What Is Funnel Analysis? Where Shoppers Leave

What Funnel Analysis Adds to Your Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate tells you how many visits end in an order. Funnel analysis breaks that number into the steps behind it, so you can spot the weak one.

A funnel is the path to buying. On a Shopify store it's often a visit, a product view, an add to cart, a checkout start and an order.

The analysis is the comparing. You check a step against last month, or one group of shoppers against another. On its own, one rate doesn't tell you much. When a rate moves, or differs between groups, you've got a clue.

Don't mix it up with a funnel report, which is the table of step counts and rates. Funnel analysis is what you do with it: comparing and questioning.

Splitting One Funnel by Device

Picture a made-up houseplant shop with 800 checkout starts and 450 orders last month. That's about 56% of checkouts turning into orders, which looks fine. Now split the same month by device.

Device	Checkouts started	Orders	Checkout to order
Phone	600	300	50%
Desktop	200	150	75%
All devices	800	450	56%

The store-wide 56% was hiding a gap: 75% on desktop, but only 50% on phones.

That gap doesn't prove the phone checkout is broken. Phone shoppers may browse more and buy later on a laptop. All the split tells you is where to look first.

Funnel Analysis on Shopify

Shopify's own analytics give you three funnel counts: sessions with an add to cart, sessions that reached checkout and sessions that completed checkout. A session is one visit, so a shopper who comes back three times counts three times.

Growth Suite (our app) records product views, cart activity and checkout events. Its five-stage Funnel Report shows where shoppers leave. For a stage-by-stage read, see our guide to funnel analysis using a Shopify funnel report.

Our visitor data from 958 Shopify stores found that about 8 of every 100 sessions reached the cart, and about 2 ended in an order. Those are averages across many stores. They're not a target for yours.

Your Funnel Doesn't Have to Match the Average

You might think a good funnel should match some industry average. It doesn't have to. A $300 jacket shop and an $8 sticker shop draw different shoppers. Their step rates can be far apart, and both can do well.

You'll learn more by comparing your funnel with itself: this month vs. last, phone vs. desktop, new vs. returning visitors. Still want outside context? See our Shopify conversion rate benchmarks by industry.