Funnels

A funnel measures step-by-step drop-off through an ordered sequence of conversions. Where a goal counts how many people converted, a funnel shows where they fell off on the way.

What a funnel measures

A funnel is 2 to 8 ordered steps. Each step references one of your saved Goals. The report shows how many visitors reached each step, the drop-off between consecutive steps, and the end-to-end completion rate from step 1 to the final step.

Each visitor is counted at the deepest step they reached, so the bars naturally decrease from left to right. Someone who completed step 1 and step 2 but not step 3 is reflected in the step 1 and step 2 counts, not step 3. The first step is always the population: everyone in step 1 is treated as 100%, and subsequent percentages are calculated against that baseline.

Reading the funnel chart

The chart renders as a row of bars on the Funnels tab in the dashboard's right-side panel (next to Pages, Sessions, and Goals).

Each bar's height is the cumulative reach at that step, scaled against step 1. The percentage inside each bar is the survival rate from step 1, and the count is the absolute number of visitors who made it that far. The faint dashed area above each bar represents the drop-off from the previous step. The headline conversion rate above the chart is the percentage that completed every step from start to finish.

For very short bars (low conversion at a given step), the label sits just above the bar's top edge so it stays readable.

Creating a funnel

Open Settings → Goals & Funnels, switch to the Funnels sub-tab, and click Add Funnel.

Drag the handle on the left of each row to reorder. The same goal cannot appear in two steps of the same funnel. If a step you need does not exist as a goal yet, switch to the Goals sub-tab to create it, then come back.

Strict vs relaxed order

By default a funnel runs in relaxed order. Visitors can do other things between steps and still count: they can revisit step 1, fire other events that are not part of the funnel, hit pages that are not steps. As long as steps 1, 2, 3 happen in that order for them within the window, they count.

Strict order is unforgiving. Every step must happen in exact consecutive order with no other tracked events in between. A visitor who hits step 1, then any other pageview or click, then step 2, will not count toward step 2.

For most marketing, signup, and onboarding flows, relaxed order is what you want. Real users wander. Strict order is useful for short, tight UX paths where you specifically want to verify visitors completed steps without distractions.

The 24-hour completion window

A funnel measures completions that happen within 24 hours of step 1. If a visitor hits step 1 today and step 2 next week, they will not count.

This is by design. Visitor IDs in Clickport rotate at local midnight to keep tracking cookieless. There is no persistent identifier that carries across days, which is what makes the privacy posture honest, so 24 hours is the longest meaningful sequence the system can correlate as a single visitor.

When to use a funnel

Funnels are the right tool for short ordered sequences where each step is a distinct moment of progress. Common shapes:

• SaaS signup: pricing page → register → activation page → first action
• Ecommerce checkout: product view → cart → checkout → confirmation page
• Lead-gen: landing page → demo form view → form submit → thank-you page
• Content to subscriber: article view → newsletter form view → subscribed

If you only care about a single conversion event with no preceding sequence, that is a goal, not a funnel. Skip the Funnels surface and use the Goals panel directly.

Filters and segmentation

Funnels respect the dashboard's date range and most cross-filters. Apply a source or country filter and the funnel recalculates against just that segment, so you can compare "what does my signup funnel look like for German visitors vs US visitors" or "is paid traffic converting better than organic."

Two filter types are incompatible and show an empty-state message on the funnel panel:

• Goal filter: a goal filter already narrows the population to visitors who hit one specific goal, which defeats the purpose of measuring the path TO a goal.
• Page filter: a page filter narrows by page, which collides with how the funnel matches step pages.

Clear those filters to bring the funnel back. Funnels are also disabled in realtime mode because the 30-minute realtime window is shorter than any meaningful funnel and the data is too volatile.

Goals and funnels are linked

Funnel steps reference saved goals by ID, not by URL. Renaming a goal is fine, but deleting one that is still referenced by a funnel is hard-prevented: the goals save handler returns a 409 error listing which funnels use the goal, and the UI surfaces the blocking funnels.

To remove a goal that is in a funnel, edit each referencing funnel first and either remove or replace the step, then come back and delete the goal. The error message tells you exactly which funnels to clean up.

Troubleshooting

The chart shows zero conversions

The most common cause: step 1 references a goal that does not actually fire for most of your traffic. Example: a "Registered" goal pointing to /register when the live signup form actually lives at /login. Open the Goals panel and check the visitor count for each step's underlying goal in isolation. If step 1 has 100 visitors and step 2 has 50 visitors independently, but the funnel shows 0 between them, then none of those 50 step-2 visitors hit step 1 first (or did so more than 24 hours apart).

Funnel numbers are lower than my Goals panel

That is expected. The Goals panel counts every visitor who hit each goal independently. The funnel only counts visitors who hit step 1 AND step 2 AND step 3 in sequence, with the same visitor ID, within 24 hours. Funnel numbers will always be a subset of the underlying goal counts. The whole point is measuring the full journey, not each step in isolation.

I cannot delete a goal that is in a funnel

That is the hard-prevent constraint described above. The error message lists which funnels reference the goal. Edit each one, swap or remove the step, then retry the delete.

I need more than 8 steps

8 is the hard cap. Past that, the chart becomes unreadable and the underlying query gets expensive. If you genuinely have a 10+ step flow worth tracking, split it into two funnels at a logical midpoint. For instance: "Acquisition" (landing → register → first dashboard view) and "Activation" (first dashboard view → goal configured → first invoice).