Glossary · Compter
Sales funnel
A sales funnel is the sequence of steps a person goes through between their first contact with a brand and their purchase. It is called a funnel because it narrows: each step is crossed by fewer people than the one before.
Ce qui s’est réellement passé, humains d’un côté, robots de l’autre. The forty terms of the trade
What it is for
It turns “we are not selling enough” into a question that has an answer. A funnel with figures names the exact step where people stop, and it is rarely the one you suspected. Without it, you fix at random: you redo the advertising when it is the form that blocks.
How it is calculated
You count the people present at each step, then divide each step by the previous one. On an example: 1,000 clicks, 240 product pages viewed, 60 carts, 18 sales — that is 24%, then 25%, then 30%. The overall rate compares the last step to the first: 18 out of 1,000, or 1.8%.
The classic mistake
Reading a drop between two steps as a leak, when it is the measurement that stops. A funnel losing nine people out of ten between the click and the product page usually describes an untagged link or tracking that breaks along the way, not visitors walking out.
A funnel with figures, top to bottom
1,000
Clicks
The link is clicked. The only step measured off-site.
240
Product pages
One visitor in four looks at what is for sale.
60
Carts
One browser in four adds to the cart.
18
Sales
Three carts in ten go through to payment.
What Subtraq does with it
Subtraq does not draw a funnel: it records the three moments that form its skeleton — the click, the lead, the sale — and shows them per link and per channel. The intermediate steps specific to your site are counted in your own analytics tool.
Read next
Un terme seul ne sert à rien. Voici ceux qui le rendent utilisable.
Conversion rate
Read the definition →« Sales funnel », une fois posé sur de vraies ventes
The real question is not how many clicks, but which ones count. The report separates humans from robots, visits from people, and always says what it does not know.
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