Building a Funnel - Discussion

Re: An expected flow

A straightforward flow might include the following steps:

Visit homepage
Visit download page
Sign up for an account
Download software
After 7-day trial, software takes user to license-purchase page
Purchase license

Note that it is possible for the visitor to drop from the flow after each step, forming a funnel. There might be additional steps that a user might take between visiting the homepage and visiting the download page that aren't accounted for in the above flow. For example, someone might want to check out the additional informational pages before visiting the download page, or even visit the license purchase page to check the license price before even deciding to download. Considering the amount of browsing that a visitor could perform on the page, it might be simplest just to track whether or not a user gets to the download page at some point, without worrying about the many paths that they could have taken to get there.

Re: Atypical events

There are a few events in the expected flow that might not correspond with the visitors we want to target. For example, there might be users on the homepage who aren't new users. Users who already have a license might just be visiting the homepage as a way to access the support sub-site. A user who wants to buy a license might also come in to the license page through the homepage, rather than directly from the software.

When it comes to license purchasing, it's possible that users don't come back after exactly seven days. Some users might come back early and make their purchase during their trial period. Alternatively, a user might end up taking more than seven days to decide to make their purchase, coming back days after the end of the trial. Anticipating scenarios like this can be useful for planning the design, and coming up with metrics that come as close as possible to measuring desired effects.

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