Interpret your funnel analysis

 

This article will help you: View and interpret funnel conversions Track conversions over time Test a variant against a baseline in an A/B test Create session-based funnels

Amplitude’s Funnel Analysis chart helps you understand how users are navigating defined paths ("funnels") within your product, and identify potential problem areas where users tend to drop off.

This article will describe how the Metrics Module of the Funnel Analysis chart works, and how you should interpret the data it contains.

Analyzing your funnel analysis data takes place in the screen’s lower panel.

Before you begin

If you haven’t already read the overview of Amplitude’s Funnel Analysis chart and our Help Center article on building a Funnel Analysis chart, you should start with those before continuing.

Interpret your Funnel Analysis chart

Interpreting the Funnel Analysis chart is more straightforward than it may at first appear, mostly because you can read through the parameters like a sentence.

For example, the following chart will show you (1) any users who (2) triggered all these events (3) in this order, (4) within one day of triggering the initial event.

All these parameters, as well as many others, can be easily changed to reflect the needs of your analysis.

The rest of this section will explain the Metrics Module as it applies to a funnel analysis, what all the parameter options mean, and how you can use them to generate the data you want.

Set your time options

Specifying the time frames of your funnel analysis is straightforward in Amplitude.  

• ...completed within: This is where you will set your conversion window, which is the maximum length of time allowed for a converting user to take between entering a funnel and completing it. The default conversion window is one day (in UTC). This means Amplitude will count a user as converted if they complete the funnel within one day of entering it; any longer than that, and the user will not be counted. The minimum conversion window length is one second, and the maximum is 366 days.
• any day: This applies to new user funnels only. If you select any day from the dropdown, the funnel will include new users who have performed the first step of the funnel at any point in the date range selected.
• their first day: If, in a new user funnel, you select their first day instead, this restricts the funnel to users who fire the first event (and thus enter the funnel) on the first day they appear in Amplitude (their new user date).

By default, Amplitude assumes events will not be triggered within one second of each other. However, in some situations—like when you have multiple events firing at the same times—you may need a more detailed level of time resolution. In these cases, Amplitude can resolve events on a per-millisecond level.

Simply check Millisecond resolution in the Advanced drop-down.

NOTE: This setting can cause issues if you are generating client event times in distributed or multithreaded environments. Contact Amplitude support if you need assistance. 

Conversion

The default option for a Funnel Analysis chart, the Conversion graph is a bar graph detailing the number of users who have clicked through to each step of the funnel.

In this chart above, we see that there were 229,324 users who triggered the event User Sign Up in the last 30 days. Of these, 173,093 triggered Search Song or Video within 30 days of viewing an item's details. And 28,472 of the original group of users triggeredPurchase Ticket within 30 days of User Sign Up.

Not only does the bar graph show the number of users who converted at each step, it also shows the number of users who dropped off at a particular step of the funnel. The former are displayed by the solid regions of the bars, while the latter are represented by the striped areas on top.

The tabular view of the data, which you'll find directly below the chart, offers some additional context: 

• Conversion: The percentage of users who successfully completed the entire funnel.
• [Event name]: The number of users who complete that step in the funnel. The first step will always be 100% because a funnel only includes users who triggered that first event.
• Average Time: The average time it takes users to move from one event to another event in the funnel, based on the time of users' first conversion.

Conversion over time

The Conversion Over Time graph shows conversion rates for users who entered the funnel on a specific date. If, for example, a user enters a funnel on January 1st and then converts in the funnel on January 5th, they will be counted in the bucket for January 1st, since that's when they first entered the funnel.

The percentages seen here are conversions per unique user, per day/week/month. For instance, if a user enters the funnel by firing the first step on both July 1st and July 2nd, and completes the funnel within 30 days of both dates, that user will be counted in the conversion percentages for both July 1st and 2nd.

This graph can also show you the conversion rate between funnel steps. Users do not have to complete the entire funnel to be included in this analysis—instead, they need only complete all the steps up to (and including) the last step you're interested in.

For an example, let's look at this chart:

Within this three-step funnel, Amplitude lets you look at conversion rates across the entire funnel, between any two steps in the process (in this example, step 1 to step 2, or step 2 to step 3), or between two pairings of steps (step 1 to step 2, and step 2 to step 3). If you were to select 1: User Sign Up to 2: Search Song or Video , all users who completed those two steps would be included, regardless of whether or not they completed step three.

Amplitude will display conversion graphs for each selection in the Measured As Module below, as shown in the screenshot above.

If this were a four-step process, conversions from step two to step three would include all users who completed the first three steps of the process, regardless of whether they completed the fourth. Users always must enter the funnel at the first step to be included.

NOTE: Conversion Over Time for new users still counts all active users.

Set conversion windows between steps

Some customers don’t want just a single conversion window for their funnel, but desire the ability to set specific windows in between step of the funnel to align it with their expectations of how long it should take users to convert through each step

Limitations:

• Only works with Conversion and Conversion Over Time

• Only works on “this order” and “exact order” settings

• Total length of conversion window limited to 365 days

A nuance exists when a Funnel has repeated steps in it, where we count the conversion window when the user encounters the step for the first time. The sum of the total conversion steps will always be equal than or less than the total conversion window, and when there are repeated steps a user may appear to convert with an overall conversion window, but may not convert when you have multiple windows between steps. e.g. The funnel has steps A > B1 > B2 > C with an overall conversion window of 8 minutes from A to C. The time from A > B1 is 1 minute, A > B2 is 3 minutes, B1 > C is 7 minutes and B2 > C is 5 minutes. If the window from A > B is 3 minutes, the user will convert because A > B1 is 1 minute (such that they’re within the window); however, if the window from B > C is 5 minutes, the user will not convert because B1 > C is 7 minutes (outside the 5 minute window).

Time to convert

Time to Convert shows you how long your users take to move from one step in your funnel to the next, displaying the data as a histogram.

Amplitude automatically chooses a bucket size (1 second, 10 seconds, 1 minute, 10 minutes, 1 hour), depending on the conversion window and lookback window you select. The median time to convert shown is for the entire funnel.

The percentages on the vertical axis represent the ratio of users who converted within a particular interval, relative to the number of all users who converted within the selected time range.

If you need to, you can also create custom buckets:

If you create custom buckets, the percentages returned will be calculated using only users who fall between the min and max values for your bucket.

NOTE: The median bar will still be calculated based on the full data set, regardless of the bucket min and max values.

You can also switch from a histogram view to a new time series, depicting how median time to convert changes over time. Click the Distribution drop-down and select Over Time.

While the default scope of a Time to Convert graph is the entire funnel, you can also limit it to any two consecutive steps in your funnel, as described in the previous section.

Frequency

The Frequency chart helps you get a sense of of the number of times users in your funnel trigger one event before triggering another specific event for the first time. You can choose the two events you want to analyze in the Measured As Module, as shown in the screen shot below.

For example, in the below example we see that 71.8% of users who reach Step 2 of the funnel trigger the Search Song or Video event only once before purchasing a ticket within a one-day period.

A/B testing

NOTE: For best practices, including tips on instrumentation, please take a look at our How to Analyze A/B Tests Results in Amplitude article.

Also, A/B testing is only available for customers with Growth and Enterprise plans.

In Amplitude, A/B testing lets you compare the funnel conversion performance of two or more user segments against each other. You can view results in terms of improvement—which describes the performance of a segment compared to the baseline—or in terms of statistical significance, which will show you the probability of observing a difference as extreme as what you saw, assuming the control and treatment have the same mean.

Amplitude will, by default, use the first segment added to the funnel analysis as the baseline, but you can change this in the Baseline segment drop-down menu.

A/B Test - Improvement

This chart will display the conversion rate for each segment across all steps in your funnel. You can have more than just one variant in an A/B test, but you can only have one baseline.

A/B Test - Significance

This chart will tell you each variant's predicted chance to outperform the baseline. A high value suggests the variant will convert better than the baseline, while a low value suggests it won't.

If these results include:

• a sample size above 30 for both variants being compared
• sample size * conversion rate >= 5 and sample size * (1-conversion rate) >= 5 for both variants
• a significance of 95% or greater

then Amplitude will consider the results significant.

Get more details on how Amplitude calculates chance to outperform and statistical significance.

Breakdown Table

The data table below the chart will give you a breakdown of the data. As with all data tables in Amplitude, you can export the data as a CSV file. Here are the columns included:

• Count: The number of users or groups that entered the funnel.
• Converted: The number of users or groups that completed all the steps in the funnel with all conditions met.
• % Conversion: The number of converted users or groups, divided by the number of users or groups that entered the funnel.
• % Improvement over Baseline: This is calculated by the equation (% conversion for that variant - % conversion for the baseline) / (% conversion for the baseline). The percentage in the data table will be green when the value is a positive number.

• Significance: This is the likelihood that the performance displayed for each test variant is actually different from zero, and not due to random fluctuations in the data. The higher this value is, the more confident you can be in your results. More formally, this can be described as 1 - p-value.

Holding properties constant and session-based funnels

By default, Amplitude does not hold properties constant in a funnel analysis. This means the funnel chart will display the unique count of users who have gone through the funnel once or more—if, for example, the user goes through the entire funnel multiple times, they are only counted once.

So for the following chart, if a user were to convert this funnel (View Item -> Add to Cart -> Complete Purchase) ten times over the last day, they would only show up once.

If, however, you opt to hold properties constant, the funnel chart will display the unique count of user and user/event property pairs that have completed the funnel. If a user goes through the entire funnel X times with Y distinct event property values, the user will be counted Y times.

For example, if a user converts View Item Details -> Add Item to Cart -> Complete Purchase with ten different Item_ID property values, they will show up ten times in the chart. Here, Item_ID is an event property that's been sent for all three events in the funnel. An event property can only be held constant if you have instrumented it for every event in the funnel.

You can use this method to build session-based funnels. To do this, hold constant Session ID, as shown here:

A user must complete each step in the funnel with the same session ID in order to be converted. A Funnel Analysis chart with this setup will no longer show unique users, since users can complete the funnel multiple times in different sessions. 

Conversion by event and user property (group-by)

You can set up your funnel to break out conversion by event property values at a specific step of the funnel. This helps you understand what property value potentially has the greatest or smallest impact on conversion.

In the example below, a three-step funnel is grouped by Step 2's event property, item_id:

The graph shows the conversion distribution of users who triggered Step 2 (Add Item to Cart) event, broken out by each item_id value.

If you choose to group by a step other than the first, you will also see a segment of users who did not reach that segmented step (the blue-shaded segment for 'did not reach step' in this example).

NOTE: If users in your funnel can complete the steps multiple times, this method will take the first occurrence of each event and bucket the user for the value on that event.

Conversion drivers

The conversion drivers option allows you to look at the actions taken by users between steps in the funnel. This helps you clearly identify potential drivers of conversion, or of drop-off. Check out our Help Center article on conversion drivers in Amplitude to learn more.