It’s a tale as old as (commerce) time – you have a shop, visitors are swinging through, but they don’t buy anything. In the language of websites, it might not be a sale you’re after – it could be signing up for your email list or requesting a free consultation. What gives?
People are taking detours, hitting roadblocks, or they’re veering off course entirely. In other words, you have a website conversion leak problem. As a Charlotte web designer, we can say the solution is understanding your customer’s journey and redirecting them.
Generally, customers follow a simple path from not knowing your brand to becoming your customer:
- Awareness
- Interest
- Consideration
- Engagement
- Purchase
- Experience
- Advocacy
At each step down the funnel, you’ll have fewer customers than in the one before, which is exactly what you want. BUT you don’t want to lose people unnecessarily. In other words, you want your ideal customer/client to do the thing you’re directing them toward, not drop off because your consultation form is too laborious. How do you knooooow? Is there a crystal ball you can consult?
As a Charlotte web design company, we love a good crystal ball but what we love even more is data. You can use an analytics tool like Google Analytics to visualize the exact drop-off points in your customers/clients’ journeys so you can do something about it.
According to this report, companies that implement customer journey management see some eye-popping results:
- 54% greater return on marketing investment
- 10x improvement in customer service costs
- 5x greater revenue from customer referrals
- 18x faster average sales cycle
- 56% more cross-sell and up-sell revenue
What makes Google Analytics 4 (GA4) so cool? Unlike Universal Analytics (UA), which used a session-based model, GA4 uses an event-based model that tracks every single interaction. Everything is an event – page views, button clicks, video plays – GA4 captures it all. It also follows users across devices, spots patterns and anomalies humans might miss because it’s AI, and has visualization tools to see paths and funnels.
GA4 has four main sections:
- Reports, which show how users accessed your site, where they came from, and what they’re doing.
- Explore, an advanced interface for custom reporting and sophisticated visualizations.
- Advertising, that provides insights into conversion performance across channels.
- Configure, which is a management tool for custom events and dimensions to track specific journey touchpoints.
Together, these four sections give you a comprehensive view of how users navigate your website. I won’t get into all these sections but let’s start with the first one. “Path Exploration” maps real customer routes. It shows the sequence of pages users visit and actions they take on your website, revealing both successful paths and problematic detours. You’ll find it under Explore > Path exploration.
By default, the default path goes from session start to page view, and either a click, a first visit, or a new session. If you want to check a specific path from the beginning, click “start over” at the top right, and you can build the path by adding a start and end event or page.
Path exploration shows two perspectives: forward-moving analysis, or what happens after users visit a particular page or trigger an event, and backward-moving analysis, which reveals what led users to a specific page or action.
You’ll want to start with your highest-traffic entry pages and follow the paths to see where users go next. Identify where they drop off before reaching conversion points.
From backward moving, start with your conversion events (purchases, sign-ups, etc.) and trace backward to see the paths that led to successful conversions. Identify the common patterns in successful journeys and add strategic calls to action (CTAs) on pages that frequently appear before abandonment.
It can also help to simplify navigation between commonly connected pages in successful paths. Other tips from your favorite Charlotte web designer?
- Create shortcuts to conversion points from high-traffic pages.
- Remove or redesign pages with high exit rates in the middle of journeys.
There’s more to explore with GA4 (I’m a poet and didn’t know it!) but we’ll leave it there for now. Remember, you don’t have to stop a website conversion leak by yourself – this Charlotte web design company is here to help. We can set up GA4, analyze the data, and chat with you about potential solutions.
Get in touch with us via email or call (704) 336-9113.
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