Goals and funnels are two different lenses on conversion. They share the same underlying data — pageviews and custom events — but answer different questions.
Goals — "did it happen?"
A goal is a single completion you care about. Examples:
- A visitor reached
/thank-you(URL-match goal). - A visitor clicked the "Start free trial" button (element-click goal).
- A visitor sent a
purchasecustom event (event goal).
A goal gives you one number: the conversion rate. Across 1,000 visits, how many completed?
Use goals when you want to measure whether something happened, track it over time, and attribute it to traffic sources.
Funnels — "where did people drop off?"
A funnel is a sequence of 2-10 steps a visitor must complete in order. Each step in a funnel is itself a goal-like event (a page visit, an event, or an existing goal).
A funnel gives you a per-step conversion rate — and crucially, a drop-off number for each step. If 100 people landed on /pricing, 60 clicked "Subscribe", but only 20 made it to /thank-you, the funnel makes the 60→20 collapse impossible to miss.
Use funnels when you want to find the largest drop in a multi-step flow.
When to start with a goal
- You're measuring a single action (sign-up, purchase, contact form submission).
- You want to compare conversion rates across acquisition channels.
- You want to display the metric in the dashboard or share it on a public dashboard.
When to upgrade to a funnel
- The goal exists already, but you want to know why people aren't completing it.
- The flow is naturally multi-step (cart → checkout → confirm).
- You want to test a UX change at a specific step and see whether the drop-off shrinks.
How they connect
You can use a goal as a step inside a funnel. A common pattern:
- Create the goal: "User signed up" (event =
signup). - Build a funnel:
/landing→/pricing→/signup→ goalUser signed up. - The goal still appears on its own as a top-level metric; the funnel adds the drop-off context.