track the same data for each step:

Step 1: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1
Step 2: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1/Page 2
Step 3: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1/Page 2/Page 3
Goal: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1/Page 2/Page 3/Page 4

I was thinking something like this:

Step 1: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1(?!(Page 2|Page 3|Page 4))
Step 2: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1/Page 2(?!(Page 3|Page 4))
Step 3: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1/Page 2/Page 3(?!(Page 4))
Goal: /www/Same 1/Same 2/Page 1/Page 2/Page 3/Page 4

I would really appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks.