“Our conversion rate is low” identifies a problem but does not tell you what to do. When everything from arrival to enquiry sits in one lump, there is no basis for deciding whether to fix the advert, the landing copy or the form.
A funnel is not a sophisticated technique. It is simply cutting the path into a few steps — and the moment you cut it, the question “where are we losing people?” becomes answerable.
Cut by behaviour, not by page
Define steps by page name and every redesign breaks the funnel. Define them as behaviour — viewed pricing, opened the form, submitted — and the same funnel keeps working through layout changes. This is where the naming discipline from the previous part pays off.
Three or four steps is plenty. Split the path ten ways and each stretch holds so few people that you cannot tell a real change from ordinary noise.
Each stretch asks a different question
The value of a funnel is that the causes differ by stretch. Find the narrow one and the list of things worth fixing shrinks by itself.
A narrow first stretch usually means the promise and the landing page disagree. If the page does not deliver what the advert or the search result implied, people leave without reading. A narrow final stretch points at the form itself: number of fields, unclear required markers, unhelpful error messages.
Three traps when reading a funnel
① People who skip a step disappear. Some visitors enquire without ever seeing the pricing page. A funnel that insists on strict ordering counts them as drop-outs. Know whether yours is strict or loose, because the two produce different numbers from the same reality.
② Trusting a rate built on very few people. If the last stretch holds a handful, its percentage swings wildly week to week. Printing the count next to the rate largely cures this.
③ Mixing traffic sources together. Someone arriving from search is at a different stage of readiness than someone arriving from an advert. Averaged together, each hides the other’s problem — and separating them is exactly what the next part’s UTM discipline makes possible.
Designing conversion paths is covered further in the SEO archive, and you are welcome to open our own application form and see how the final step is put together.
Next part
To break a funnel down by source, the sources need labels. The next part is UTM tagging — when the labelling wobbles, one campaign splits into several rows and quietly understates itself.