A short guide to funnel analysis

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. Everything we would tell a client about funnel analysis in the time it takes to drink a coffee.

More dashboards rarely produce more decisions. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

Why this earns attention

The biggest drop-off is the best place to work. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

How we handle it

Segment by device before drawing conclusions. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

The mistakes we see most

A leaky funnel wastes every pound of ad spend. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

In practice

Data you do not trust is worse than no data, because it gets quoted anyway. Three things worth confirming about funnel analysis before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• The biggest drop-off is the best place to work — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.