Google Analytics Guide - Manual (Page 22)

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Setting Up Goals: Define the Funnel Path
http://www.yoursite.com/donationthankyou Donation Confirmation
http://www.yoursite.com
http://www.yoursite.com/donations
http://www.yoursite.com/donations/cart
Home Page
Donation Page
Thank You Page
The next step is to define your Funnel Path: the pages you expect visitors to click through to
reach a goal.
For example, if you are trying to track people who are making a donation on your site, this is
where you put in the URLs of all the pages they’ll likely visit on the way to making a donation and
getting your “Thank you for your donation” page. This funnel might include your homepage,
donation page, shopping cart page and finally your goal, or “Thank you,” page.
• For each funnel step, enter a full URL (including the “http://” prefix), and give the step a name
such as “Donation Page” or “Donation Check Out Page”.
While creating these steps is optional, we strongly recommended that you do so, since the
Defined Funnel Navigation report will show you how effectively you retain visitors throughout
the conversion process. When you define steps, you can see if visitors are taking the path you
expect, and where they may be losing interest.
If you run an e-commerce site, a recommended funnel would define the checkout steps that lead
up to a completed purchase. In this example, the funnel generally would not include individual
product pages -- rather, it would consist only of those final pages that are the same with all
transactions.