What Is a Customer Journey? Beyond the Funnel

Dana's Stroller Journey, Step by Step

Let's follow one made-up shopper. Dana's expecting a baby and needs a stroller.

Stage	What Dana does	Can your store see it?
Hears about you	A coworker shows off a stroller from your store	No
Compares	Reads reviews and watches videos elsewhere	No
First visit	Finds you on Google, reads the product page on her phone, leaves	Yes, as one visit
Buys	Returns a week later on her laptop and orders	Yes
After the order	Gets shipping emails and the parcel, then asks how to fold it	Partly
Next order	Buys a rain cover two months later	Yes

Two of those six steps happen where no store can track them. And they may be the reason Dana picked your store.

What the Journey Means for Your Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate covers one stretch: store visits that end in an order. Only about 2 sessions in 100 ended with an order in our visitor data from 958 Shopify stores. A session is one visit. So Dana's first trip counts as a visit with no sale, even though she bought later.

That in-store stretch is your sales funnel. The journey is wider. It starts before that first visit and keeps going after the parcel arrives. For drop-off numbers at each store step, see the customer journey through your Shopify sales funnel.

Our app, Growth Suite, tracks product views, cart activity and checkout events. It uses them to predict who is likely to buy and who may leave. Our guide to dedicated buyers vs. walk-away customers explains the difference.

Where Shopify Shows Parts of the Journey

Order page: an online store order in Shopify admin has a conversion summary. It gives a short look at the visits before that order, when Shopify could track them.
Customer profile: lists past orders, so you can see who came back, like Dana.
Analytics reports: these add up visits, carts and checkouts across all your shoppers.

No report shows the coworker's tip or the reviews Dana read elsewhere.

Myth: The Journey Ends at the Order

It's easy to treat the order as the finish line. But for Dana, the shipping emails, the parcel and her question about folding it were all part of the trip. How those go can affect whether she buys again.

Watch the wording, too. Designers often use “user journey” for just one task on a site, like choosing a stroller and paying. If someone uses the term, ask which one they mean.